IBM i Job Outlook for 2024 Not Great, But Not All Bad Either
January 17, 2024 Bob Langieri
First, the good news: Salaries for IBM i and RPG developers and programmers continue to go up. Average salaries of new hires of senior developers in 2023 have been getting $120,000 to $130,000. I predict this going up 6 to 10 percent in 2024, to $127,000 to $143,000. Some with specialized skills will get 10 to 20 percent more.
This is why it’s important to add to your skills. IBM i salaries still pale compared to other more popular platforms and skills. Hiring is still very slow in the IBM RPG world as companies are doing more with less! Hot skills are migration to cloud, integrating open systems with legacy systems, Web services, use of Python, Git, AI, and cybersecurity.
In the bigger picture, I see cybersecurity and forensics as hot specialties for years to come. This is much broader than just the IBM i or Windows. Companies don’t like to admit they have been breached or held for ransomware, but the truth is a very high percentage of companies have been hit, usually through their Windows servers. Ransom is usually in the seven-figure neighborhood and the fixes are taking months to repair and a toll on other needed projects.
More older IT people are working past retirement age. Working to the age of 70 is pretty common. Partly I feel that they want to keep working because the love their work, and partly because of the need to supplement Social Security. Another tidbit I hear is that older workers are more reliable and have a better work ethic. Imagine that.
But sooner or later, these people will leave and companies will find themselves understaffed. This is another reason why companies are having to be creative with training young IT minds to learn RPG as well as using part-time and remote part-time support. Over the past eight to nine years, most of my search activity has been because of someone retiring or dying. It’s a reality, folks.
As much as we need to protect against security threats, companies need to prepare for a dire shortage of skilled people. There are still a few (very few) resources to do the training for you and very affordable, but companies are being too shortsighted to make the investment. Is it worth $2,500 to $5,000 to train someone in modern RPG? You bet it is! And young developers learning the IBM i will have the world in their hands, as they are in hot demand.
Trends for RPG Programmers/Developers
In years past, it was easier to track numbers of job openings by specialties like RPG programmers/developers. I researched both Dice and this year Indeed and using simple search terms like “AS400,” “AS400 Programmer,” and “AS400 RPG Programmer.” I found mixed results.
Overall, I found that in the last seven days, there were approximately 40-50 full-time openings nationwide for IBM i RPG types, about half posted by companies and half posted by recruiters. Typically, some of those companies that are giving those openings to recruiters are also posting the same jobs, so that 40 to 50 openings are probably more like 30 openings total for all of the USA.
I see a trend in more openings for contract programmers and more companies willing to have programmers work remote. Many companies have moved to a hybrid workweek, even those who said they never would. Some are one to two days remote and three to four days onsite. Personally, all of my contractors are working remote and I don’t see that changing. And these are all long-term relationships, one to eight years (full and part-time).
Yes, there are also some direct hires, but overall, the IT job market has been in a slowdown since COVID. My recruiter friends who work in the non-IBM i market (Windows, Unix, open), have told me that 2023 was extremely slow as well.
For a number of years, I researched programming language trends on the Tiobe Index. and watched as RPG declined in popularity from about 20 to no longer in the top 50. Currently C# is the most used language. But don’t despair: There is still a pretty big market for RPG fans. Just realize that IBM i and RPG are just one small sliver of a growing pie in the IT programming language jungle. If you think individual pronouns are too many, just look at the top 50 programming languages on the Tiobe Index.
For years, I have been a student of economic and business trends. These are the tea leaves I read:
- Employment data (rates of unemployment, employment participation rate, monthly job creation number and how the numbers usually get revised downward a month or two after announcement and usually overlooked)
- The stock market is usually a predictor of the economy by 6 to 12 months
- Interest rates
- CPI (Consumer Price Index), or inflation
- Oil prices
- The US Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Numbers of job openings
- What I hear from people who work in the IBM i world
I hear from people who get laid off, company mergers, companies getting off the platform, IT managers, and more. I believe the IBM i has so much potential, but companies need someone to show them the potential.
Lately some big companies like Amazon, Apple, Meta and others have been announcing big layoffs. Are they concerned of a recession, slowdown, or just trying to better their bottom line? This is why it’s so important to keep learning, keep upgrading your skills, and experiment with new technologies.
The Internet offers you a wealth of information, including how-to videos, webinars, and sources for information that can advance your skills. AI has been around a long time, but thanks to ChatGPT and similar tools, you can turn your theories into a real tool to make your company a step ahead of the competition.
Microsoft has recently made a change to new keyboards for Windows 11, adding a new key called Co-Pilot that activates an AI chatbot. Expect to hear much more about AI in the workplace, so learn it and add to your toolbelt.
Keep your career moving forward by learning new skills, be active about listening to the signs of new trends, follow discussions on LinkedIn, IBM news, webinars, user group meetings and conferences as well as COMMON. Invest your time and money in advancing your skills to better prepare you for your next challenge or opportunity.
Bob Langieri is the CEO of Excel Technical Services.
Bob Langieri is the president and owner of Excel Technical Services, a Southern California IBM i recruiting company. Bob can be reached through bob@excelsearch or on LinkedIn.
Editor’s Note: This story is an expanded version of a post Langieri originally shared on LinkedIn.
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being an social/economics article, IBMi is without doubt one of the most productive and cheap to run platform (just weight in all *the billions* of security problems caused by other platforms…. blocking companies… airports… hospitals…).
But nobody is doing unfortunately (at least publicly journalistic wise) an analysis to why some companies are moving away from the platform, what are the problems, who decided, a gap analysis.
personnel, yes it is a reason.
not knowing new features, being on a old mechanical disk system, obsolescence, tech debt, another.
lack of a modern native GUI and super light remote display graphical protocol to enable robust and always available apps like stock programming editors (not requiring things like RDi…) and enabling super fast reactive ERP screens defined by a description language native and known by all the industry, capable to show a calendar at least and a decent grid and an JPG? yes, this is key, and feeds the other reasons. mouthful off 😉
Forgive me, Ema, but I think you are not correct in your gap analysis about we journalists out here.
This entire publication, in its now 35 year history, has been a gap analysis about why people keep the platform and why they leave. We have done literally thousands of detailed stories on this. I think IBM i is an efficient platform for those who know how to make it sit up and bark, as they say, but it is alien to those who are in the majority who don’t even know what they are missing but who have cheaper iron and cheaper software and more people to still make some pretty impressive infrastructure for other kinds of workloads where IBM i is absolutely not suited.