Today is 02/12/1999 and this firm is looking for a Y2K Test Lead. Seems kinda late, folks...

==================== Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), founded in 1971, has grown to become one of the world's largest and most respected institutional money management firms. Headquarted in Newport Beach, California, approximately fifty miles south of Los Angeles.

The qualified candidate will supervise a team of 4-6 staff in the performance of various phases of Year 2000 systems testing. Individual will be responsible for helping to develop and implement test scripts, coordinate various phases of testing and will have full responsibility for the thorough documentation of tests performed and test results. Candidate must have strong people skills, be able to quickly develop an understanding of the business and work under tight deadlines. =========================

Wonder if PIMCO's on the NYSE or NASDAQ. Seems like they'd be a good candidate for some "short" action...

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), February 12, 1999

Answers

Note: Not only are they a little late, but it appears that the candidate need not have any experience programming computers . . . "Candidate must have strong people skills, be able to quickly develop an understanding of the business and work under tight deadlines." I'd suggest that pointy-headed dude from Dilbert. Hey! "team of 4-6" that might actually be Dilbert and the boys!

Hey, Mac. You gave me an idea. I'm going to start a thread looking for information on companies that are totally FUBAR to short. I'm sure there are other threads, but it's time for a fresh one.

Note: Yardeni's new "netbook" has a list of picks and pans for y2k, but he ony talks about industries, not individual companies.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 12, 1999.

you know, Puddin, it could just be that they're looking for a replacement since their last guy quit...which would also have some interesting implications.

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), February 12, 1999.

Adams may be right, Puddintame. I've been working on a y2k project for 9 months now. Close to 40 people on this one project and we're now on our 3rd project leader. The two previous guys left the company (some say after they saw the writing on the wall re this project). So not unusual for people to leave y2k projects. We've also lost some key analysts and coders. I bugged out to a rural area, but the company set me up with a home office and a connection and kept me on as a permanent employee (as long as I'll finish this project for them...all bets off then, I'd say). So seems to me competition for y2k computer people still pretty high.

And BTW, my opinion is that you don't have to be a hardcore techie to do business application testing...sometimes we make the worse testers cause we just test the code we wrote, not if the code works in real business sense. Not always true, but mostly true. Course I could be banned from the doughnut club for admitting that....

-- seagreen (seagreen@justlurking.com), February 13, 1999.