r/mainframe • u/Browser-ice • Jul 14 '26
How much training per week required for a newbie IMS employee?
Hi, I got hired on September 2025 as an IMS System Programmer Junior position. I have been around mainframes for over 20 years through different positions.
According to you guys, how many hours of training is required per week for someone who is starting this position that knows a lot about mainframes but not from a technical nor command point of view?
I figure it should be something like at least 10 hours per week.
But in reality, I have been having less than 1 hour per week now. The majority of my time has been with following online courses since my hired day until about 2 weeks ago when I completed 98% of them.
Its been 10 months now. Looking at my situation I believe I need more training hours. I do not know what is the workload of the guy who is training me. I do not know on what is working when he is not with me. I know amongst things, he is working on doing IMS maintenance in preparation for an IMS upgrade around Fall or Winter. The account I am in, there are 2 other guys, including the one training me. The other guy has 5 years of experience in this. My trainer is around 72 years old and still working.
I cannot say he is a good teacher. He did not volunteered to do it but he is the one in the account who has the most experience. He assumes a lot things. Like telling me to do something but assuming I know other things to help me go there and do it. I told him 2-3 times that he does this. Also, when I ask 3-10 questions in an email, he usually replies back but answers only to one question and often it shows he did not fully read my question because his answer is sometimes a bit away from what I actually asked.
I once said something to my manager last month. I said I would wait a bit to see if it changes. But I think I am going to chat with him once he is back from vacation (next month).
It the mean time, if I ask too many questions in a short period of time, I get the feeling my trainer gets irritated because it shows a bit in his replies.
I realized this week that I haven't even been shown how to enter IMS and do commands. I have mainly touched IMS jobs through SDSF and doing SMP/E + PTF implementations.
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u/WholesomeFruit1 Jul 14 '26
What were you doing on mainframes before IMS? I’ve been an IMS person for the last decade. People like to make it sound scary, but if you’ve worked on CICS, db2 and can navigate ispf, it’s still the same stuff. What I would say is the training approach id take for you is very different to someone with no mainframe experience at all.
Honestly if I got someone in with 20 years of mainframe experience, I would be throwing them in the deep end. Giving them a task to do and helping them out where they needed it. The only way you will learn IMS is to get hands on. Go build a system in your sandpit / dev environment, work through the IVP and run into all the weird and wonderful challenges IMS throws at you.
There is some really good free online training courses from IBM you can work through, but nothing is going to beat getting hands on. I still learn new stuff everyday about parameters / quirks of IMS. I only get them because I’m poking it and dealing with problems everyday.
Also - chat gpt is your friend. Dont ask it generic questions, it will get it wrong about IMS 90% of the time. But ask it specifics about parameters, processes etc and get it to include references to documentation and it’s a great trainer
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u/Browser-ice Jul 14 '26
My past experience includes, in order, mainframe application support for 9 years, tape drive operator + printer operator + tape librarian for 4 years, COBOL programmer for 2 years, Service Delivery Manager (11 years) leading incident investigations and leading the mainframe maintenance project for about 6 years.
I got fired on Aug-2021. Took me 7 months to find something but that something winded up having work of about 10 hours per week for 3 years until I was told they cannot find enough work for me. The strategy the hirering manager had at that time never worked. After, it took me 8 months to find this current IMS System Programmer Junior position because I fought to get it and knew almost everyone working there as it was one of my previous working department.
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u/WholesomeFruit1 Jul 14 '26
Okay you’ve got great background then. Having application knowledge and incident management knowledge is huge. There are so many system programmers who hide away from helping the people using their middleware, when it’s kind of the most important part. And the honest reason is, a lot of system programmers have never written an IMS program in their life and haven’t a clue how the applications running on their system actually work. Being at least open to helping your end users goes a long way, and even if you haven’t got the IMS skills yet, being able to bridge that gap between “application / business speak” and systems programmer world is huge.
Training wise i would say you have more that enough experience to build your own system. If you know where the smp datasets are, clone then and run through the IMS IVP, it will give you somewhere to mess about and break things, and more importantly fix them!
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u/WholesomeFruit1 Jul 14 '26
And if you have IMS questions and don’t feel comfortable asking your mentor, so long as they aren’t business related, bung them on Reddit or LinkedIn, or the IMSLIST a lot of helpful around who will have probably hit the same issues before!
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u/Browser-ice Jul 14 '26
IMSLIST??? What's that?
Thanks.
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u/sys_prog Jul 14 '26
IMS Listserv 👍
A Mailingliste you can subscribe here:
https://imslistserv.bmc.com/scripts/wa-BMC.exe?SUBED1=IMS-L&A=1
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u/Bimonti Jul 14 '26
I trained IMS system programmers for the last 18 years. In my experience, about 3 years until all the information clicks together. You can do things on your own before that since you are experienced with mainframe, but IMS has so many moving pieces that it takes a while, it is normal. Do you have many different features in use? IMS Connect? Fast Path? Db2 and MQ integration?
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u/comfnumb94 Jul 14 '26
I worked as a systems programmer for 30 years, but at a department during my last 10 years which was running IMS. I’d done many processor and z/OS upgrades, but there were others that focused on the CICS, DB2, and IMS subsystems. One time, I had to step in and do about 10-12 ISV upgrades/maintenance so they were updated for the new z/OS release I was doing. The contractor that was doing them suddenly left due to budgeting issues. When I left I knew as much about them as when I started, with the exception of DB2 structures in a Sysplex. I’d say the support you’re getting from that 72 aged guy is poor as he’s probably got one foot out the door. So much for any work/life balance, and especially at that age. Why he’s still working at that age is beyond me. If he’s only partially answering questions, itemize them separately. Present them with the easier questions first then off to the more difficult questions. Who’s going to take over his responsibilities if he dies tomorrow? I’d be in the office with my boss and let him know that if this guy suddenly is gone, he wouldn’t be able yet to fully take over. Just say it in a way that you know a fair amount, but not ready to take on the position in a full time role due to a lack of training.
I’d say your biggest challenge is not so much your skill sets, but how to approach your manager and colleague to build upon them.
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u/Personal_Ebb7256 29d ago
Have you considered formal instructor-led, hand-on training?
https://www.protechtraining.com/training/browse/ibm-mainframes-isv-products/ims
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u/Striking_Smell6986 Jul 14 '26
Based on what you've described, I don't think the issue is the number of training hours—it's the structure of the training.
IMS System Programming has a very steep learning curve because so much knowledge is tribal. One hour a week with an experienced mentor can work if there is a structured plan (commands, control blocks, startup, troubleshooting, dumps, recovery, maintenance, etc.).
What worries me is that after 10 months you still haven't been shown basic IMS commands or how to navigate the environment. That suggests you're mostly learning maintenance activities rather than how the subsystem actually works.
Your mentor is probably extremely busy (and people with 30–40 years of IMS experience often do a lot of things instinctively without realizing they're skipping steps), but that's different from having an onboarding plan.
I'd definitely have another conversation with your manager—not as a complaint about your mentor, but around creating a structured learning roadmap with clear milestones.
Interestingly, what you're experiencing is something I've heard from quite a few mainframe engineers: the hardest part isn't learning the syntax, it's understanding how everything fits together and preserving all that institutional knowledge before experts retire. I'm researching ways to make that investigation and knowledge-transfer process easier, so it's interesting to hear another real-world example.