In Good Hands
That was the case for Nicholas Richer, whose employer, Spangler Candy Company, acquired its first AS/400 in 1988, over a decade before he was born. “Learning it was essential given our extensive legacy RPG codebase,” he says.
Richer is one of a dozen 2025 TechChannel Rising Stars, each of whom started working on the IBM Power platform within the last five years. They come aboard as hybrid cloud and AI are transforming approaches to IT and driving modernization. While they will all be part of the same future, they all reached this point following widely varying paths.
Some, like IBM web integration developer Ann Wilkerson, were hired to work on IBM Power straight out of college. Others took a more circuitous route. This was literally the case for Jacob Anderson, who drove a fuel truck before becoming an associate software engineer at Fortra.
"Just a few years ago, I was a Class A Fuel Hauler. Now I work on a platform that powers businesses worldwide,” says Anderson, observing that he serves as proof that it’s “never too late to get started.”
Learning the Ropes
Anderson adds that there is a wealth of resources available for anyone beginning their Power journey. That’s a good thing, because in addition to learning languages like RPG, many of them have had to acclimate to green screen terminals while memorizing new commands and navigating a multitude of menus.
“I did not learn anything about Power systems or IBM i in college, so the first few months felt like drinking from a fire hose,” Wilkerson says. “It was also daunting to be surrounded by all these experts; developers who have worked on IBM i for decades and seem to have it all figured out.”
That part is also an advantage. Early-career IBM Power technologists are learning the ropes by enrolling in formal training programs, watching video tutorials, poring over documentation and taking advantage of modern development tools, but perhaps their most important sources of knowledge have been their colleagues, industry peers and mentors.
“Mentorship is invaluable in IT, but especially so on the IBM i, because there are plenty of cute little gotchas and quirks that can take ages to figure out on your own,” says Justin Becker, a junior developer at Innovative Software Solutions.
Doing the Work
It’s a good thing that help is there, because these Rising Stars are tackling critical projects, bringing modern development approaches to legacy systems.
Matteo Lui, system engineer at Power Horsa, used modern languages like PHP, Java, and Python successfully re-engineer historical monitoring and analysis tools written in RPG. Joshua Gardner was involved in automating the organization and formatting of nearly 100,000 source files that would later be sent to IBM for use in Project Bob, the new AI-powered IDE. Zach VanDeuren, RPG programmer at CU*Answers, is working on a strategy to support expanding business functions through IBM i distributed data management concepts.
Marcin Guzek’s first real-world experience on IBM i involved being assigned to 250 IBM i partitions across 30 customers. “The volume and variety of incidents and service requests were intense, but they gave me a fast track to learning,” says Guzek senior systems administration associate at Kyndryl. He appreciated the experience so much that he now calls it his favorite project.
Vuyo Mbanjwa’s favorite project involved building a hybrid warehouse management solution that connected RPG programs on IBM i with a mobile application. “Seeing a legacy system power a modern, real-time interface was rewarding,” Mbanjwa says. “It proved how flexible and future-ready IBM i can be when paired with modern technologies.”
Paying it Forward
Now with this kind of experience under their belt, many Rising Stars are already mentoring others. Meena Chand is fresh off learning critical concepts from her own mentor, who she says “explained the deep logic behind IBM i architecture, especially its strong security and single-level storage system.” With that learning experience still recent, Chand is now mentoring university students, guiding junior colleagues, creating demos and speaking at conferences such as GSE UK.
Sometimes, the flow of knowledge is turned on its head, and early-career developers have knowledge to share with their more experienced coworkers. Such was the case for Nathaniel Olson, who has taught Code for IBM i (Visual Studio Code) to more experienced colleagues who learned their trade before the modern development tool was on the scene.
Rising Stars are in prime position to serve as role models, showing others what the journey to IBM Power can look like. One of those filling that role is Angela Pocklington, a junior developer at Innovative Software Solutions. Just two years into her experience with IBM i, she serves as VP of community outreach for the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA), giving college students attending WMCPA conferences the opportunity to ask questions as they dip their toes into the IBM Power ecosystem.
“My advice to anyone new or seeking a career on the platform would be to find connections, get involved even just a little, and make use of the resources found on Common.org the best you can,” Pocklington says.
Richer, the programmer analyst at Spangler Candy Company, has one thing to add to that: “Embrace being a beginner.”
