The Baby Boomer Exodus: What’s Wrong with
the Standard View?
Business White Paper
Are pending Boomer retirements about to create a vast skills shortage, or is
something even more fundamental going on?
By Jim Fowler and Sandra Wade | Software AG
CONTENTS
Who are the Baby Boomers
3
Ready, Set, Yawn
4
Three Impact Areas
4
Programming Skills
4
Mission-Critical Experience
6
Organizational Domain Knowledge
7
How Should Organizations Respond
8
to the Exodus
Throwing the Boomer out with
8
the Bath
Step 1: Determine which Positions
9
are at Risk
Step 2: Tackle the Skills Problem
10
with Training
Step 3: Build Mission-Critical
11
Experience through Mentoring
Step 4: Transfer Domain Knowledge
On October 15, 2007, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling fired
up a computer and did something revolutionary.
Having entered this world on New Year’s day, 1946
(at one second past midnight), nearly 61 years later
she became the first US Baby Boomer to register for
Social Security. With a few strokes of the mouse, the
long-awaited Baby Boomer retirement wave had
officially reached shore in the States.
While the exodus of Baby Boomers from the global
workforce has vast macro-economic implications
that will take decades to unravel, it is particularly
meaningful to the IT industry. Specifically, the Baby
Boomer exodus threatens to significantly impact the
world’s so-called “legacy” computer systems—most
of them custom-coded, running on mainframe computers, and responsible for the majority of the world’s
data processing. Some analysts believe (although
there is no way to measure) that between 70% and
80% of the world’s data resides on mainframes.
12
by Maintaining Ties with Retirees
Step 5: Automate Existing Systems
13
wherever Possible
Conquering the Triple Threat
14
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WHO ARE THE BABY BOOMERS?
Before diving into this narrow focus area, it is important to have a cursory understanding
of the larger subject. When referring to the “Baby Boom,” this is of course the cultural
phenomenon that took place immediately following World War II. At that time, the US
economy shifted from war-time pursuits to manufacturing in an effort to assist the “free
world” in rebuilding their countries.
Additionally, the US G.I. Bill made it possible for a generation of people to obtain college
degrees—perhaps for the first time in their family’s history. Improved income levels combined with a soaring economy due to increased exports resulted in increased exuberance
and…more babies. Many more babies. The extraordinary rise in the number of new births
didn’t level off until 1968 (see figure 1, below, source: US Department of Commerce).
The Post-War World II Baby Boom wasn’t only a US phenomenon. Many European countries
and Japan suffered great loss of life during the war. So, it wasn’t uncommon for governments to provide incentives to their citizens to produce more off-spring with the goal of
rebuilding their much-depleted workforce.
Recently, the analyst firm Forrester Research has begun taking a closer look at the impact
the Baby Boomers and their impending retirement will have on IT organizations and corporations as a whole. Based upon Forresters’ review of US Census Bureau data, it turns out
that the majority of Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65 (a common retirement age)
within the next 6-20 years (see Figure 2, below) .
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It is projected that by 2012
there will be 21 million
vacant US IT jobs and only
17 million workers to fill
those positions.
Here’s something to ponder. Using U.S. Census data, the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace
Flexibility calculated that today on average 4.6 adults turn 65 each minute. By 2025, this
number almost doubles to 8 adults per minute.
Ready, Set, Yawn
Might it be reasonable to expect that—given this inevitable mass migration—schools,
- Computing Technology
Industry Association
governments and businesses would have a well-thought-out plan to replace all those IT
workers who will retire over the coming decades? Apparently not.
A recent ComputerWorld survey (May-June, 2007) asked 233 IT professionals “Are you taking
steps to retain IT pros who are nearing traditional retirement age?” Nearly 60% responded
that no steps were being taken. This response is in line with data from the Computing Technology Industry Association. It is projecting that by 2012—a mere 4 years from now—there
will be 21 million vacant US IT jobs and only 17 million workers to fill those positions.
Therefore, approximately 4 million positions will remain unfilled in the US IT economy.
So what is the likely impact of this apparent apathy toward the impending retirement of
Baby Boomers?
THREE IMPACT AREAS
The IT business will be impacted by the Baby Boomer exodus in three distinct areas—but
not necessarily at the same time or in the same way. The areas are programming skills,
mission-critical experience and domain knowledge.
Programming Skills
Perhaps the “popular view” of the Baby Boomer exodus goes something like this: Within
a few years after Baby Boomers begin leaving the IT workforce in droves, all legacy systems
will stop running because the legacy (COBOL, Assembler, PL/I) code will be gibberish to the
young Java and .NET programmers remaining in the IT organization. This exaggeration
unfortunately masks a couple of more serious and urgent issues.
Much has been written about why the skills issue is over-hyped, but there are two basic
reasons. First, any major shortage of legacy skills won’t start to kick-in until well into the
midst of the retirement boom, which is a decade away. Until then, there are plenty of
COBOL programmers, as well as other skilled programmers, on the market in large metropolitan areas. Isolated regions, where IT workers simply don’t want to live or re-locate, will
feel the shortage sooner.
Second, training programmers in 3rd generation languages such as COBOL and 4th generation languages such as Software AG’s Natural is not that difficult. As long as training courses
are offered by vendors, or can be put together by end-user organizations, programmers can
be trained. In fact, many organizations have their own in-house training programs already.
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This is not to imply that eventually, skilled programmers of all kinds won’t be in short supply—including those with legacy skills. This is a serious problem that IT and business will
one day have to address, because young people are apparently not choosing IT as a career
Interest in computer sciencerelated majors declined 70%
between 2000 and 2005.
in the numbers they once did.
- Higher Education Research Institute
As an indication of this trend, the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of
at the University of California
California suggested that the number of students seeking degrees in computer science is
in a free fall. The institute reported a 70% decline in interest in computer science-related
majors between 2000 and 2005, and a 17% drop in computer science graduates since
2005. And even though women make up majority of college students, they account for
only 28% of the computer science degrees granted—down from 38% in 1984.
Some might expect that legacy programming skills that evaporate in the US and Europe will
materialize in Asia to fill the demand. However, parts of the world such as India—once seen
as IT outsourcing factories—are starting to experience legacy skills shortages as well. Just as
in the Western world, programmers want to learn the most popular languages and disdain
those viewed as outdated. Plus, outsourcing IT projects doesn’t yield the cost savings it once
did. High wage inflation and employee turnover in India, in particular, have caused organizations to reconsider outsourcing IT projects as a way to reduce operational costs.
So on balance, the programming skills shortage is a “big wave” that will undoubtedly do
considerable damage if proper preparations are not made. But it is currently well out to sea
in most regions and industries. Other waves created by the Baby Boomer exodus are
breaking closer to shore right now.
Mission-Critical Experience
The heavy focus on programming skills in the typical discussion of the Baby Boomer exodus
often masks a less-understood, but more urgent problem. In the heyday of mainframe
enterprise computing during the 1970s and 1980s, an aspiring computer programmer or
operator could not obtain do-it-yourself programming guides to PERL, Python or Java. Nor
could they download freeware onto their own PC and begin building their own web site.
Rather, a person generally needed a degree in computer science, was hired by a large
enterprise and began at the bottom of the organization hanging tapes and stacking punch
cards for the mainframe system. This person likely attended extensive new-hire training
and worked his way up the ladder through a mentoring program where he (almost never
she) learned all the skills needed to operate and maintain a system that was expected to
provide 24/7 service, bullet-proof security and robust performance. Bringing the system
down was not a matter of Ctrl-Alt-Delete, but was a serious event that had career-threatening
implications if done in the wrong way or at the wrong time.
This rigorous, white-coat, raised-floor environment is where the Baby Boom generation of
programmers, analysts and operators learned their craft. They are now being replaced by
a generation of IT employees accustomed to frequent “re-boots”, system outages, lapses
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in performance and security issues common to distributed computing environments. Yet
the expectation of business has not changed. Mission-critical reliability, performance and
security are more essential than ever to business success.
Only years of experience can
teach a person how to achieve
mission-critical success in a
real-time environment.
The new generation of IT employees—as talented and skilled a group as it may be—simply
does not have the luxury of “figuring out” how to do mission-critical computing. There
must be seamless continuity of operation. Only years of experience can teach a person
how to achieve mission-critical success in a real-time environment, where one cannot
simply hit the reset button. Whether the new system is a distributed system or a mainframe, the requirement for mission-critical experience remains, and such experience takes
time to accumulate.
While programmers might still be in abundant supply—and it is relatively easy to pick up a
new language—the same is not true of mission-critical experience. An organization that
has a Baby Boomer managing a mission-critical system and who is expected to retire 2, 5
or 10 years into the future could be in the midst of a “silent” crisis right now—unless the
Baby Boomer is already in the process of mentoring their replacement.
And though it’s tempting to believe that colleges and universities will provide missioncritical training, the fact is that these environments are better set-up to teach programming
languages and deliver the kinds of laboratory projects that students can complete on their
own PCs in a few months or less.
Organizational Domain Knowledge
If the pending loss of
programming skills is a
potential problem…then the
pending loss of organizational
domain knowledge is a
potential disaster.
If the pending loss of programming skills is a potential problem, and the pending loss of
mission-critical skills is a potential crisis, then the pending loss of organizational domain
knowledge is a potential disaster. Furthermore, this is a disaster that could happen to any
organization tomorrow if only one person—who happens to be just the wrong person—
walks out the door. Never mind the coming deluge of Baby Boomer retirees, this tsunami
can be triggered by one retiree.
When a 20 or 30-year IT veteran leaves the organization, they take with them not only
their skills and experience but also their organizational domain knowledge.
If the pending loss of programming skills is a potential problem…then the pending loss of
organizational domain knowledge is a potential disaster.
Custom-built enterprise systems (the kind that were developed almost exclusively before
the 1990s) are the same way. Within these systems—which often have been added-to and
modified for years or even decades—is data representing the history of how an organization
has evolved. And these systems also embody the business rules and best practices that
help an organization maintain its competitive edge in the marketplace (for example, a large
retailer’s supply chain system or an airline’s flight crew scheduling system).
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The embedding of an organization’s domain knowledge into these custom systems is generally not noticed as long as the systems are being maintained and operated by people
who know how the systems were constructed and how they interact with other systems.
The problem is that the details about how these systems evolved are usually not well
documented. What changes have been made to the systems? Which systems are vital to
the organization? What are the known bugs and shortcomings? Where are the integration
points between this system and other systems? The answers to these questions are often
in someone’s head, and nowhere else.
What happens when the person with all the answers retires? How is the system to be
maintained, upgraded or even re-written? With no governance in place, how does one find
out what other systems are impacted throughout the organization (as well as systems at
vendor and customer sites) by the operation of this one system? One way (if the person
responsible is brave and/or foolhardy enough) is to shut the system down for a week and
What happens when the
person with all the answers
retires? How is the system to
be maintained, upgraded
or even re-written?
interview whoever screams!
Clearly a better way is to plan ahead and deal with the issues of domain knowledge
loss—as well as mission-critical experience loss and programming skills loss—before any of
them reaches a critical stage. The following section explains how to become proactive in
preparing for the Baby Boomer exodus.
HOW SHOULD ORGANIZATIONS RESPOND TO THE EXODUS?
The goal of the previous section was to point out the perils of a do-nothing approach to the
pending Baby Boomer exodus. It should also have been clear that outsourcing is not an
encouraging solution, and that colleges and universities cannot be solely relied upon to fill
the gaps in skills, experience and domain knowledge. This leaves one “leap of faith” option
to consider before deciding to construct a methodical, long-term solution. For lack of a
graceful description, this option has become widely known as “rip and replace.”
Throwing the Boomer out with the Bath
Why not simply migrate all critical applications off the mainframe and re-write them in
Java or .NET? This would eliminate the whole problem; the absence of legacy applications
and systems that need to be maintained by older workers means Baby Boomer retirements have zero impact on the business, right? Unfortunately there are several holes in
this argument.
First, in the area of programming skills, “legacy” is an evolving term. Right now, applications
written in COBOL or PL/I might be viewed as legacy. However, as “hotter” development
technologies are adopted, applications written in Visual Basic, C++, Java, Perl and other
languages are becoming legacy. They are often undocumented (and changes to them
have not been documented either) and the developers who created them have left the
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organization or moved on to other projects. These might be vital applications, but who will
be able to maintain them? In the “rip and replace” scenario, every development environment
gives birth to a new generation of legacy systems.
Second, in the area of mission-critical experience, the requirements of the business for
high-performance, secure, 24/7-reliable service don’t go away with the implementation of
a new IT platform. Therefore, ripping out older mainframe applications and replacing them
with distributed systems only means that a new generation of programmers and analysts
will have to figure out how to handle mission-critical requirements the same way the Baby
Boomers did—the hard way! These capabilities take years to acquire and cannot be taught
in a classroom like a programming language. Yet the business expects, actually demands,
a seamless transition with no dip in service. Anything less could be disastrous.
...if one replaces a custom
“legacy” system that embodied
the history and business rules
of the organization, the
system had better replicate
the existing system perfectly...
Third, in the area of domain knowledge, if one replaces a custom “legacy” system that
embodied the history and business rules of the organization, the new system had better
replicate the existing system perfectly—including flawless integration to the other systems
in the business whose proper operation is intertwined with the core system. How is this
possible with poor (or no) documentation, and the nuances of the legacy system locked
inside the heads of Baby Boomer employees who were recently sent packing?
Finally, while there are certainly instances of successful replacement projects, there are also
numerous published and private examples of rip and replace turning into crash and burn. Two
of the most notorious are Ford’s $400M Everest adventure and McDonald’s $170M Innovate
implosion. Additionally, a recent survey conducted among UK mainframe owners and published in Ireland News (28 February, 2007) revealed some pretty interesting facts:
• 93% still depend on the mainframe to run mission-critical applications
• 50% say it is too risky to migrate off mainframe
• 28% tried and failed to migrate off the mainframe
• 12% had limited success with a migration off the mainframe
• 8% had tried and succeeded with a migration off the mainframe
...the rip and replace option is
not a magic bullet to address
the Baby Boomer exodus.
So in most situations (with a few notable exceptions), the rip and replace option is not a
magic bullet to address the Baby Boomer exodus. That option simply trades one set of
problems for another that could be even worse for the organization. Therefore, the best
way to address the retirement of Baby Boomers is to construct a long-range plan that is
both multifaceted and practical. This plan has five steps.
Step 1: Determine which Positions are at Risk
The only way to predict the actual impact of the Baby Boomer exodus on an organization
is to do a position-by-position inventory. First, gather demographic information on every
staff member in a key role. What is each person’s age? If they are over 50, what are their
retirement plans, if any? (Of course, it is important to understand all relevant Human
Resources policies before asking such question—which could violate company rules, or
even be illegal.) In the worst case, make an educated guess.
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Next, look at current and future staffing requirements. Which positions are predicted to
stay in place for a long time, and which are predicted to shift or be eliminated in the coming years? Just as important, evaluate each position in terms of the skills, mission-critical
experience and organizational domain knowledge required to succeed at the job. Of course
the best way to make this evaluation is to look at the person now occupying the position
Today on average 4.6
adults turn 65 each minute.
By 2025, this number
almost doubles to 8 adults
per minute.
and describe the level of skills, experience and knowledge that person has. If a future position will combine several existing roles, the level of skill, experience and knowledge
required for success will likely be far greater. Also determine if the position will evolve
- Center on Aging & Work/
Workplace Flexibility
over time so that a different level of skill/experience/knowledge will be needed in the
coming years.
As accurately as possible, try to assign to each position the number of years needed for a
person to acquire the necessary qualifications. Also try to estimate how long it will take
(and how much it will cost) to hire a qualified person from the outside.
The final activity in this first step is to create a matrix matching each position’s skill/experience/knowledge requirements with current employee retirement plans. If a particular
position requires a high degree of skill/experience/knowledge, and the person currently
holding that position plans to retire soon, it is an at-risk position. This means the position
could be vacant well before a capable replacement is trained-up or located (see Figure 4,
below). Immediate action is required to make sure that a vacancy in this position does
not occur.
Figure 4. Work backwards to determine if an employee’s position is “at risk” due
to planned retirement.
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Once the most highly at-risk positions within the organization have been identified, it is
time to create a plan to assure that each position has continuity. The next three steps
address this task.
Step 2: Tackle the Skills Problem with Training
Programming skills are the easiest of the three deficits to address. People who are skilled
in one programming language can fairly easily learn another (for example, a recent Forrester
Consulting study found that programmers proficient in COBOL could easily learn Software AG’s
Natural). Training courses are frequently offered by vendors and independent contractors,
and many organizations already have in-house training available for their employees to
make sure there is continuity among their programming staff. In some cases, experienced
programmers can be trained on another language in a matter of weeks—especially as the
Eclipse development environment becomes the de facto standard regardless of programming language used.
...application programming
can be a stepping stone for
technically adept employees
from non-IT departments to
transition into an IT career.
In addition, application programming can be a stepping stone for technically adept employees
from non-IT departments to transition into an IT career. These employees often bring
domain knowledge with them that the current IT staff doesn’t possess.
In the long run (20+ years into the future), the sheer decrease in young people going into
IT careers is likely to catch up with the number of Baby Boomers retiring. There will be an
overall deficiency in IT workers across the board. For this reason, it is also wise to consider
partnering with local colleges and universities to create special training courses designed
to produce the exact type of IT employee your organization is expected to need over the
coming decades. This is especially true if your organization is located in a non-metropolitan
area where potential employees might not want to relocate.
In order to partner with colleges and universities, it’s important to understand their goals
so they benefit from the relationship as well. Schools must fill seats; therefore, any programs they offer will need to be highly attractive to students, not just employers. Potential
mutually-beneficial scenarios include co-operative education and internships, job fair hosting
or participation by the potential employer, and free guest lectures by company subject
matter experts.
The combination of vendor training, in-house training (of both IT and non-IT employees)
and college/university participation should enable organizations to adequately fill the programming skills void left by Baby Boomer retirements.
Step 3: Build Mission-Critical Experience through Mentoring
Replacing the mission-critical enterprise IT experience lost when a Baby Boomer retires is
more difficult than shoring up programming skills. While skills lend themselves to classroom
training and repetitive practice, mission-critical experience takes years to accumulate.
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Therefore, referring back to the chart in Figure 4 (above), mission-critical experience is an
area where time really does matter. The success of the organization will be riding on the
ability of key people to keep systems running 24/7, and with the Baby Boomers retiring
Mission-critical experience
is an area where time really
does matter.
there will be less and less experienced systems analysts and programmers to hire away
from other organizations.
The unexpected loss of key individuals could conceivably lead to a genuine business emergenc—depending on how automated and how esoteric the hardware/software combination
supporting mission-critical systems are. In some cases, even outsourcers or system integrators
might not be able to provide the right personnel in a timely manner. What happens then?
To avoid this kind of crisis, any organization that identifies at-risk positions in the area of
mission-critical skills should institute a mentoring program immediately. Seasoned professionals should be paired with young, career-minded IT workers for hands-on guidance—
much like the journeyman/apprentice relationship required by many trades.
Regardless of whether the employees currently occupying mission-critical leadership posi-
To avoid this kind of crisis,
any organization that identifies
at-risk positions in the area of
mission-critical skills should
institute a mentoring program
immediately.
tions find such a program somewhat threatening, the organization needs to implement the
program for its own good (one of the largest public colleges in the US, for example, makes
knowledge-transfer part of the compensation package for its own seasoned IT employees).
There should be clear and substantial benefits for all parties involved, or a long-term mentoring program will fail.
The measurement of success will be the ability of several younger IT professionals to keep
the mission-critical system up and running on their own, for an extended period of time.
The organization should be comfortable entrusting the satisfaction of its key stakeholders
to these young professionals well before the scheduled retirement of the current experts.
Step 4: Transfer Domain Knowledge by Maintaining Ties with Retirees
While skills and experience requirements can be met through training and mentoring, the
hand-off of organizational domain knowledge is a less straightforward issue. There are two
important domains to consider. One is the domain of the business itself. Because of their
longstanding positions providing detailed support to various departmental and organizational
functions, experienced IT employees often have a unique overview and historical perspective
on how the business really operates from day to day.
For example, the person who developed, trained people on, and maintains the customcoded manufacturing support system and knows how IT supports every single job on the
manufacturing line very likely has an extensive knowledge of the company’s manufacturing
processes. Does this detailed process knowledge exist anywhere in writing, outside of this
IT person’s head? What will happen when this person retires and changes to the system are
required? Who will know how the multitude of sub-processes is impacted by any change?
What is the impact to the business of losing this wealth of knowledge?
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The other knowledge domain is that of the individual IT systems. How do they operate?
How have they been updated over the years? How do they interact? Which ones are vital
and which have become redundant or useless resource hogs? For many IT organizations
geared to respond quickly to ever-changing demands, creating system or process documentation hasn’t been a priority.
With the Baby Boomer exodus,
organizations are at risk of
losing vast amounts of both
business process knowledge
and IT system knowledge.
Therefore, with the Baby Boomer exodus, organizations are at risk of losing vast amounts
of both business process knowledge and IT system knowledge. Training won’t help. Mentoring will only pass the knowledge from the mind of one person to the mind of another,
extending the very same problem into another generation of employees (who are likely to
remain at a given organization for a far shorter time).
The only way to address the loss of vital domain knowledge is to ensure that the information is transferred into a repository that stays with the organization regardless of who is
employed. This can be hard-copy documentation, or better yet, some type of digital
repository. Ideally, the key information the organization needs will be captured as part of
a process modeling initiative – covering both business process and IT systems. All automated IT processes will become Web services and be managed through SOA governance.
However, for most organizations, this type of far-reaching imitative is still many years in
the future.
In the meantime, organizations must do two things immediately. First, they must identify
employees several years from retirement who possess substantial business or IT domain
knowledge. The organization must then work with the employees to define a method of
domain knowledge transfer that is both useful to the organization and beneficial to the
employee. The employee cannot perceive the employer as a sort of “Borg”—sucking
all the value from them, only to discard them as soon as the knowledge-extraction process
is finished.
Second, organizations must identify employees very near retirement, for whom there is
not sufficient time to complete a knowledge transfer process. The organization should work
with these employees to persuade them to delay retirement, or to maintain ties with the
company post-retirement. With respect to this issue, the statistics might be surprising.
The Conference Board recently
reported that 13% of those
who had planned to retire in
the next five years stated that
a sabbatical program would
keep them from retiring.
The Conference Board recently reported that 13% of those who had planned to retire in the
next five years stated that a sabbatical program would keep them from retiring. This finding
supports the notion that some workers might want to “power down”, but not “check out.”
They might be open to flexible work schedules, flexible responsibilities, phased retirement,
job sharing or part-time work. And some employees might even be willing to accept
reduced compensation in order to extend medical benefits.
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The transfer of domain knowledge into a ”knowledge repository” can take place in a flexible,
part-time manner that could be quite acceptable to a retiree. In this way, the organization
has the opportunity to accomplish domain transfer requirements in a lower-cost manner
that does not take full-time employees away from time-sensitive projects.
Step 5: Automate Existing Systems wherever Possible
The fact remains that unless major steps are taken in the next few years by universities,
businesses and governments worldwide, the downtrend in younger people moving into IT
careers will inevitably lead to an IT worker shortage. And there is only so much that can be
done from a human resources standpoint to compensate for inevitable shifts in the make
up of the global workforce. Therefore, the fifth and final step in dealing with the Baby
Boomer exodus is to make technology choices over the next 5-10 years that tip the scale
in favor of a smaller and more agile IT workforce.
The first, and most obvious, aspect of this transition is to increase reliance on automation
in the realm of the mission-critical systems themselves. This means optimizing existing
hardware and software by automating development, management and operations. An
initial move might be the adoption of streamlined development environments such as
Eclipse, so that a single developer can more easily work in multiple languages. Then to
achieve even greater efficiency, transition from application coding to application composition
using technologies such as Web services and business process management (BPM).
The second and higher-level aspect of this transition to a smaller IT workforce is to automate
IT and business processes. Through Web services, process modeling and SOA governance
technologies, much of the work now done by tedious human effort can become part of the
automated fabric of the organization. This new generation of service-oriented technology
...much of the work now done
by tedious human effort can
become part of the automated
fabric of the organization.
is coming into practical implementation at just the right moment in history—when a gradually shrinking IT workforce will simply no longer be available to keep up with the growing
demands business is making of IT. People will not be able to do it. Automation can and
must fill the gap.
However, as organizations begin to adopt SOA and process automation technologies, they
are learning that the transition is not an overnight event. It involves fundamental changes
in the way the organization behaves and operates. But now is the time to embark on the
journey of automation—before the skills become scarce, the mission-critical experience is
harder to find, and the domain knowledge is impossible to retrieve. All of these elements
must be built into the organization itself, so that in the decades ahead fewer people will
be required manage them. After the Baby Boomers settle into retirement, and their children
and grandchildren occupy the global workforce, there will be fewer people in IT.
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CONCLUSION—CONQUERING THE TRIPLE THREAT
The popular view of the Baby
Boomer exodus is wrong. It is
not just a skills problem...
The popular view of the Baby Boomer exodus is wrong. It is not just a skills problem, but
rather a triple threat of declining legacy programming skills, loss of mission-critical experience
and evaporation of irreplaceable domain knowledge. The colleges and universities cannot
fix the problem alone, and it can’t be solved by outsourcing or simply replacing all the
legacy systems. The good news is that a practical long-term approach—combining training,
mentoring and maintaining ties with retiring Baby Boomers—can provide the resources
required to bridge the gap between the Baby Boomer exodus and a future enterprise
landscape where fewer IT employees interact with a higher level of IT automation.
B U S I N E SS W H I T E PA P E R
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FIND OUT MORE
“Old Tech Skills Again in Demand”
Chicago Tribune, April 2008
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sat-tech-jobs-ibmapr05,0,2110029.story
“List of Mentoring Strategies”
Florida Community College at Jacksonville, March 2006
http://www.distancelearning.org/mentors/strategies.html
“Filling Positions Vacated by Baby Boomer Retirements: Why Not Older Workers?”
ProjectManagement411.com, March 2008
http://www.projectmanagement411.com/filling-positions-vacated-by-baby-boomerretirements-why-not-older-workers/
“IT Jobs: Tapping Teens to Fill the Gap”
SearchCIO.com, April 2007
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid182_gci1250438,00.html#
“Baby Boomers, are You Leaving a Legacy?”
The Refirement Network, February 2007
http://www.refirementnetwork.com/articles/baby-boomers-are-you-leaving-a-legacy
“Retiring Baby-Boomers Leave Managers at a Loss”
Management-Issues, June 2007
http://www.management-issues.com/2007/6/12/research/retiring-baby-boomers-leavemanagers-at-a-loss.asp
Aging Hipsters: The Baby Boomer Generation – a source for trends research,
comment and discussion…
www.aginghipseters.com
“Preparing for Baby Boomer Retirement” (detailed background on the phenomenon)
James J. L’Allier, Ph.D. and Kenneth Kolosh, June 2005
http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=976&zoneid=25
“Rich Boomer, Poor Boomer” (financial prospects awaiting retirees)
The Australia Institute, August 2006
http://www.tai.org.au/documents/downloads/WP88.pdf
“Yes, the Tech Skills Shortage is Real”
Information Week, January 2008
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/training/showArticle.jhtml?article
ID=205601557
B U S I N E SS W H I T E PA P E R | T H E B A B Y B O O M E R E XO D U S : W H AT ’ S W R O N G W I T H T H E STA N D A R D V I E W ?
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