COBOL Developers' Unexpected Bull Market

Level 1: Grandpa to the Rescue

Imagine you live in a town where most people have shiny new bicycles to get around. But there’s also one really old bicycle in the museum that nobody uses anymore. One day, an unexpected flood happens and suddenly everyone needs a bike that can go through high water. It turns out all the new bikes are electric and short-circuit in water, but that old bicycle from the museum can still pedal through anything. The only person who knows how to ride that old bike is a retired grandpa who used it when he was young. So the town rushes to get grandpa. He hops on the old bicycle and help people get supplies through the flood. Overnight, grandpa and his old bike become the town’s heroes, even though before the flood, kids laughed at that clunky old thing.

In this story, the old bicycle is like the COBOL computer programs — something old that everyone thought was outdated. The flood is like the pandemic – a big emergency. And grandpa is like the COBOL programmer – someone with old knowledge that suddenly becomes super important. It’s funny and surprising because nobody ever imagined that the old bike (or COBOL code) would be the thing that saves the day. The meme with the stock arrow is a silly way of showing how the value of something old suddenly went up, up, up just when people needed it the most. So it’s basically saying: sometimes the “old-timer” solutions and the people who know them can come out of nowhere to rescue everyone in a crisis.

Level 2: Old Tech, New Demand

At its core, this meme is saying that an old technology suddenly became very valuable because of an unexpected event. The old technology in question is COBOL, which stands for Common Business-Oriented Language. COBOL is a programming language first developed way back in 1959. It’s so old that it was one of the first widely-used languages for business applications. Think of giant early computers filling rooms with blinking lights – those often ran COBOL. Today, COBOL is considered a legacy language, meaning it’s from an earlier era but still in use. A legacy system refers to older software or hardware that is still critical for operations, even if it’s outdated by modern standards. Many banks, insurance companies, and government agencies have COBOL programs still running because these programs reliably do things like process transactions, calculate interests, or manage records. They’re the quiet workhorses of big institutions.

Now, what happened during the COVID-19 quarantine time (around early 2020) is that a lot of people suddenly needed government services – for example, unemployment benefits – all at once. Systems that handle unemployment claims in many U.S. states were written in COBOL decades ago. Under normal conditions, you might have a steady number of claims. But during the pandemic, millions of people were filing claims rapidly, which put a huge strain on these old computer systems. On top of that, new laws were passed (like stimulus programs and extra unemployment payments), so the software had to be updated quickly to handle new rules.

The trouble was that not many programmers today know how to update a COBOL program. COBOL programming isn’t commonly taught in schools anymore, and most COBOL experts are older or have moved on to management or retirement. So when those systems started to fail or need changes, there was an urgent hunt for anyone who understood this legacy codebase. It’s a bit like suddenly needing mechanics for a very old type of car – not many around, but you really need them. In fact, some state governments literally asked for help: for example, the Governor of New Jersey publicly asked for COBOL developers to volunteer and help fix the unemployment system. This was big news in the tech world at the time.

The meme uses the "stonks" image to represent this situation in a funny way. In internet culture, “stonks” (intentionally spelled S-T-O-N-K-S) is a meme image of a goofy, mannequin-looking businessman in front of a stock market chart. It’s often used to joke about something (usually used humorously when someone makes a silly financial decision or when something unexpected gains value). The upward orange arrow and the word "stonks" imply that value is going up. Here, the text on the character’s suit says “COBOL dev.” (meaning a COBOL developer). So the picture is portraying a COBOL developer’s value or importance as shooting upward like a skyrocketing stock price.

Above that, the caption "quarantine time / Cobol Developers:" is like a setup for the joke. It’s saying: “In quarantine time, COBOL developers: (stonks)”. In plainer words: during the quarantine period, COBOL developers’ “stock” went way up. This is humorous because normally people talk about new tech skills being in high demand (like AI, cloud computing, etc.), not a very old skill like COBOL. COBOL was almost seen as a punchline before — something outdated, associated with old dusty computers. Yet the pandemic reversed that, at least temporarily. The meme is pointing out that reversal.

To a junior developer or someone new to the industry, here’s why this is significant: We always hear about modern languages and frameworks, but a huge amount of important infrastructure runs on older technology. Legacy systems like those written in COBOL often sit out of sight until something breaks. When COVID-19 created massive new workload and changes, those systems became the center of attention. Suddenly, maintaining and updating old code became more critical than developing new apps. And only a small group of specialists had the knowledge to do it. So their skills became extremely valuable overnight — something that’s pretty unusual in tech where usually the newest skills are the hottest.

The "stonks" meme format makes the situation funny and easy to grasp: picture a boring old technology suddenly behaving like a hot stock that’s going up in value. It’s an ironic form of hype. Usually, you’d see upward stock arrows for, say, Bitcoin or Tesla stock, not for COBOL developers! By framing it this way, the meme exaggerates reality a bit to get a laugh. But it’s based on a true trend: in quarantine times, companies and governments were indeed desperate to hire or contract COBOL programmers. Some COBOL contractors reportedly started charging very high rates because demand spiked and supply was low. It was like a niche job market went crazy.

This also teaches a little lesson about legacy code modernization. Many organizations delay updating old systems because it’s costly and complex. However, not updating them meant that in a crisis, they were stuck. The meme hints at this indirectly: if you ignore old systems for too long, you might have to pay the price later — sometimes literally, as you scramble to find people who can fix them. LegacySystems and modernization became a hot topic in 2020 because of this: everyone realized those unglamorous old systems really mattered.

In summary, the meme is saying: During the COVID quarantine, COBOL programmers became surprise heroes! What was old-fashioned yesterday turned into gold today. And it uses the goofy “stonks” stock-market joke image to drive that point home in a lighthearted way. Even if you didn’t know all the background, the image of a COBOL developer with an upward arrow and the word stonks makes you think “Haha, something about COBOL is suddenly profitable or valuable.” Now you know the context: it’s funny because it actually happened in real life due to the pandemic’s impact on technology.

Level 3: COBOL Comeback Rally

This meme taps into a slice of tech history that suddenly collided with present-day reality. It uses the popular stonks meme format – a faceless businessman (the "Meme Man") in front of a rising stock chart – to represent a COBOL dev. whose value is unexpectedly skyrocketing. The top caption "quarantine time / Cobol Developers:" sets the stage: during the COVID-19 lockdowns, something extraordinary happened in the software world. Suddenly, COBOL programming skills went from nearly obsolete to extremely in-demand, as if their stock price shot through the roof.

Why would a 60-year-old programming language see such a “stonks” surge? In early 2020, many government and banking systems were pushed to their limits. Millions of people filing unemployment claims, banks handling relief loans, health agencies updating benefits – a lot of these critical systems run on legacy codebases written in COBOL decades ago. Under normal conditions, this old code hums along quietly on big IBM mainframes (often called "big iron"). But the pandemic created abnormal conditions: huge spikes in usage and urgent policy changes that required code updates. Those trusty old COBOL programs suddenly weren’t scaling or adapting fast enough. Enter the forgotten heroes: COBOL developers.

For veteran engineers, the humor here is layered with irony. We’ve spent years chasing the latest IndustryTrends – microservices, cloud computing, modern languages – often hyping whatever is new and shiny. Nobody was hyping COBOL in 2020; it was the butt of jokes as “dinosaur” tech. Yet when those legacy systems became bottlenecks, organizations had no choice but to scramble for anyone who could speak this archaic language. Technical debt that had been ignored (or deferred due to budget cuts) came due at the worst possible time. Some state governments literally put out emergency calls for COBOL programmers on live TV. (In New Jersey, the governor pleaded for volunteer COBOL coders because their unemployment system was crashing.) It was a real-life twist where suddenly valuable skills meant knowing a language from 1959!

The meme’s upward orange arrow and the word “stonks” lampoon this absurd market flip. It’s saying, “Look at COBOL developers’ value go up, against all odds!” Seasoned devs laugh because it’s a classic case of LegacySystems biting back. Those ancient programs have been doing the dirty work for decades – processing payrolls, tracking pensions, handling DMV records – with near-bulletproof reliability. Replacing them is like performing a heart transplant on a running patient: risky, expensive, and prone to disaster. So instead, many organizations opted to leave them be (“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”). That works fine until something does break or needs a change under pressure – then you realize the only people who can fix it might be retirees who last touched the code 25 years ago.

This “COBOL boom” in quarantine time is also a nod to history repeating itself. Many senior devs remember the late 1990s Y2K crisis, when companies frantically rehired COBOL experts to fix date bugs in old code. After Y2K, COBOL slipped back into obscurity while the world moved on to Java, JavaScript, and Python. But here we are again: an even bigger global event yanked COBOL into the spotlight. The shared laughter comes from recognizing this whiplash in industry trends. It’s both funny and facepalm-worthy that a language invented before the moon landing became the hottest tech skill during a modern pandemic. As the joke implies, the COBOL folks in their twilight years suddenly saw their career “stonks” rising, perhaps chuckling “Who’s laughing now?” all the way to the (mainframe-powered) bank.

Beyond the humor, there’s an underlying truth that senior engineers appreciate. Legacy systems modernization is often talked about but not fully acted on. It’s not glamorous to refactor a COBOL program or migrate a core banking system to a new platform – those projects are hard, multi-year slogs with political and technical landmines. So these systems persist, maintained by tiny teams. The meme highlights the consequence: when a crisis hits, that neglected infrastructure becomes everybody’s problem. In this case, a global crisis turned niche COBOL knowledge into a suddenly hot commodity. It’s an exaggerated “stock market” metaphor for how the tech world’s values can flip overnight. And it carries a wry lesson: sometimes the old tech you’ve been ignoring is quietly running the world, and you won’t value it until you desperately need it. Stonks, indeed.