QAD / PROGRESS Career Dilemma

[JSVP33]

Hello All,

I am highly seasoned Progress / QAD IT Person with over 20 years starting with version 6 and currently working with open edge . As you can imagine i am in my very early 50's and have been loosing a lot of sleep and having anxiety over the rest of my career for quite some time now. It's well known that the scope for these skills are very limited and especially in USA where i reside. Apart from these skills i have BI implementation expertise and PMP certification from PMI.

Part of my anxiety is also due to the fact that any other IT person i meet from outside the QAD/Progress world have not heard of PROGRESS RDBMS and would not like to do anything with it. Also heard about people who worked in PROGRESS before have switched to other areas based on companies migrating to other ERP like SAP or learning skills like .NET.

Working with 4GL my sql skill are not that of an expert and hesitate to get into a full SQL environment. I do want to stick with ERP / Business Applications and BI along with this would be great.
I would like to get your opinion on what skills should i concentrate on getting in the current situation. Would shifting to Oracle ERP at this stage make sense ???

Please help me get over my anxiety so that i can sleep better.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

[TomBascom]

You're in a niche. Celebrate!

That can be a very good thing. Or not. It depends on what you make of it. But you could be one of the faceless masses flogging generic skills that everyone has heard of and where there is always a lower bidder.

By all means strengthen your skills -- learn SQL and become conversant in other technologies. But don't abandon your leverage and become just another minion.

 

[JSVP33]

Thanks Tom for your reply. Guess i was not expecting a response to my post so fast. Honestly what i worry about is the next 13 /14 years with no new people wanting to get into Progress and other people / Companies moving away from Progress. I am a huge fan of progress because of it's ease and DB admin capabilities but am not sure why they have not been able to popularize it like Oracle or SAP. Keep asking myself if there will continue to be a market for Progress People ?? Will i have to move coast to coast for Progress Jobs in future because of limited companies using progress??

 

[TomBascom]

I disagree with pretty much everything above.

It would NOT be a good thing for Progress to be like X. Who wants to be associated with pathological liars and charlatans? Not me. Nor do I wish to be one bland face among millions.

There is a market for people with Progress skills and it is a strong market. The company itself is growing steadily and has plenty of healthy prospects over the next 10 to 15 years. Neither Progress nor the partner applications are going away. New partners get added, new applications get written and new faces appear on the scene.

It will never be Oracle and I thank any listening deities for that.

Sure there are always going to be "companies moving away..." Big whoop. Companies move to something different for a lot of reasons. Companies move *to* Progress too.

 

[TomBascom]

And while I'm being cranky... Recruiters are not your friend. They are buying in to the employer's "get me cheap, high quality resources" mantra. With the emphasis on cheap. There is a very real supply problem in the Progress labor marketplace. Not enough supply /should/ translate to higher prices... Get yourself better trained. Learn stuff beyond qad (or whatever) and you just might find that this is actually an excellent technology to specialize in.

 

[TomBascom]

Since I'm on a roll...

Get out and participate in PUG meetings. Go to Exchange. Go to PUG Challenge. Participate in online forums - don't just lurk. These things will all increase your knowledge, skills, value and opportunities.

Don't ever use the "my employer won't pay for it" excuse. That's just another way of being a victim. Take control and put yourself in charge. Sure, it is always nice to have the company cover these things and if they had any sense they'd realize that they get enormous benefit too - but don't use it as an excuse.

 

[TomBascom]

One last thing

Yes, you will find some significantly negative posts and people. Again so what? You can find that sort of stuff about any platform or vendor. There may even have a few good points buried in the bile. (I've been known to get kind of cranky myself...)

I also find it strange how some of those people still seem to continue to be making a pretty good living using software that they despise so much.

 

[tamhas]

Your anxiety about Progress jobs disappearing is misplaced. Look at the financials. They keep selling more licenses and more maintenance. That means the installed base is expanding, not contracting. Indeed, one of the big issues in the OpenEdge world is anxiety about finding trained people. Personally, I think this requirement for prior OpenEdge experience is over done since ABL is easy enough to learn if one has good programming skills already, but it is a bias that works in your favor. What you should be working on, if anything, is strengthening your skill set to make you that much more valuable. Broaden the areas of your knowledge. Tackle new problems. Add to the list of "I did this!"

 

[JSVP33]

Your anxiety about Progress jobs disappearing is misplaced. Look at the financials. They keep selling more licenses and more maintenance. That means the installed base is expanding, not contracting. Indeed, one of the big issues in the OpenEdge world is anxiety about finding trained people. Personally, I think this requirement for prior OpenEdge experience is over done since ABL is easy enough to learn if one has good programming skills already, but it is a bias that works in your favor. What you should be working on, if anything, is strengthening your skill set to make you that much more valuable. Broaden the areas of your knowledge. Tackle new problems. Add to the list of "I did this!"

Thanks for your replies Tom And Tamas. It makes me feel much better after reading all your responses. With all the other IT people i work with on a day to day basis not having heard about Progress was making me feel like an alien from another world. I am a single person in our company looking after QAD and BI and upgrading to latest versions for the company is a very big deal due to both financial and resource crunch.But i do get your point of view and please feel free to add any more comments you may have.
Thanks again for your responses.

 

[tamhas]

Progress doesn't have the visibility that some technologies do in large part because the bulk of sales happen through ISVs so the customer thinks of the system they have as QAD or whatever and only secondarily recognize the technology used to provide it. This is very different from other DBs and languages which are often purchased or selected independently of the application. That doesn't mean that no one is using it, however.

Like Tom says, a very good thing for you to consider would be going to conferences. QAD is big on conferences and QAD users often like going to them and I am sure they must be valuable, but I would also consider going to one or more of the general Progress conferences. Exchange in Boston is just next month. While a bit pricey compared to other options, it would give you the widest exposure to the OpenEdge world. I almost guarantee that you would come back with your head bubbling with ideas of things your company might do going forward. Depending on your location, I would also recommend PUG Challenge EMEA in November or Americas, next June. Both are much more techie in orientation and I absolutely guarantee either one will broaden your skill set in a couple of days. And, of course, it will allow you to make the acquaintance of lots of other people using Progress products so you won't feel so "lonely".

I notice that you are a new member here. One of the other things that you can do which will also broaden your skill set is to avail yourself of the on-line forums including ProgressTalk, PEG, and the PSDN Communities.

 

[davissix]

Ran across this older post. After 8 years, have your thought processes changed on this subject?

 

[TomBascom]

No

 

[susieq_va99]

I just read this also, thought it was a New post. It sounds a lot like me. But I keep going in the Progress 4GL ABL world, looking for that new Permanent Opportunity. Thanks for popping this thread back to the top.