Other highly experienced mainframers on Lotko’s list who continue to make important contributions include Mary Ann Furno, John Pinkowski, David Helsley, Greg MacKinnon, Ron Colmone, Russ Teubner, Todd Gagle, Venkatauday (Venkat) Balabhadrapatruni, Chris Crone, Larry England, Matt Hogstrom and Brett Morris.
“It takes people at different points in their careers. We have many distinguished engineers with deep experience and skills in the mainframe space that grew up in CA or one of the companies that got acquired by CA and formed CA, now Broadcom Software. But we're also continuing to attract individual top talent from across the industry. So, so some of these people have been with us for a long time, others have come to us from elsewhere,” Lotko adds.
“These are people that you see out at the conferences, not just up on stage but mixing with you at breaks, talking to you about technology, helping you drive your businesses forward. And I mean, look investing in the people that support this platform and bringing a new generation of talent in, that's the way forward.”
The torch is now being passed to a new generation by great mentors and educators, among the most outstanding being
who has a family history with IBM. “So I remember dad as an elevator operator at 590 Madison Avenue. … I clearly remember him because he said Thomas J. Watson got on the elevator one day that he took him up to where it did whatever floor was, Junior, whatever his floor was. And in the conversation, he was a very personable man. They would greet each other amicably. And he found out my father had a college degree and he was kind of perplexed. Why are you running an elevator? … He said, well, it's the best job I can get. Yes, I have a college degree, but I'm looking all over town. He gave him a card. He said, take this to the x floor and tell them to put you in the draftsman program. And that, that was in 1955, 2 years before I was born. And from there, he went on to programming and he was at IBM for 23 years.”
Not only does Seay have a family history with IBM and a passion for the mainframe, but as an African-American educator, he has a heart for those students whose potential, like that of his dad, might go unrecognized but for the efforts of leaders such as himself. He has consequently been at the forefront of developing a new generation of mainframers just on time for previous cohorts to begin retirement on a large scale.
What are his motivation and method? In his own words, “My great grandfather was an escaped slave. He ran away from the plantation, found the union lines, got a rifle, fought for his freedom, got $1,000 pension and then set up a community in Alabama and put himself through what's called, and his wife, to what's called Normal School, which was this fast track to educate teachers.
“And that's where HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] come from. And they were educating black people for decades when nobody else was. And all the talent in the black community was focused in the HBCUs. Both athletically and intellectually in the HBCUs. That's where it was.
“And so fast forward to hear the opportunity here. And I want to skip a lot of the history just to bring us to right where we are now, the relevance of the HBCUs. I preach this. And you've heard me say this many times: the HBCUs can be a major solution to the skills problem in mainframe, the mainframe sector of energy, they can be a, I'm not going to say they can be the total solution. Maybe they could, I don't know how many of you can get engaged, but they can certainly be a major, a major solution. …
“The story is always the same. The kids are easy to sell. This will get you a job, this will get you a good paying job. You got their attention, they're there. There they are. And then the companies come but guess what? The companies just don't need mainframe people. They need ten of everybody else to every Mainframe person they need. So, they come to the campus to get the mainframe people. They say, guess what? They got a good product here. Oh, we got network people, we got ops people we need, we got developers we need, in the non-mainframe space and that's the way it is at all the schools.”
The journey continues, and as new generations arrive on the mainframe, they will continue to inherit the greatest and most innovative business computing platform in history, for generations to come.