Deutsche Bahn AG or an IT company that works closely with the railway is currently looking for an administrator for Windows 3.11. However, the railway is not looking itself, but has commissioned the personnel service provider Gulp, which specializes in IT and technical positions, to do so. You can therefore find the job advertisement “Remote: Windows 3.11 Administrator (m/f/d)” here on the Gulp website.
Gulp only says that it is a customer order. Gulp does not say whether the customer is Deutsche Bahn or a company that cooperates with Deutsche Bahn. Siemens, for example, would be conceivable, as the job advertisement also asks for Sibas knowledge. “Sibas” stands for “Siemens Railway Automation System”, which is used in rail vehicles, here is an example of it.
The job advertisement reads:
The result of your work is high-quality display software whose interfaces to the vehicle control and vehicle control technology function smoothly.
The most important technical data is displayed to the driver in real time on the driver’s cab display system of high-speed and regional trains.
The job holder’s tasks include updating drivers and maintaining the legacy system. Among the required previous knowledge, the job advertisement explicitly mentions Windows 3.11 and “knowledge of legacy operating systems and Windows managers (particularly MS DOS and Windows for Workgroups). The whole thing reads like a journey back in time to the beginnings of Microsoft Windows. You can read more about Windows 3.11 in Windows 1 to 11: The History of Windows – Blue Screens & Easter Eggs.
The job description names Erlangen as the location. Siemens has a large branch there.
Microsoft introduced Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in November 1993 and Windows 3.11 in 1994. But in the industrial and military sectors it is by no means unusual for very old hardware and software to still be used. Here are some examples:
