Lessons learned: my journey from raw recruit to senior consultant

By Leanne Wilson, Vertali.

I’ve been working in mainframes for 12 years. Currently a senior security consultant, and recently completed an MSc in Cyber Security. Along the way, I’ve been a practice lead in mainframe services, an information security manager working in governance, risk management and compliance (GRC), and a z/OS security consultant. But before all that, back in 2012, I was as a mainframe trainee with a successful consultancy specializing in IBM Z.

My experiences taught me that successful mainframe consultants are made, not born. The path ahead is not always straightforward but one thing is certain: the critical role of mentors and colleagues in shaping your development, and the huge value of organizations like SHARE® and Guide Share Europe. These experiences gave me a passion for mentoring and education, and led me to play an active role in the community myself. Speaking of which, for me, it all began at a GSE conference in 2011.

‘68 percent of the world’s production IT runs on what?’

It was a revelation to discover the ubiquity and importance of the mainframe. Like many, my notions of the mainframe were shaped by popular culture. The supercomputer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (by the way, despite the name HAL being one letter ahead of IBM, that was apparently a coincidence) and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, hanging by a wire to hack the CIA mainframe. Not only did I learn about the importance of the mainframe, I also learned about the massive skills shortage. A couple of years after being at Staffordshire University, I had a sense of direction.

Taking the plunge

I joined the industry as a trainee mainframe systems engineer at RSM Partners in February 2012. I gradually started to build my knowledge and skills, under the watchful eye of seasoned colleagues, working in back-end office support and IT support. The main aspect was mainframe education: independent learning, formal training, networking events, monitored access to systems and, much later, actual project work. This activity was later formalized as the Mainframer in Training (MIT) program, and was covered in a SHARE article.

In my first six months I attended seven formal lecture/workshop courses. I was an eager beaver. I was responsible, in many ways, for setting the pace and direction of my learning, and I embraced everything: z/OS, z/VM, RACF, CICS, DB2, IMS, MQ, USS, Websphere, JES. Throughout, I was coached and mentored. Experienced mainframers kept me on the straight and narrow, answering my endless questions, supporting me at every step.  Thinking back, I created my own personalized training plan.

New To Z: developing the talent of tomorrow

More than a decade later, and there’s still a skills shortage. The experienced workforce is ageing. And yet the mainframe is persists, modernized and still relevant. There’s a great deal of interest (and opportunity) in upgrading legacy environments and developing new hybrid strategies for data and transaction-heavy sectors. But perhaps the mainframe’s longevity works against it, creating perceptions that it’s not “modern enough” for today’s demands. In 2022, a ComputerWorld study found that young IT professionals were reluctant to focus on the mainframe, seeing it as a “stagnant environment”. It’s estimated that only 7% of today’s mainframe workforce is under 30. Teams continue to be understaffed, at a time when upskilling your talent pool to support strategic IT investments – the mainframe is so often the hub for digital transformation – makes sense.

As an industry, we need boost the numbers of young people in the talent pool as quickly as we can – something Vertali is doing, funding and delivering its own New To Z (NTZ) initiative. Development focuses on giving individuals the breadth of skills and knowledge across the platform they need, before they specialize. That wide experience can be lacking in today’s rather more atomized IT culture. In a neat bit of circularity, I’m now supervising the company’s two latest NTZ recruits. I know what it feels like to be sitting where they are. They will, I hope, benefit from what I learned, my successes, and perhaps more importantly my mistakes.

In fairness, IBM is investing in training a pipeline of new mainframe resources. It’s also developed a range of modern GUI-based tools that help to make the platform more engaging, relevant and comfortable for a new generation, currently working in distributed environments who may be considering the switch to big iron.

Lessons learned

What have I learned from my experiences? Everyone has their own journey, so you need to make sure you take control of it. I probably tried to do too much, too quickly. You can’t be a master of everything straight away. But it’s also important to explore all the different areas and avenues of the mainframe in your early days. You can specialize later. You need a tailored Training Plan to make sure that what you’re doing is goal-oriented, structured, differentiated, supported, and constantly reviewed. And you need to document your learning.

You need to be in an environment where you can apply your new-found skills rapidly (look up the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, a model that shows how learned information slips out of our memories). It’s important to have links to, and be able to communicate with, non-technical teams, to connect what you do with business requirements. You need a strong appreciation of process, and of change and incident management. Networking is critical: get involved in user groups and working groups, meeting people and, ideally, presenting at conferences. SHARE events, the GSE 101 Working Group and GSE Next Gen initiative are invaluable. You should start building your own network early. The person next to you at an event could, in 10 years, be the person you call with a severity one incident – or the future client who calls you for help.

On a more personal level, my apprenticeship felt like spinning an awful lot of different plates at the same time. I learned how to survive on six hours’ sleep. That you should always create a backup. That training is about more than simply ticking boxes. And we should expect to receive the help and support that we need from our colleagues – and there’s no shame in asking for help.