Introducing IT Social Hour: A Pair of 2024 Rising Stars Sound Off
To kick off the new roundtable-style conversation series, Robyn Lafleche and Isaac Thibault talk about their paths to IBM Power, share their observations on the skills gap and try to predict the future
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This transcript was edited for clarity:
Andy Wig: Hey everyone. Welcome to the very first episode of the IT Social Hour. This is a series from Tech Channel where people get together to talk about their professional journeys, their industry observations, and the things that excite them about their work. I’m Andy Wig, the senior editor at TechChannel. Since this is a new venture, we thought it would make sense to bring on a few of the people who are also relatively new to their platforms. And with that in mind, we’ve got two of TechChannel’s 2024 Rising Stars on hand. To explain a little bit about Rising Stars, every year TechChannel recognizes a handful of technologists who have already made a big impact on IBM Z and IBM Power, while still being in the early stages of their time on the platform. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that these are the people who represent the future of the industry. And today it’s my honor to welcome Robyn LaFleche, a junior, IBMI programmer at R2i Inc. And Isaac Thibault, a futurization consultant at Profound Logic. So let’s go ahead and get to know Robyn and Isaac. We’ll start off with brief introductions. I’ll just have you tell us a little bit about what you do at your job, how long you’ve been doing your job, and where in the world you’re located. Robyn, do you want to get us started off?
Robyn Lafleche: Sure. I am in Ontario, Canada and have been working on the IBM i platform for a year and three months as a junior IBM i programmer for R2i Inc. My job currently involves creating and modifying our PGLE programs, integrating open source technologies with our existing projects to modernize them and collaborating with my team members to ensure seamless implementations. And I also troubleshoot and resolve issues and contribute to the development of new features and functionalities.
Andy: Alright, thanks Robyn. How about you, Isaac? Tell us a little bit about what you do.
Isaac Thibault: Yeah, thanks Andrew. So I’m located just outside of Denver, Colorado, up in the mountains. I have been on the platform, I guess coming up on two and a half years so far with a company called Profound Logic. So my title is futurization consultant. Essentially I work with current customers and new customers to consult with them on best path forward to futurize their applications so that they can continue all the work they’ve done over the last 20, 30, even 40 years, building these applications, but starting for them to bring them into the future. And that’s both on the services side, helping them with certain projects they have, but also on the software side, giving them solutions that work with their applications, but just spice things up and bring those applications into a modern environment that we’re currently in now.
Andy: Okay, I love it. Futurization consultant. That’s definitely an eye-catching title, so great. Thanks for sharing that.
Isaac: Yeah, yeah, a little bit about that title. We used to just be account executives, but that doesn’t sound as fun as futurization consultant. And really at Profound Logic, futurization, we subbed out modernization for futurization because we believe that modernization is just getting applications to the current state where they should be. But Futurization is taking that one step further and planning for the future and bringing those applications into the next 5, 10, 15 years for these businesses to continue to move forward.
Andy: Yeah, I’ve heard other people kind of take issue the term modernization. Another one I’ve heard is optimization as kind of a replacement word. So yeah, different terminology out there. So for the first question here, we’ll go to you, Isaac. Tell us how you ended up working on your platform and what drew you to it.
Isaac: Yeah, so honestly I knew nothing about the platform before I joined Profound Logic. I’ve been in sales adjacent roles for the last eight, nine years and really I was looking to make a jump roughly three years ago into a pretty innovative space and I didn’t really care what that was. I just wanted to be with a company that was trying to make strides and innovating constantly. And I got connected with Profound Logic. I met Alex, who’s the CEO, who still develops all of our solutions here at Profound Logic and I was pretty inspired by the work he’s doing and I knew that I wanted to join a company like his that was making a difference for customers in the space and the work he’s doing to futurize the platform and help customers carry the work they’ve done over the last 30, 40 years forward. I could get behind that mission. So that’s what drew me here, that kind of inspired by the work he’s done over the last 26 years building out this company.
Andy: Okay, great. How about you Robyn? How’d you end up doing what you’re doing these days?
Robyn: Similar background to Isaac where I had no idea of anything about the platform whenever I started. It was actually a cousin of mine that was working at R2i that informed me that there’s a training program that they’re trying to establish for new developers to come into the platform. And so I applied for the junior IBM i role, programmer position, and given my recent graduation and qualifications was accepted and I was drawn to the platform because it’s reliable, it’s secure and it’s stable. It’s not open source where it’s constantly evolving and if you miss an update, it stops working. So it is really great and I’m able to integrate the open source technologies with our platform. So it was a combination of best of both worlds.
Andy: It sounds like there’s, IT is maybe a little less stressful than maybe other platforms. It may be in terms of the updating and so forth. Good to know. So the next question, we’ll start off with you, Robyn, this time. What are some challenges you overcame when you first started working on your platform?
Robyn: The biggest challenge that I faced was finding up-to-date resources online to learn RPG. Most of the information that I found was outdated by 10, 15, 20 years. So it wasn’t the current fully free RPGLE, it was RPG four or older. So trying to learn the more modern version of RPG was difficult. I had started off with blogs, forums and YouTube playlist, but they still lacked that modern content and the structure. So I had enrolled in the RPG course with imPower, and then that helped progress my understanding of the platform and the language. So with imPower and then the help of my colleagues who have 20, 30 years of experience, it allowed me to further my understanding and progress to where I am now.
Andy: Okay. Yeah, I think several of our Rising Stars went to imPower to learn their skills, so great. Yeah. Isaac, how about you? Any challenges you had to kind of work your way through as you kind of got to know IBM Power?
Isaac: Yeah, I mean it’s ongoing challenges that come up. As I said at the beginning, I’m brand new, two and a half years in, I still consider myself brand new to the platform itself. So I think I’m always learning and evolving. I think just understanding the background of the IBM i, where it came from, where it’s come to now was a big struggle. It’s not something I ever dealt with in my life at all. So just grasping my head around the importance of the platform for a lot of these major customers and companies out there in the world and how it affects everyday business that they do. A lot of times people forget about IT teams, but when you’re working on this platform, you realize how important these IT teams are to the business and its success. And so I think really understanding the pain points they deal with was important for me and a challenge at the beginning. But I think I’m slowly getting better each month each year that goes by.
Andy: Okay. Yeah, I can totally relate to trying to get your head around the whole ecosystem in the industry. That’s where I’m at right now myself. But yeah, one day at a time. We’ll stay with you Isaac for this next question. It should be a fun one. What excites you about your job or what particular projects have you enjoyed? Any specific highlights along those lines?
Isaac: Yeah, so I’m on the sales side, so I’m not in the day-to-day of working hand in hand on any specific projects. A lot of those I hand off to our services team that works with customers on those projects. But I think what excites me about my job is this post covid world. We’re still in a remote environment, especially at our company, but a lot of customers we deal with as well. I think the most exciting thing is going onsite with these customers, seeing firsthand what they do day in and day out, understanding the platform and the importance of it for their business. And then working with my technical team to come up with solutions in person onsite with these customers and work through it in real time. I think it’s been a long time since I was in person with customers and so starting to move towards that direction and now being two and a half years in and understanding the platform a little bit better, it’s kind of fun to work hand in hand with those customers on the different projects and needs that come up for them.
Andy: How about you Robyn? What excites you about your job?
Robyn: So as a member of our development team, what excites me about my job is the continuous opportunity to learn and innovate. So currently I’m in research and development searching for ways to enhance and modernize our existing projects with more modern solutions. So currently I’m enjoying full stack development projects on IBM i. So I’m taking the knowledge that I acquired from a university background in modern and web development and combining it with my now learned knowledge of RPG and creating full stack projects on IBM i. So our backend is with our databases in IBM i and then with web screens designed using either HTML and JavaScript or React apps.
Andy: All right. So for this next question, Robyn, I think we’ll stay with you for this one and it touches on the whole skills gap that we hear about often and I’m curious to hear what you observations you might have on obstacles that might keep people from getting onto these platforms, particularly in this case power as a career direction and wondering what you might have to say about what can be done to really get them, get more people interested in pursuing careers on power.
Robyn: The biggest obstacle that I’ve seen so far is just the skills gap that you mentioned and the lack of information about the platform, which I’m noticing is potentially what is deterring people from entering this field because the information that’s available, at least the most currently available, seems to be outdated and no one is aware of it, at least I wasn’t aware of it in university and none of the people that I was interacting with were aware of the platform. So in my opinion, to attract new tech workers to the platform, be a good idea to provide training programs similar to what imPower is doing and emphasizing the critical role and challenges that the platform presents because it is a very important platform in today’s market. And then also start educating students in universities and colleges about the platform to give them the opportunity to join it while they’re still in university and try link them up with those training programs.
Andy: So yeah, it sounds like a lot of it’s just awareness where people even having a background in computer science, maybe not having heard of it. I think that says a lot in terms of what obstacles are out there. And Isaac, you have any thoughts on solving the skills gap and overcoming some of these obstacles that we might face and getting fresh blood into the platform?
Isaac: I don’t know if I’m the right person to solve any of the issues, but yeah, I think I agree with Robyn. The awareness piece is what’s really missing. I think a lot of people see the IBMI platform as outdated as an old platform, as someone looking it is just for RPG developers that are close to retirement age is what the platform’s for. I think as Robyn stated earlier, it is more than that, especially with companies like Profound Logic and other vendors in the space. I think we’re making it easier for new developers, younger developers to come into the space and have an impact on the platform.
I think with the ability to connect to open source technologies, it’s really innovating the platform and it’s making it relevant. Again, I think from the top down though, there needs to be awareness for younger developers that they can come in and have an impact just like Robyn has with R2i and other younger developers that I’ve met in the space, there is a spot for younger developers, you can learn the platform, you can have an impact. And I think if we can sell that from the top down that you can come into this space and start innovating. It’s not just day-to-day data entry and things like that, responding to support calls, it’s you can come in and start working with AI if that’s what you really want to work with. You can start working with modern JavaScript languages. You can work with any open source technologies that can plug into the IBM i platform. And I think that’s when it starts making it more exciting that it’s not just an old outdated platform.
Andy: Well, you’re a sales guy, so you can maybe make those pitches to people. I imagine.
Isaac: I do. My best people are resistant to change though.
Andy: So kind of along those same lines, I wanted to address the subject of soft skills a little bit and especially about being relatively early in your careers and presumably younger than a lot of the people that you work with. I’m curious how you approach these working relationships, how you approach working with people, maybe the veterans, the people from older generations and how maybe your working styles might differ just because of the time you grew up in. And Isaac, we’ll start with you with that question.
Isaac: Yeah, it is definitely a challenge at times. I am from the average age of people working on the platform probably 20 to 30 years younger. So it, it’s something I lean into. I’m the young guy on the block, but I think ultimately older generations, younger generations, people in general are resistant to change and I think that’s no different than the people working on this platform. But I think when you can change the perception to I’m here to help you and make your job more efficient and make your life easier, I think people come around to working with myself a lot, a lot more easily. I sell software that makes companies more efficient and I think ultimately when you can share that with the customer in the right way, they get on board and they start thinking about the things that they can do that they haven’t been able to do in their career and they can end their career on a high note. So I think it is no different than working with someone my own age. As long as you can get over that hump of resisting the change, I think you’re onto the right path.
Andy: How about you, Robyn? Do you have any thoughts on that subject?
Robyn: Similar to what Isaac just said, most of my colleagues that I work with currently have more experience than I have been alive. So it’s definitely a big change, but I am appreciating the wealth and knowledge that they’re sharing with me and they’re very willing to help me answer any of my questions, walk me through debugging, helping with anything that I’m stuck on. So they’re always willing to help in terms of working styles. Like Isaac said, there is a resistance to change, to update ways of thinking and processing and working. But from what I’ve noticed with my coworkers, once I started trying to integrate open source, everyone was on board with trying to learn and trying to also integrate those solutions. And from my team, there wasn’t much resistance to change, it was just the lack of knowledge on the platform. So it was very great, but I haven’t worked with many other people on the platform, so I don’t know from an outside perspective.
Andy: Well, it’s good to hear you both have had positive experiences in terms of these working relationships and making it all work out. So alright, that brings us to our last question and for that one, we’ll start off with you Robyn, and that question is what do you think will be the state of your platform slash industry in 2030? That sounds like a long time from now, but it’s only five years from now I guess, which blows my mind a little bit. But anyway, yeah, what do you think?
Robyn: I think we’ll definitely be seeing more AI automation on the platform and definitely ongoing modernization efforts to get the platform up to speed with the rest of the open source world. And definitely focused on bridging the gap of skills for new developers entering the platform so that way they’re able to come in and take over for the retiring generation.
Andy: All right. And what does our futurization consultant have to say about the future of the industry?
Isaac: Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything Robyn said. I think AI is going to play a tremendous role in what this platform looks like in five years from now. AI is evolving every single day, and so I don’t think anyone, any company, any person can truly predict what it’s going to look like. But I know it’s going to look very different and I know it’s going to help those who embrace it. I know it’s going to help automate a lot of their daily tasks to make their roles more efficient, which in turn is going to help businesses as a whole. I think there’s going to be a mass retiring sometime around 2030, either before, either a couple years after, of RPG developers. The average age is already close to retirement as an RPG developer in the space. And so I think companies who can support those customers get to that next step and what it looks like is going to make a huge impact.
I think there’s a lot of companies in the space that help these customers transform that legacy code into an open source language. I think that’s going to play a tremendous role in what 2030 looks like. So these companies are going to still keep their business logic, but the actual code and what it looks like and the developers that work on it is going to look drastically different. And I think people like Robyn, who has an understanding of open source technology and the younger generation, is going to more or less carry the torch forward for these businesses. It just may not be coding in RPG or COBOL or whatever these customers are currently doing. I think it’s going to be more on the open source side and plugging into that backend legacy code that these companies have built over the last 20, 30, 40 years. So it’s definitely going to be different. I’m excited for it. Think younger individuals that are coming into the space are going to have a huge impact on what the IBM i platform is going to look like. And I think the innovation that’s going to come in the next five years is going to be different probably than what any of us can predict right now.
Andy: Yeah, I feel like even two years out is probably tough to predict, but yeah, it’s fun to imagine at any rate.
Robyn: Definitely.
Andy: Well, that’s it for my questions here, Robyn and Isaac. I really want to thank you for being a part of this very first episode of IT Social Hour. It means a lot. So just thank you for being here. I really appreciate your insights and thanks to everyone for tuning in. There will be more to come. We’ll see you in hopefully about a month. And please remember, you can get all the latest on all things tech by going to TechChannel.