The Great Resignation

[OspreyO]

Gonna be awhile I think until COBOL knowledge is dead as a career - there are still a ton of companies especially in finance, services or certain types of retail whose back end is at least partially if not entirely rooted in it with all too often story that the people who [fully] understood it are long gone along with much of the original documentation and no one wanting to be the one who pulls the trigger on the cost and upheaval of a wholesale replacement system (at least 2 supermarkets in the UK had disastrous migrations to new systems trying to replace their older COBOL based ones).

We've only just replaced some of our COBOL and similar systems. We didn't rewrite the systems, we effectively outsourced that workload out to third party service. I think we will live to regret that in the long term, but thats another story. Once the skillset becomes expensive or simply unavailable in reasonable timeframe to support legacy systems. Companies will have no choice but to bite the bullet and replace them entirely.

 

[Housey]

Apply to roles and/or reach out to sales leaders - there are plenty of roles out there.

10-15 years experience you should be getting a package of around £280k - £350k and (assuming overachoiemvent) be earning £400k+ at a fairly safe, big software company.

Get into a startup with the right backing, a bit of luck and you'll be taking a lot more than that.

I thought I would add some experienced perspective to this...

I have worked in the tech sector since the late 80's in sales and sales leadership. I have worked for small, medium and global organisations and start ups and some of the most well known names in the industry. A top sales role today would be Strategic / Global AE running a large account with spend often into 10's to 100's of millions or more. These roles will typically come with significant basic 200K to 250K upwards, double OTE and overachievement will see people into 7 figure earnings. I speak as someone who has done that type of role.

No one will just walk into that role, you need to be very rounded and experienced to secure this type of role as you will be living in the board room of corporations and at the leadership level. You will be running a team of 20-50 people who support you. They may not report to you, but they will be your team, you move them like chess pieces around the board. This is selling at this level, hugely complex, global teams, lots of travel, lots of cadence, lots of out of hours work etc etc etc.

What I have found with tech sales is there is lots of talk of huge earnings and OTE's, overachievement and what X did last year, but most don't in a sustainable manner. No company could sustain a large sales team massively overachieving each year and it would surprise many that sales numbers will rarely be built on the whole team doing it's number, which the rarely do outside of 'right place, right time' situations, not least in the larger corporations. They are still often very well paid, but that comes with stress levels many will never get close to experiencing, not least when you are learning the trade. With age and experience comes ways to deal with that much better, but it is always there. Big bucks come with big pressure, it is not for most people.

Very very few roles pay 150K basic upwards across the industry no matter what you are being told. Glassdoor and LinkedIn salary metrics as well as industry metrics will prove this, I even posted on a few years back. Most sales roles at a good level in tech will pay 80K-100K base with maybe double OTE and not many people make that OTE let along overachieve. They may tell you they do, for they are still well paid by any measure, but most don't. Start ups with lots of cash with throw big money, but most fail so the 250K base means little if you reach the end of the funding runway in Q3.

Companies will not pay 400K to anyone who isn't a top talent and most people are not top talent. One year at 400K does not make a career and I can tell you doing that for 35 years is crazily taxing.

 

[Housey]

....and my first job was a COBOL programmer. I was rubbish.

 

[glenimp617]

Jesus, I learnt COBOL years ago. Never took it up as a career though.

 

[BongoHunter]

ARG! Have just returned from paternity leave to a new boss, I've been back 4 weeks and he's driving me mad. No people skills at all, and completely unrealistic expectations for deliverables - also refuses to set clear briefs for complex projects as "it's obvious".

It's not obvious when you have 7 people to transform one of the largest IT environments in Europe, and those 7 people also have other responsibilities. He won't even attend the meetings arranged where we try to explain and talk to him about this. Feeling like I'll be adding to "the great resignation" stats very shortly at this rate.

 

[Moley]

also refuses to set clear briefs for complex projects as "it's obvious".

This is a huge red flag. I've seen this numerous times over my 35 year career and it's always been from someone who was over their head and didn't have a clue what they were doing and therefore were trying to coast on the back of other peoples efforts.

If I am correct, you can expect to have him start throwing blame at people for not doing things that 'are obvious' instead of taking responsibility for not setting clear expectations (which he can't do because he doesn't know how to).

In your shoes I would be going straight to someone senior to explain the situation and point out that this person is going to prevent the project being delivered on time, within budget, etc.