
California can't give state employees a pay cut, thanks to its ancient COBOL payroll system - timr
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1132588.html
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ajross
Don't laugh. Some day folks will be struggling to maintain their ancient Rails
junk and paying top dollar for anyone old enough to remember how it works.

Giant batch systems (I'm assuming this is a batch thing) in COBOL really
aren't so insane anyway. The language is simple (if ugly, and an evolutionary
dead end), the problem is comparatively simple, and the batch notion
eliminates a lot of the complexities people deal with in modern "realtime"
systems. The real problem here is the IT bureaucracy that allowed the system
to get so stale that it wasn't maintainable anymore. But than can happen
anywhere, with any technology.

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hugh
My guess: actually it would take about five minutes.

But the only guy who knows that is an employee of the state of California, so
what the hell is his incentive to let them know that? He's probably working
right now to obfuscate the code.

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hollerith
No one has mentioned yet the possibility that the IT managers who claim it is
impossible believe that it is unethical ever to cut the pay of a government
worker (those tireless guardians of the public welfare).

~~~
lacker
In fact, today John Chiang (the controller in charge of these paychecks) is
blaming COBOL, but in the past week Chiang has been saying he thought it was
illegal, unethical, et cetera to enact these pay cuts. Not that
Schwarzenegger's maneuvers are morally defensible, I really don't know, but it
seems pretty unlikely that Chiang discovered this programming problem by
coincidence the day after his other excuses failed to stop the executive
order.

~~~
jpcx01
If I were in his position, I'd do the same thing. When he gets fired for not
doing his job, he'll be a liberal hero for stalling the evil, tyrannical
government of Schwarzenegger who was trying to suppress the lives and family's
of California's most productive workers.

~~~
MaysonL
If Schwarzenegger could fire him, I'm sure he would. But, just like Arnie,
he's been elected by the wise and wonderful electorate of this marvelous
political entity.

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anthonyrubin
$177 million seems much too high for a replacement system. Of course 200K
employees seems much too high for a state government as well.

~~~
maximilian
California is awful big and has a ton of people in it. I'm not entirely
convinced that California considers itself a country but just hasn't told
anyone yet. They do everything different here and even check you at the
_state_ borders.

177 million does seem like a lot though.

~~~
dfranke
> and even check you at the state borders.

What are you talking about? I live in California, have been in and out a great
number of times, and have never encountered anything of the sort. Besides, it
would be unconstitutional.

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lacker
When I first came to California I was driving west on I-80 and I was stopped
at the Nevada border. But they just asked if I had any plants or animals in
the car and when I said no they left me alone. Apparently they are very
concerned about invasive species. Hawaii is similar.

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mynameishere
I have a hard time believing they have no facility for changing pay. Seems
like it would have been in version 0.1

~~~
mdasen
I think the problem isn't that they can't change pay. It's that it's terribly
difficult to change the pay for a hundred thousand workers (I'm assuming the
CA gov. employs that many).

For instance, let's say that you calculate an employee's salary as: Position
Salary * Location Variance + Yearly Boost * Number of Years Employeed. That
seems simple. The program stores those variables and outputs a number for each
worker. Now, if you tried to get everyone to $6.55/hr ($11,921 per year),
you'd be in a pickle. You aren't storing wage or salary. So, there's no way to
adjust someone's salary. Even if you consider variable wage/salary increases
per year (vary by person and by year), you could still have a system that
didn't give you a salary.

So, I can see how that would happen. What I can't understand is why they can't
just get a list of employees and send that to their bank and say, give them
all $458.50 every two weeks! So, I can buy that they can't alter their system
- these types of things can be made in the most stupid ways. Why they can't
just get a list of employees and cut them all equal checks doesn't compute.

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jpcx01
Time to brush up on the "Learn Cobol in 24 Hours" books and move to
Sacramento!

