[thaumaturgy]

I do remember that, and as I pointed out in the thread at the time, New Jersey was asking for volunteers: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/06/new-jersey-seeks-cobol-progr...

My first dev job was COBOL on a Unisys mainframe. When the volume of "omg we need COBOL devs" articles got loud, I looked into what was available. The compensation graph for COBOL positions approximately matches those of any other dev job. You can do as well (or better) as a Python dev or Node dev or whatever.

The key to making more money is in specialization. The highest-paying jobs are looking for experience with specific combinations of technologies.

But being a Python dev has the added advantage of not having to deal with COBOL. ...speaking as someone who used Unisys' STRING/UNSTRING OS functions to implement input variable interpolation in COBOL because it has no native string operators or data type.