In this episode of I Am a Mainframer, host Steven Dickens is joined by Ricki West, a systems programmer at the UK Land Registry. Ricki shares his career journey from consulting at RSM and BMC to becoming a sysprog with a broad scope of responsibilities.
Ricki discusses the evolving roles in mainframe subsystems, his experience bridging gaps across technologies like RACF, ACF2, DB2, MQ, and CICS, and how he developed a grounded understanding by connecting these systems. He also highlights his leadership role in the WAVEZ community, which supports young professionals and students in entering and growing in the mainframe ecosystem.
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Transcript:
Steven Dickens: “Hello, and welcome. You’re joining us here for another I Am a Mainframer podcast. I’m your host, Steven Dickens. I’m joined by Ricki West. Hey Ricki, welcome.”
Ricki West: “Hi, alright.”
Steven Dickens: “Yeah, good. So let’s dive straight in, get the listeners and viewers orientated. Tell everybody what you do and who you do it for.”
Ricki West: “Yeah, okay. So I’m a systems programmer for the Land Registry in the UK. So I’ve been there for just over a year now.”
Steven Dickens: “Fantastic. So, let’s get, I mean, this show is all about understanding mainframers and what they do. I know what the Land Registry does, but we’ve got an international audience, so I want to explain what that is first and then we’ll use it.”
Ricki West: “So the Land Registry is the register for all the land and all the houses and all the deeds etc. for anyone in the UK, Except Scotland.”
Steven Dickens: “Northern Ireland or Northern Ireland?”
Ricki West: “No, no, not Northern Ireland. That’s a difference.”
Steven Dickens: “The vagaries for the international audience of the way that the UK is structured, right?”
Ricki West: “Yeah, yeah, because you’ve got different politics depending on what’s going on in different places. And yeah, it’s very different and especially when you’re trying to sort stuff out.”
Steven Dickens: “So fun fact, England has been tracking who owns what land since the Doomsday book in 1066. So you work for one of the oldest organisations probably involved in the mainframe.”
Ricki West: “Yeah, and I think we were one of the first to take a mainframe as well.”
Steven Dickens: “Fantastic. So let’s maybe start there. Just give us a little bit about, I mean, I don’t want a systems programmer address, but we have a bunch of people who listen to this show. So just tell us about what your day-to-day looks like. Yeah, so it’s too much proprietary information, but just give us a flavour, Ricki, about what you do on the daily.”
Ricki West: “So I’m quite a general sysprog. So I do a lot of everything. So I do a little bit of security, so a bit of RACF. I also do like SMP work, so software installs. I do a little bit of hardware. So we would upgrade into a new ZBox later this year. So I’m organized and all that and sort of that will be hardware sort of devices and all sorts of stuff. Primarily it’s very much software based, keeping everything running. I do a bit of M, I do MQ. There’s some system automation in there, a bit of networking. So it’s quite a broad thing. I mean, I’ve only been doing this for a year. Before that, I used to work for BMC, And before that was RSM Partners.”
Steven Dickens: “They got bought by BMC, right? You were at RSM, then BMC. So that’s where your mainframe career started at RSM?”
Ricki West: “So I started my career in 2019.”
Steven Dickens: “So you’ve done largely a consulting organisation. That’s what RSM Partners is. Now you’re sort of rebirthed, if you will, as a Vitali. Then you did BMC as a vendor and now you’re an end user. So one of the differences there, you’ve got to impact a lot into sort of six years of career.”
Ricki West: “Yeah.”
Steven Dickens: “So differences as you transition between them?”
Ricki West: “So when I first started, I was always, so I started when I started BMC—sorry, RSM—I was on the managed services side. So I was contracted out to be a skilled person basically. And that’s where I pretty much learned the mainframe alongside people that I was working with. And then I then started taking on services once I actually got my feet on.”
Steven Dickens: “So what was that? What was that first experience like? You sort of knew the platform, dropped in the deep end. Mark and the RSM team sort of do a great job, you know, really deep. What was the sort of first experience with the platform? How did you find that?”
Ricki West: “I mean, it was intense. Very intense because it was nothing like you’d ever experienced before. So you had to relearn everything from scratch. I mean, going from Windows and Linux to Z is very different. Especially having to learn how to use PF keys to navigate round. I mean, I loved it. I thought it was great.
Steven Dickens: “That’s been the experience of other alot of career professionals on this podcast over the last 7 years”
Ricki West: “I think it depends on your mindset, really. I mean, I’m not a graphical person. I, you know, I couldn’t do web design. Save my life. I couldn’t make any, you know, I couldn’t make a pretty website. That’s not me. I result. I’ve always been functional coding. To make everything at, make something. So, you know, a terminal is great for me because I don’t care if it’s pretty. I just want it to do what I want it to do. And the background is kind of perfectly designed for that.”
Steven Dickens: “Exactly.”
Ricki West: “And that’s… It’s not for me. It’s for me. This is definitely for me. I don’t have to, you know, be all RT and make everything all flowery. It’s right. Function over anything. And it’s, it’s exactly what I wanted. Because that, you know, that’s the sort of mindset I have. I have like a logical mindset and everything is all of that logic.”
Steven Dickens: “So, let’s go back to the system program and role. It’s that kind of Swiss Army knife, if you will, of kind of role in the mainframe space. You’ll have a CICS specialist, you’ll have a DB2, you might have some of the focuses on storage, you might have some of the focus on network, you might have some of the focuses on security in kind of bigger shops. But they’ll always have that kind of general system programmer role. Have you found… I think a lot of people watch this show to kind of find out what the roles are, find out how they can navigate a career through the mainframe platform. Have you found being a system programmer…”
Ricki West: “So I originally was a CICS person when I first started. So when I started. I was on a service to deliver CICS. So I learned CICS and I learned MQ alongside with it. And then while we were obviously doing that, I then also transitioned into DB2. So then I became a DBA that also knew CICS and MQ.”
Ricki West: “So because everything on the mainframe is connected, it was instead of, if you have a CICS problem, it was instead of seeing the fact that there was, you know, an SQL error, it was thrown into the DBA. It was the fact that I could follow, you know, the trail and find out for myself and find out what was going on. Because everything on the mainframe is connected. You know, you can find a log from somewhere that then links to something else and something else. And that’s what, you know, that’s how I’ve almost transitioned and built my skills because I’ve always connected one system from another. When I… because I did MQ and DB2 and CICS, I then started doing security assessments for those sort of systems. So then I started learning RACF and ACF2.”
Ricki West: “I did do some TSF, yeah, I did do some top secret at some point, but it didn’t really stick very well. It was way too complicated. But I am a, I prefer ACF2 over RACF.”
Steven Dickens: “Just, I mean, there’s a lot of people that will probably hate me for saying that. The point from team are going to like that.”
Ricki West: “But the only reason why I like ACF2 over RACF is because it’s denied unless authorized, not the other way RACF. Because the amount of time that I see in RACF, you know, people just haven’t defined things. And then it’s like, oh, we’ve got access anyway, so. And it’s, you know, it’s, you know.”
Steven Dickens: “I mean, into that. It’s your own trust type model of… . And that’s what I like. Access to anything until we give you access rather than we’ve got access to everything until we take it away.”
Ricki West: “Exactly So, I mean, if RACF could do that, then yes, definitely. But it’s not like that. So it’s always, you know, but yeah, that’s so.”
Steven Dickens: “It sounds like you bounced around the subsystems adding capabilities. You did CICS, you did MQ, you did DB2, then you got into security. And then and now a sysprog.”
Ricki West: “So yeah. And then, so then I, so then when I went to land registry, I then learnt basic sysprogion. Because the thing that I found was while I was at BMC and I could do all this stuff, I had a very big fundamental gap where, you know, I didn’t actually understand the operating system underneath. Of where the systems were, you know, what the system was sitting on.”
Steven Dickens: “You’ve always been the layer above the OS.”
Ricki West: “Yeah, exactly. I’ve always been an administrator. So, so now I’ve started, you know, this is why I then went into one to be a sysprog. So that way I could see underneath. So I could play with, you know, how the system set up to S&P work and network in, which will then go along with, you know, how CICS and MQ would connect in. And that sort of stuff. So I have tried to, you know, follow the path and always stay connected to where I was. I mean, I’m no longer touching CICS at all. Any more just because we don’t have it.”
Steven Dickens: “Yep.”
Ricki West: “So, but I do use everything else.”
Steven Dickens: “Fantastic. So are you involved in any, so are you involved in any of the community? GSE?”
Steven Dickens: “Probably I would say given the accent and where you’re based.”
Ricki West: “I am the chairman of WAVEZ. So WAVEZ is the 101 and 102 initiative for young people. So it’s, it’s a community for anyone under, say, seven years worth of experience. Talks to students. It’s predominantly in the UK. I have tried to push it out to Europe. But we do events where we’ll have like a day event, for example, I held that a Barclays in September, I’m sorry, April. There was a day event where I had a street, well, two streams. So I had one session was, say, introduction to racquet. And then that was the 101 and then the more advanced, advanced sort of RACF session. And they were side by side, so that way I had 115 people attend. And they basically bounced between a, a security session, a DB2 session. We had a CICS session. There was a ZOS session. So, and there was two sessions at each time, depending on who this, you know, so that way they could actually go between one and the other, depending on their specialisms. So if they were just, if they were a CICS programmer and they, you know, they, they actually knew CICS quite well. They would go to the 102, but they would then go to the 101 RACF. And, you know, so that way you could then multi-skill. So that way you could then multi-skill, but then you would go to the level of technical session.So, I did that for, is a, is a session, is a day at Barclays. And then over August, I did the Wave Summer Serp, which was a virtual event, one day every week over August. So we had, again, side by side, 101 and 102 sessions, roughly about the same sort of topics. Depends on people, like to speak as availability, I had to move them down a bit. But, yes, so we had 40 sessions.”
Steven Dickens: “Wow. So, did you get, how many, did you get a bunch of people?”
Ricki West: “Yeah, so I had, I had something about 400 registrations.”
Steven Dickens: “Wow, that is fantastic. Yeah. I mean, we just was digging into the BMC survey. And if you’ve not looked today, I recommend you do, the demographic has changed. So I think we’ve been saying for the last 10, 15 years, are all these guys in their late 50s and 60s going to retire? And they have retired. So, yeah. So, what, it’s interesting looking at the BMC data on the demographics. And maybe you can harvest a couple of data points for sort of the introductions of your charts. It’s flipped. We’ve got millennials and Gen Z’s kind of coming into the platform. And that’s happened in the last year, 18 months. If you look at the last two surveys that have just done, the 20th one this time, that demographic is really transitioning. So, having 400 people turn up to those sort of virtual events, that speaks volumes, I think.”
Ricki West: “Yeah, I mean, so I also run the, we have what’s called the WAVEZ Student Scholarship, which is where we’ll get sponsorships from various vendors, companies, etc, who want to sponsor a student to attend GS UK.”
Ricki West: “Yeah. So, I run that scholarship. So, I’m actually, I’ve actually got a reward for them the scholarships today, actually. But I had over 150 applicants.”
Ricki West: “That’s all right. So, I’ve just got to choose which ones. I feel like I have to go really, because they have to, as part of the scholarship, they have to basically say why they want to be part of the community, how they will benefit, what they will take back, and what are they going to share, because it’s more about, you know, taking information from the conference and sharing it between their peers, whether that’s, they set off the student society at the university, and then they share the knowledge that way, and then they can do all the stuff like, is that explore, or in the skills, depth, or all that sort of stuff, because that’s the stuff that I push, because that’s where I originally started. I set up the student society at Wilburhamton, Union. So I don’t know if you know, Herb, Daily, he was coming out.”
Steven Dickens: “No, Herb, really well.”
Ricki West: “Yeah, so Herb and Henry Crouper with the, with the reason why I started my career. I was with Henry this week.”
Steven Dickens: “Yeah. great guy, great guy.”
Ricki West: “So we got a lot of mainframe society as well, so obviously that’s with Henry and, and you know, and really?”
Ricki West: “Yeah.”
Steven Dickens: “So Rick, we’re now getting to the point where we’re talking about a bunch of people that we know and the conversation’s going to disappear. So you’re sort of five, six years in. We talked about it a little bit off camera. I’m going to ask you to go back. You talked about the journey. There’s not a lot of runway yet. There’s six, six years of runway. But you’ve got the opportunity to go back to yourself, to your younger self. You’re graduating from Wilburhamton. What would you say based on that period of sort of the last six years? What would you say to yourself to go, go do more of this and go do less of that?”
Ricki West: “I’d say, do more of the, I would have done more of this like the Z Explore stuff first before I started, and actually got more of the feel for it. Because I started on CICS, I didn’t know anything else. And then I just focused on what it was that I was doing, and I didn’t focus on how it worked underneath. So if I was to have done the stuff, because I’d explore in the skills depot, I would have had a lot more grounded, whereas I’m trying to do that. I’m going to stand the system a bit more before you go.”
Ricki West: “Whereas I did it the opposite way around, I specialised first, and I understood how the sub-system worked without understanding how it sits underneath, and how it interacts with the base layer of the operating system. So if I would have understood that, because I’m obviously doing it backwards, I’ve gone top down rather than going down and up if you get what I mean.”
Steven Dickens: “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Ricki West: “But I mean, it does, sometimes it, I mean, it depends on whether you like to have a grounding first, or whether you like to have the little light bulb moment where you go, oh, well, that’s how it works, rather than that. Rather than, right, I understand this, and then you build on top of it rather than, well, I know how this works, but it just, it’s like magical mystery, isn’t it? It just happens.”
Steven Dickens: “Yeah, I think that’s really something in there. I think understanding the system, what a logical partition is, what does these, what these things are, and how they all kind of fit together, and understanding how Zos works. It’s a really good thing for anybody, you know, there’s mainframe red books that get you started, there’s hundreds of courses, you know, there’s, there’s stuff from interscale, there’s stuff on the IBM portals, there’s stuff on Broadcom. You know, there’s plenty of material out there, you reach out to you and sort of connect. You’d probably got a bunch of, you know, you ran the course that you said, the 101 courses. I don’t think there’s a lack of places for people to start. Yeah, there’s some really good advice there.”
Steven Dickens: “The other question I’ve got, I’ve been asking this for seven years now, and I always get love the answers to this, and I’m really interested in your perspective. Where do you see the platform three, five, ten years out from there? You’ve got sort of six years kind of hands-on in the engine room type experience. Where do you see it going forward?”
Ricki West: “I see that it’s going to be quite, we’re going to be in the same sort of position, where we’re still trying to educate people that the platform has the capabilities, but they don’t see it. They still think that cloud is still, you know, the way to go, and it’s not. I mean, we see that a lot of companies are now bringing stuff back off cloud because it’s so expensive. But I see that sometimes, like with the way that the mainframe is, and the fact that we have to, we’re constantly having to push two organizations to use its abilities. I think that sometimes, you know, it’s going to be the same sort of thing than now as it is going to be like then, as well as the way that the banking systems are currently are going to go.”
Ricki West: “You know, we’ve got all these new tokens that are going to happen instead of real money, so that’s going to be an interesting one to see, whether we’re ever going to go blockchain. Do you know what I mean? Because that would completely change the way that the mainframe is seen, because obviously that’s the mainframe’s name, but this really isn’t it for banking.”
Steven Dickens: “You know, the digital assets that you mentioned, the Linux one team is doing a good job of curing those workloads onto the platform. There’s some inherent characteristics of the mainframe in the HSMs and deep buried in the way that the box works. So I think there’s some confidence that the team can have that the team you’d be keeping in have architected it to adapt for those new workloads. But I do agree there’s a transition coming for sure.”
Ricki West: “Yeah, I definitely think there’s going to be something that’s going to happen. And you’ve got the stuff like with the quantum safe encryption stuff. And not many companies actually realized that, you know, especially when I was talking to an architect yesterday, and they were saying that they don’t know how to protect themselves against, you know, obviously now decrypt later with the quantum. And I said, you know, well, we’ve got quantum safe encryption on the mainframe, so I can just stick it all on there and turning, you know, and, you know, set it up so that we can protect ourselves.”
Ricki West: “Now, it was the fact that, you know, we’ve got the command set. Well, we didn’t know that existed.”
Steven Dickens: “It’s been only been the 3 generations.”
Ricki West: “I’ve only been banging on about it for a couple of years. But since I actually started, but this is the thing that I’ve seen. And it’s, you know, you are no matter how much somebody that works on the mainframe talks about the mainframe. It is still really difficult to actually get other people inside organizations that are on different technology to understand its capabilities, and to choose to go back on the mainframe rather than come off it.”
Steven Dickens: “So Rick, we’ve got to wrap this up. We could chat. We could chat about coming relatively from the same part of the world. We could chat about the West Midlands and Wolverhampton. We could talk about the mainframe. So I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for coming on the show.”
Ricki West: “Yeah. Thank you very much.”
Steven Dickens: ” You’ve been watching the I am a mainframer podcast. Please click, subscribe, do all those things. Turn your notifications on, and we’ll see you next time.”
Steven Dickens: “Thank you very much for watching.”
Ricki West: “Yes, thank you.”
OUTRO- Thank you for tuning in to the Mainframe Connect podcast. And this episode in the I Am a Mainframer series, sponsored by Phoenix Software International and by Vicom Infinity, a converged company. Like what you heard? Subscribe to get every episode. Or watch us online at openmainframeproject.org. Until next time, this is the Mainframe Connect podcast.
