Even in the earliest days of 2020, consultants and programmers are hunting down chances to earn money servicing the 3000. When Doug Hagy looked into joining the LinkedIn HP 3000 Community, he wanted to see if the group was a source of related work opportunities. "I developed on the HP 3000 continuously from 1981 to 1999," he said. "At its peak of popularity, it was a pretty solid platform. Companies who chose HP 3000 usually had deep pockets."

Hagy isn't wrong altogether. An HP 3000 investment can be traced to Fortune 100 corporations like Boeing, or a part of the L'Oreal beauty empire. It's far more likely to see an MPE/iX server running as a place like a Texas title insurance company, or a manufacturer of saw blades.

We had to reply that we didn't know of new work opportunities for 3000 experts. Certainly, his 18 years of development experience qualifies Hagy as one of those. From time to time, opportunities surface in places like the 3000-L mailing list. Fresche Legacy has a stable of 3000 people who help in migrations as well as perform some system maintenance for 3000s.

FM Global was looking to hire a Powerhouse developer on a contract basis in January. Pay was $50 an hour for the job in Rhode Island, on a six-month set of contracts "extended for years to come." The company even advised applicants of a $62 a night rate it had for contractors' lodging at Extended Stay America. It didn't look like the lodging was fully compensated, but there was a $23 a day per diem.

Just this week we heard from Birket Foster, whose MB Foster firm is still assisting in migrations of data from 3000s. Some of those are contract-driven, while others can be sometimes project-specific engagements.

LinkedIn has a 3000 Community with 674 members, which makes it twice the size of today's 3000-L membership list. LinkedIn's groups used to have an attached Jobs feature, but by now the Jobs are spread across all of the site's resources. With that said, a post for Programmer/Analyst for the City of Lawton, Oklahoma was listed in November. MPE/iX was among the requirements.

Hagy was enthusiastic. "If I found someone wishing to migrate an app from a 3000, that could be interesting. IMAGE, V3000, COBOL could be an interesting project. Lots was developed for this platform."

The deep pockets are mostly gone from 3000 enterprises. Migrating Image, VPlus, and COBOL II was a project for the previous decade. Companies are migrating data for use with cloud computing and alternatives involving Linux. Archival 3000 systems are running, and some others are managing production on a timeframe to allow companies to migrate.

Hagy, who operates Twin Lakes Consulting, "a nimble micro business" based in Greensburg PA, says he last touched MPE around 1999 or so. "I was doing Y2K prep and providing backfill support for businesses moving to new platforms," he said. I wasn't thinking there'd be any HP 3000 action out there now, until I saw the group you moderate. I'd make time to assist if someone wanted to port a novel app from MPE and needed someone to dissect its inner workings. Before MPE I did RTE work on HP 1000s."

Some companies will need a programmer or consultant whose experience goes back to the days of real-time systems with HP badges on the front of the server. They emerge from the shadows of an era where reliable service, on an unhackable server, that simply worked, could be enough.

Image by ds_30 from Pixabay