A senior IBM i administrator retires after 30 years. The system still runs — but no one left knows why a certain job fails every third Friday, or which undocumented workaround keeps the ERP humming.
Every long-standing platform is bracing for the Gray Wave — the ongoing shift of retirements across the technology workforce. But IBM i appears to be facing a steeper uphill battle — and the reasons go beyond demographics.
Let’s take a closer look at them.
Reason 1: The Talent Pipeline Never Refilled
Decades ago, universities offered courses in RPG and CL — the core languages behind IBM i. Today, most computer science programs have dropped them in favor of cloud computing, cybersecurity, data science, and web development stacks. As IBM i gradually disappeared from most academic curricula and entry-level ramps, new graduates were left with fewer opportunities to even discover the platform, let alone build a career on it.
While major modern technologies and platforms benefit from occasional university partnerships and enterprise-funded reskilling tracks, IBM i has largely missed out on that renewal cycle.
So, the professionals keeping today’s systems running are often the same ones who learned RPG in the 1980s and 90s. That model worked well for enterprises until retirements began to accelerate.
The challenge today is that there simply aren’t enough new professionals entering the ecosystem to replace those leaving it. As a result, the talent pipeline is growing thin, creating a gap that is now becoming increasingly difficult for organizations to ignore.
Reason 2: Deep Institutional Knowledge
Most IBM i environments have been running for decades. Over the years, countless business rules, customizations, and workarounds have been built into applications that were never fully documented.
This knowledge exists not in manuals or knowledge bases, but in the heads of the people who have often maintained these systems for 20 to 30 years. That works fine until the day they retire.
As the retirement of these individuals draws near, organizations risk losing not just technical expertise, but also business context, operational know-how, and problem-solving experience that was never formally captured.
The “what” of a program might be visible in the code. However, the “why” — why a report was created a certain way, why a job runs in a specific order, why a field is calculated the way it is — would gradually leave with them.
While all multigenerational platforms face this challenge to some degree, IBM i environments often rely on small, stable teams. When a single expert walks out the door, organizations often find themselves losing decades of institutional memory.
Reason 3: The “Invisible” Platform Syndrome
IBM i doesn’t usually make it to the headlines. It rarely comes up in tech news, major developer conferences, or the career conversations shaping today’s graduates. Most young professionals entering IT have simply never heard of IBM i — it has largely stayed out of the spotlight due to its quiet resilience.
That invisibility often starts internally. Many organizations don’t actively promote IBM i career paths until a key employee announces retirement, a critical project stalls, or a knowledge gap suddenly surfaces. By that point, enterprises are often forced to react rather than prepare.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: fewer people see the platform, fewer people learn it, and the perception that IBM i is a dead-end skill only grows stronger.
Reason 4: IBM i Experts Wear Multiple Hats
In many IBM i environments, a single professional does far more than write code. They handle development, day-to-day operational support, system administration, security oversight, and troubleshooting — often for the same set of applications they’ve managed for decades.
That kind of versatility kept lean IT teams running efficiently for years. Over time, these professionals become the go-to experts for everything, concentrating expertise in just one or two individuals on the team.
When one of these people retires, enterprises don’t lose a single skill set — they lose multiple skill sets at once. What appears to be a single vacancy can quickly turn into several capability gaps that need to be filled simultaneously.
Leadership often doesn’t grasp the true scope of what that person handled — until they’re no longer there to handle it.
Reason 5: Small Community and Big Operational Dependence
IBM i is concentrated in mid-market industries. Compared to more widely adopted platforms, the IBM i community is smaller and more fragmented. Unlike technologies backed by academic programs, industry-wide workforce initiatives, and large talent ecosystems, IBM i enterprises often have fewer avenues to recruit experienced professionals or develop new ones.
Yet unlike some systems that have been partially phased out, IBM i often remains fully embedded in daily operations — running order processing, inventory, and financial workflows that the business depends on every single day.
That’s the paradox: the platform’s reliability made it indispensable, and that indispensability increased dependence on a shrinking pool of professionals who understand it. When expertise leaves, the impact extends beyond the IT department. It can directly affect the revenue-generating processes that keep the business running.
The Bottom Line
The Gray Wave isn’t unique to IBM i. Every multigenerational platform is grappling with it. What makes IBM i different is the combination of undocumented institutional knowledge, thin talent pipeline, smaller support ecosystem, low platform visibility, and concentrated expertise. Taken together, these factors make workforce transitions more difficult and potentially more disruptive for IBM i enterprises than for many of their peers.
For enterprises still thinking this shift isn’t steep, our next post will break down the data behind it.
Awareness is only the first step. The real question organizations must be asking themselves is, “What happens when the next key person retires?”
At Programmers.io, we’ve worked with leading Fortune 500 enterprises to ensure long-term sustainability — in terms of both the platform and the people running it. Because when it comes to the Gray Wave, the greatest risk isn’t that experienced professionals are retiring. It’s waiting until they’ve already retired to act.
If you’re unsure how exposed your organization may be, consider discussing it with our IBM Champions to find the right roadmap that will help you position for the years ahead.
