If you read the mainstream tech press, you would think that global financial institutions are wandering the streets, begging on their knees for anyone who knows how to spell PROCEDURE DIVISION.

The narrative is always the same: “The COBOL boomers are retiring! The mainframes are running out of developers! Banks will pay top dollar for anyone who understands z/OS!”

It makes for a great headline. It generates a lot of clicks. And, as I have discovered firsthand, it is absolute, unadulterated fake news.

Let me give you a reality check on the so-called "Mainframe Developer Shortage."

The Illusion of Demand

I love mainframes. I genuinely do. While the rest of the industry is busy reinventing the wheel with bloated JavaScript frameworks, I find absolute beauty in the bare-metal efficiency of IBM Z architecture, the rigidity of COBOL, and the elegant simplicity of a 3270 data stream.

I didn't just read a Wikipedia article about it. I wrote a native, zero-bloat macOS TN3270 and TN5250 terminal emulator from scratch in C++. I dug through ancient IBM manuals from the 1970s to reverse-engineer the ISPF Query Reply protocols. Beyond that, I am currently ranked in the Top 20 worldwide on IBM's Z Xplore platform.

By the media's logic, recruiters should be kicking down my door, throwing lucrative contracts at me to keep their mission-critical DB2 instances alive.

The reality? Absolute silence. I cannot land a mainframe job to save my life.

The Geographical HR Firewall

The disconnect between the media's panic and the reality of hiring comes down to the absolute brokenness of modern HR departments and geographical gatekeeping.

I am a German citizen, but I live in Malta. In a rational world, when you need a highly specialized engineer to remote into a mainframe that sits in a data center 5,000 miles away anyway, the physical location of the developer's chair shouldn't matter.

But we do not live in a rational world. We live in the world of HR compliance panic.

The lucrative US mainframe jobs? Walled off by impossible visa requirements and strict "US-soil only" policies. And to be honest, working remotely for a US company from Europe is a bureaucratic nightmare. The tax implications, the payroll complications, the legal red tape – it's a mess that most companies would rather avoid than figure out. And there is some political reasons why I would prefer to stay in the EU anyway.

So, I look to Europe. specifically, Germany, the economic powerhouse with a massive legacy banking sector. You would think a German citizen offering highly specialized COBOL/z/OS skills would be a slam dunk.

Instead, you run into the "Remote Work Paradox." German corporations proudly advertise "100% Remote" positions, but the second you mention you live in another EU country like Malta, the door slams shut. They demand physical residence within the German borders. It is legally highly questionable under EU freedom of movement and remote work principles, but HR departments would rather let a critical mainframe job sit vacant for two years than figure out cross-border EU payroll.

What the "Shortage" Actually Means

When companies cry to the media about a "skills shortage," they are leaving out a crucial word. They are experiencing a cheap skills shortage.

They don't want a passionate systems architect who understands the metal. They don't want someone who builds emulators or ranks globally in IBM's own metrics.

They want a junior developer who is willing to accept a low-tier salary to mindlessly patch 40-year-old batch jobs without asking questions. Or, more accurately, they want an excuse to offshore the entire legacy department to a consultancy that will do it for pennies on the dollar, while blaming the "local talent pool" for the transition.

Loving the Metal Anyway It is a frustrating, fake-news world. The media hypes up a ghost town of opportunities, and the corporate gatekeepers ensure that true enthusiasts are locked out by bureaucratic red tape.

But despite the sheer absurdity of the hiring landscape, my love for the technology hasn't changed.

I will keep writing C++, JCL, and Cobol. I will keep maintaining DX3270. I will keep pushing my rank on Z Xplore and hang around in IBM Communities. Because at the end of the day, mainframes are still incredible, beautiful machines. It's just a shame that the corporate infrastructure surrounding them is so completely broken.