Editor’s Note: This is the first article in SHARE’s series highlighting the mainframe career journey at different stages. Stay tuned for future installments on mid-career, early career, and career transitions. If you would like to participate, reach out to editor@share.org.
In the later stages of a mainframe career, one might expect that it is time to slow down and coast toward retirement. But Jim Horne, mainframe systems programmer at a large home improvement retailer, offers an alternative. With more than 40 years in IT, Horne says that late-stage careers are a time for delving deeper, giving back, and having fun while doing it. This mindset offers a powerful blueprint for anyone in the “late innings” of their career. “Keep swinging, stay curious, and focus less on titles and more on the mark you leave behind,” he says.
Own Your Legacy, Not Your Job
Horne is blunt about the myth of becoming indispensable. “Nobody is irreplaceable, and clinging to that illusion can hurt both your organization and your reputation,” he explains. Instead of hoarding knowledge or building “job security” through needless complexity as a systems programmer, for example, late-career professionals should be asking themselves, “What will happen here when I’m gone?”
That question reframes the endgame. The real measure of a mainframer’s impact is not how badly the company stumbles when they leave, but how smoothly it runs when they are retired. “Clean, understandable systems. Clear documentation. Colleagues who know how to carry on the work are the hallmarks of a legacy,” Horne says. “Leaving a mess is a cautionary tale.”
A mainframer’s legacy requires an approach that will favorably impact the organization well beyond their own tenure. Horne says, “You want your name to be associated with generosity, clarity, and stability, not with headaches and hidden traps.”
Pay It Forward: Mentoring Is Key to Legacy
Mentoring is a priority in the later stages of a mainframe career. “You should be setting other people up for success,” he points out. Horne received help from colleagues early on in his career, and he continues to pay that forward by mentoring colleagues, speaking at conferences, writing, and sharing what he has learned.
His advice on mentoring is straightforward:
- Ask people if they want help.
- If they say, “no,” or show no interest, move on.
- Don’t limit your impact to your own company — your experience travels.
Mentoring accelerates the learning curve for others, helps them avoid pitfalls, and sets them up for long-term success with greater confidence. In an industry where no one advances alone, intentionally lifting others may be the most meaningful work an experienced mainframer can do.
Keep Learning or Get Left Behind
Technology changes and buzzwords shift, but Horne says the core purpose is the same: use technology to help the business. He has maintained this focus continually throughout his career, even as the industry has welcomed other technologies like distributed computing, cloud, and now artificial intelligence (AI).
Rather than chase every trend, mainframers should double-down on the habits that have grown their careers — focusing on thinking and problem-solving, not the latest tools, and diving deeper into their work, specializing rather than generalizing. Some tried-and-true methods for continued success include attending conferences, staying up to date on the latest technologies, reading new documentation, and focusing on what matters most in their role.
Horne’s litmus test is both playful and serious. “If you’ve survived this long in IT, you either learned to think, or you’ve been fooling management. Late career is when critical thinking, not sheer stamina, becomes your real edge,” he says.
Leverage New Tools
Horne sees AI not as a threat to his job, but as a tool to make the boring parts easier. In his world of mainframe capacity and performance, there is plenty of drudgery: sifting through mountains of data to find patterns and decisions. AI can help narrow down what he needs to pay attention to.
He says, “Let tools accelerate your analysis and surface insights, but don’t hand them blind control over decisions and changes. You should use them to do your job better and continue to do the thinking yourself.” Late-career professionals shouldn’t fear new tools or compete with them; Horne advises leveraging each tool’s capabilities to multiply their value to the organization.
Admit What You Don’t Know
If there is one principle Horne returns to again and again, it’s: “Never be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know.’” Early in his career, he thought not having an answer was failure, until managers thanked him for being honest and asking for help. But late-stage career mainframers often feel the pressure to know everything or to be the expert in the room. However, Horne argues that pretending to know can be dangerous to a mainframer’s career, reputation, team, and their organization’s IT systems.
“Asking questions is not a sign of decline; it is a sign of seriousness,” he says. “The only truly ‘stupid’ question is the one you never ask.” As he sees it, mainframers become more aware of how much there is to learn. Experience expands an awareness of the unknown, and late-stage career professionals know that leaning into their humanity and humility are strengths.
Focus, Don’t Freeze, When Overwhelmed
Mainframers can feel overwhelmed at any career stage. Horne is no stranger to that feeling. He advises that when feeling overwhelmed or frustrated, mainframers should take a step back, narrow their focus to their organization’s priorities, and tackle one problem at a time.
For late-career mainframers, there’s an opportunity to deepen their knowledge in a set of focused areas. They must accept the knowledge and support of their team and be sure to give team members permission to take the lead. “Enjoy the journey, and remember to have fun in what you do,” says Horne.
Define Your Second Act
Horne has no plans to retire — his work is his hobby. But that is not everyone’s path. Some late-career mainframers still want to stay current on the latest technologies in the ecosystem, but without a place to “practice your art,” Horne says it’s hard to stay relevant. Reading alone is not enough; skills are maintained by doing.
Opportunities for a second act after retirement include:
- Consulting engagements
- Board roles
- Part-time or project-based work
For others, it may mean consciously leaving the mainframe field in the past and finding fulfillment elsewhere. Horne says that one of the keys is being honest with yourself about what you want, how you want to spend your time, and how you want to be remembered.
Keep Swinging
Horne’s story is meaningful. Mainframers don’t have to retire and leave the game. “Don’t stop swinging for the fences just because you are late in the game,” he says. “Take on new opportunities, risk failing, learn from missteps, and leverage your hard-won track record to earn the trust to experiment.”
Most mainframers enter their careers with curiosity and genuine interest in the platform, and those traits will serve them well throughout their careers. But mixing it up with humility and courage, as well as training the next generation in the mainframe craft, can ensure a lasting legacy.