I met one of those guys who maintains a large COBOL codebase over the weekend. He's pretty happy with his job, is close enough to retirement that he'll be able to just keep doing this until then. Even though we only chatted for a few minutes, it was neat.
If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://bsky.brid.gy/convert/ap/at://did:plc:3danwc67lo7obz2fmdg6jxcr/app.bsky.feed.post/3lseglajx2s26 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)