Known a lot of guys like that, although not always paid well.
One of the ironic things about IT is that colleges and even most trade schools only teach the latest and greatest. Kids come out proficient in only the current versions of software.
But very few companies are using the latest versions of anything. For some it's by choice based on experience (usually being burned by Microsoft enough times in the past), but for most, it takes time to evaluate, plan, modify and test sufficiently to upgrade to what is essentially a moving target for typically little to no functional gain. And a lot of times, the cost isn't worth it, so various systems stay on "outdated" software.
The new crop of recruits has never seen this old software and has no idea how to manage it.
Hell, when I was an IT noob, IBM released their RS/6000. It was supposed to replace all the AS/400s. We were also told that soon mainframes would be obsolete.
30 years later and I'm still managing software on an AS/400 (among other things). I haven't seen an RS/6000 in decades. And mainframes are still very much alive and kicking, especially in banking. Even back then, we barely got any training on these platforms so I'm sure nobody coming out of college knows squat about them if they've even heard of them. My company still has machines that are running Win 2008 because the application vendor went out of business and there isn't a replacement short of custom coding from the ground up. We just isolate them to minimize vulnerabilities and do our best to keep them alive.
But I'm probably less than a decade from retirement, and there are plenty of other guys with one foot out the door. The knowledge is leaving fast and most companies do a terrible job of allocating time and resources for training, while at the same time, the pool of knowledgeable, competent people they can bring in from outside is shrinking rapidly.
Known a lot of guys like that, although not always paid well.
One of the ironic things about IT is that colleges and even most trade schools only teach the latest and greatest. Kids come out proficient in only the current versions of software.
But very few companies are using the latest versions of anything. For some it's by choice based on experience (usually being burned by Microsoft enough times in the past), but for most, it takes time to evaluate, plan, modify and test sufficiently to upgrade to what is essentially a moving target for typically little to no functional gain. And a lot of times, the cost isn't worth it, so various systems stay on "outdated" software.
The new crop of recruits has never seen this old software and has no idea how to manage it.
Hell, when I was an IT noob, IBM released their RS/6000. It was supposed to replace all the AS/400s. We were also told that soon mainframes would be obsolete.
30 years later and I'm still managing software on an AS/400 (among other things). I haven't seen an RS/6000 in decades. And mainframes are still very much alive and kicking, especially in banking. Even back then, we barely got any training on these platforms so I'm sure nobody coming out of college knows squat about them if they've even heard of them. My company still has machines that are running Win 2008 because the application vendor went out of business and there isn't a replacement short of custom coding from the ground up. We just isolate them to minimize vulnerabilities and do our best to keep them alive.
But I'm probably less than a decade from retirement, and there are plenty of other guys with one foot out the door. The knowledge is leaving fast and most companies do a terrible job of allocating time and resources for training, while at the same time, the pool of knowledgeable, competent people they can bring in from outside is shrinking rapidly.