[RSHEPP]

My mother and her husband are COBOL devs for a US state government. She works on the health insurance side for teachers and other state employees. Think claim processing.

Lots of batch jobs running at night. Their alert system is an actual human who calls my mom when jobs fail in the middle of the night.

It's high paying for the city they live in, but not high paying for software development. They will both have full retirement and healthcare for life, assuming the government can fulfill it. They are both fully remote since COVID too.

She's also worked for state lottery, teacher's retirement system and DOT.

edit: she says they have a SQL database, but mostly store in IBM IMS

[gaws]

> They will both have full retirement and healthcare for life, assuming the government can fulfill it

Are they not worried about getting DOGE'd?

[Lyngbakr]

Is it entirely maintenance or does she also build new stuff with COBOL?

[RSHEPP]

She says it's both. By new stuff, it's mostly one off programs that handle small changes to the way billing or claims are handled. It sounds like they have a library of programs to start with and she extends it to fit the new edge case.

[agnishom]

By state, you mean US state, right?

[RSHEPP]

Correct. Updated.

[ninja3925]

Very likely.