One of the hardest conversations we have with SYNON shops is about hiring.
The conversation usually goes like this:
“Our SYNON specialists are retiring. We need to hire replacements. How do we find them?”
“You won’t. There is essentially no labor market for SYNON expertise anymore. That’s not a recruitment problem. That’s a modernization imperative.”
The reason is structural, not accidental. Young developers don’t pursue SYNON careers because SYNON died as a platform in the early 2000s. Universities don’t teach it. Tech bootcamps don’t mention it. Job postings for SYNON developers sit unfilled for months.
Meanwhile, younger developers are entering the job market looking for skills that matter: Python, Go, Rust, cloud platforms, modern web frameworks, API design.
If you ask them to learn SYNON, most will politely decline.
But if you ask them to learn RPG Free Form? That’s a different story.
Why RPG Free Form Is Different From SYNON
SYNON was a black box. You built models. The tool generated code. You didn’t write code; you configured models.
RPG Free Form is real code. It’s syntax-based, not model-based. It looks modern—closer to Python or JavaScript than to legacy RPG. Variable names are readable. Logic is explicit. Comments are meaningful.
To a younger developer evaluating a job posting that says “help us modernize our RPG applications,” RPG Free Form looks like a legitimate skill. SYNON looks like career quicksand.
That’s not a judgement. It’s market reality.
Recent hiring data from 2025–2026 confirms it:
- Postings for “RPG Free Form developers” get 3–5x more applicants than postings for “SYNON specialists”
- Younger developers (under 35) actively prefer free-format RPG’s syntax and flexibility
- Organizations that have converted SYNON to RPG Free Form report easier hiring and better retention of junior developers
In other words: converting SYNON to RPG Free Form is not just a technical upgrade. It’s a talent strategy.
The Hidden Cost of SYNON Specialization
When your organization becomes deeply dependent on SYNON expertise, you create a fragile structure that limits your options. Your SYNON developers are typically 50+, with the next cohort at 30+. There’s a 20-year generational gap with no mid-career SYNON developers in between. When the senior people retire, you have no one to pass knowledge to. SYNON applications become owned by specific people, so when those people leave, institutional knowledge leaves with them. Nobody else understands why certain models were built the way they were, what edge cases exist, or how integrations work.
This creates a recruitment death spiral. You need a SYNON specialist but can’t hire one (they don’t exist). So you promote someone into the role who is now spread thin across applications they don’t fully understand. Quality degrades. You become less attractive to remaining SYNON experts. Turnover accelerates. A junior developer who learns SYNON has one career path: become a SYNON expert. That’s not appealing. There’s no exit path to modern technologies. They’re trapped.
Most organizations handle this by accepting SYNON as permanent technical debt and routing around it. That approach has real consequences: limited integration with modern tools, slow feature development, and chronic understaffing that compounds over time.
The RPG Free Form Alternative
When you convert SYNON to RPG Free Form, you change the talent equation entirely:
Readable code. RPG Free Form code looks like code that could exist in any enterprise. It has meaningful variable names, explicit logic, and clear structure. A developer unfamiliar with the business logic can still understand what the code is doing.
Standard skill set. RPG Free Form is a skill that exists in the market. There are developers who learned it in school or on the job. There are training programs. There are communities. It’s a real career path, not a dead-end specialty.
Flexibility. A developer who learns RPG Free Form can also work on modern API layers, integrations, and cloud connectivity. They’re not locked into one skill. They can grow and transition.
Recruitment advantage. When you post a job for “RPG Free Form developer,” younger developers see a legitimate opportunity. It’s still IBM i (which has a reputation for stability), but it’s modern enough to be marketable on their resume.
Retention improvement. Once hired, junior developers are more likely to stay if they’re learning a skill that’s valuable outside your organization. SYNON specialists often stay out of necessity (limited marketability); RPG Free Form developers stay because they’re genuinely learning something useful.
What This Looks Like In Practice
Consider two organizations:
Organization A (still on SYNON):
- Senior SYNON specialist: age 58, salary $95,000
- Mid-level SYNON developer: age 52, salary $85,000
- Junior developer trying to learn SYNON: age 28, salary $55,000
- Total team cost: $235,000
- Generational cliff risk: HIGH
- Recruitment likelihood for junior position: LOW (job posting sits unfilled for 6+ months)
Organization B (modernized to RPG Free Form):
- Senior RPG developer (previously SYNON): age 58, salary $90,000
- Mid-level RPG developer: age 35, salary $75,000
- Junior RPG developer: age 26, salary $50,000
- Total team cost: $215,000
- Generational cliff risk: LOW
- Recruitment likelihood for junior position: HIGH (job posting fills in 4–6 weeks)
Organization B has a younger, more stable team, better recruitment prospects, and lower costs. And they didn’t sacrifice capability—in fact, RPG Free Form is more maintainable than SYNON-generated code.
The Timing
SYNON modernization has a natural window. It’s right now.
Here’s why: 2026 is the last year when there are still people in the market who understand SYNON AND RPG. When those people retire (in 2–5 years), your options shrivel.
If you start the modernization now:
- Your existing SYNON specialists can guide the conversion
- They can mentor junior developers on the new RPG code
- By the time they retire, the organization has a stable, younger team
- You’ve successfully made the generational handoff
If you wait:
- Your SYNON specialists retire without passing knowledge
- You’re trying to hire junior developers to maintain code they can’t understand
- You’re desperate and making poor technical decisions
- Your organization is in crisis mode
The difference between proactive and reactive is 2–3 years.
The Implementation Path
Modernizing SYNON to RPG Free Form for talent reasons follows a different arc than cost-reduction modernization. Start by assessing your team structure—how many people are SYNON specialists, what’s their age and retirement timeline, and what’s your current hiring success rate for junior developers. Identify which SYNON applications are most important to your business and which have the deepest knowledge concentrated in people who are close to retiring.
Post positions for “RPG Free Form developers” before you start the conversion. Use the modernization as a selling point: “Join us as we modernize our applications from legacy SYNON to modern RPG Free Form.” The conversion of your first application becomes a training vehicle for junior developers to learn how code gets refactored, what modern practices look like, and how to maintain clean code going forward. Senior people mentor juniors during the modernization, so by the time the senior people retire, the juniors have developed deep knowledge of those applications. Then iterate—each SYNON application you modernize trains another cohort of junior developers. After 3–4 applications, you have a strong, stable team in place.
The Honest Assessment
Converting SYNON to RPG Free Form is not primarily a technology decision. It’s an organizational decision.
Technically, you could keep SYNON running forever. The applications work. The platform is stable.
But organizationally? You can’t staff it. You can’t attract talent. You can’t pass knowledge to the next generation.
Those are business problems that technology can’t solve. But technology can enable the solution: by making your codebase modern enough that it’s attractive to the next generation of developers.
If you’re managing SYNON applications and worried about the generational handoff, let’s talk. We’ll help you understand how to structure a modernization that’s as much about building a sustainable team as it is about upgrading the code.