Probably going to be waiting a while. Mainframes are still heavily & widely used in banks.

Student cheats way through college CS courses. Then cheats way into getting first software development job. Soon after that, colleagues discover he can't code worth a damn, but but bullshits with the bosses, gets promoted into management. Company pays for evening/weekend MBA program. Repeat cheating exercise, complete MBA. Get promoted to CIO.

This kind of sounds like the plane Johnny Depp's character was designing in The Astronaut's Wife.

How many legs does the dog have Winston?

Four

And if the Party says it's not four but five then how many?

It might have been the cops that gave you headaches, not the tower.

I always figured it was a good thing I hadn't invested in learning SAP and jump on the gravy train some of my software consulting neighbors have been riding... just seemed like a matter of time before word got out and the hours dried up for them.

The Internet is less disturbing than a face to face meeting.

Makes me wonder if the Spanish Inquisition would be less disturbing if it were conducted over the internet. Spanish Inquisition 2.0

Don't say it couldn't happen. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

My first reaction is WTH, but on the other hand don't embassy staffers have pretty much the same deal?

Yep, this is a situation where attorneys pay off. When selling a company ($1M - $5M) I tell people to prepare to pay $15K to $50K for a transaction attorney, but an IP attorney will probably run more. Buyers will try last minute tricks to cut the price in half or more so an experienced lawyer is a must.

While I'm at it... Some other comments have said a broker wants 6%, that's only for a quite big deal (assuming some variant of a sliding Lehman scale is used). Even in the $1Million range 10% is common (even 15% in some states like Florida).

Another commenter said something about getting MBA students involved. No way. This stuff is way, way above a student class project.

The poster is going to have to find someone who has been through this and get referrals. Sorry, that means meeting people and using social skills. Emailing potential buyers probably won't help because if you don't know any people in the space, you also don't know how to communicate with them out of the blue; you'll probably put them off, if they read your message at all.

Get an attorney who has experience doing these types of deals, this has saved me from failed deals. The guy who did Daddy & Mommy's will or plays golf with Uncle Barney or whatever isn't the way to go.

Trying to sell your company through one of the hundreds of business for sale websites brings tire kickers and scam replies. Going to the local business brokerage franchise (basically a bunch of commission-only out-of-work real estate salesmen) is usually a dead end for this type of thing, they won't grasp what you are selling, but they will have free balloons for the kiddies.

What about all the cycles compiling and debugging C++ code? Or all the trees torn down for C++ books? Or the environmental impact of C++ developers? I mean, have you ever had to share a cube with one of them? Pheewww.

...but I'd prefer to be able to buy something assembled

Slashdot, news for nerds. So sad, I remember when nerds built their own systems.

I have graduate degrees in both Computer Science and Economics and this commonality was so obvious to me over a decade ago that it wouldn't have seemed worth writing about. Hell, you even study Von Neumann in both of these fields at the undergraduate level.