HP 3000 contracting experience, all for hire
December 10, 2012
An HP 3000 site which wants to go unnamed was interested in a 3000 contractor website. A place that lists available help, I suppose, with information about what experienced MPE pros still do. I posted a simple request without much background information, midday Saturday on the 3000-L mailing list, to try to find someone interested in helping.
Within 48 hours I had the contact names for 22 companies and consultants, all ready to do business with this HP 3000 shop. It's a pretty good-sized system, and the IT manager expected some real effort in finding somebody. After all, HP 3000 expertise is supposed to be hard to find.
"I'll be looking for a couple of experienced HP 3000 MPE resources very soon, and I know they won't be easy to find," he said. "Been there and done that." He didn't want his company name, or his own, used in any report. Some companies are buttoned down like that; we can respect it.
It's a 750Mhz N-Class with four processors that's working at that company. Even their backup system is an N-Class, a 500Mhz 4-way. This recently-installed N-Class 3000 is not going away anytime soon, and about two dozen 3000 citizens would like to come along for the ride. Yes, even in 2012.
I'd call our seeking-the-guru experience exceptional, but I only posted a three-line request on a weekend afternoon. The response was immediate. Responses continued to trickle in today. It wasn't even posted on the LinkedIn HP 3000 Community site. There are over 550 members there, although plenty of them don't contract. Some have retired from that business.
Not everybody is going to qualify for this work. The prospects range in size from companies booking several millions of dollars in business to individuals who aren't sure how much longer their employer will be using the HP 3000. There's also a range of experience, from before the PA-RISC days, to people whose first 3000 work was on a Series 9x8. That's still more than 15 years on the low end. One prospect said, "Whatever runs on the HP 3000, we know it. Qedit, Quad, Cognos, COBOL, Query, in-depth operations and repairs of hardware, HP987, etc., etc."
Several wanted to know where the work would be performed, and some were modest about their focused skills. Others have called, including one programmer-system manager who'd heard about the opportunity "and wanted to jump on this," because he wanted to leave the non-computer job which he's taken instead of 3000 work. That work was at a site which imposed an end-of-life on its 3000, but not on the veterans who maintained it. I got more than one resume emailed to me. It all has been forwarded to that IT manager who wants to remain out of the public eye.
This community may be on the cusp of an imminent shortage of 3000 contract help. Perhaps it's a little early to be considering a lack of MPE talent while sustaining a 3000 installation, however. Either that, or during this weekend everybody was done holiday shopping, or had finished up their last 2012 engagement.
There's a list of MPE contactors and consultants available at the OpenMPE News website, a free outpost where I'm still the nominal curator. Maybe that's the website where our IT manager should have a look. We'll do our best to include the names which are new to that list, as well as any who have refreshed their interest, in a special section there.