As an IT consultant I have the opportunity to observe how companies take care of business. Normally this insight only servers to strengthen my desire to remain a consultant. However, in recent times it has allowed me to see how companies are reacting to the Y2K threat. Perhaps these observations can help. My background is in UNIX system administration, with a smattering of Novell, Oracle and NT. Been at this for about 13 years. One of the things this lends to me is access to everyone who works on the systems I administer. I know what applications are loaded on my systems and, because vendors and in-house programmers are prone to blame errors on the OS first, I know when something goes wrong with them and what is done to correct it. In a rough sequence from about 1996 on to present day this is what I can report.

A major financial in the New York area had not, as of later 1997, even thought about Y2K remediation. This was a pretty sharp group of people, with skill and business sense plain to see in over 50% of its MIDDLE management. (From most IT people I know, this is a rave review of management).

On to one of the largest players in the financial world. The environment is SUN Solaris and NT workstations. The application is financial planning software that an internal customer would use to service external customers, which consisted of mainly companies looking to have their IRA accounts managed. If this stuff broke they look stupid to companies looking for financial planning. Late in 1998 (fourth quater) The Word came down that they would be compliant by beginning of 1999. Supposedly they received this edict at some point from the SEC. I can only hope the SEC issued this command long before the boys and girls in the suits passed the word down to us. What did remediation consist of? For my part, I loaded the patches (software upgrades, service packs, what ever you want to call them) on the systems and changed the dates when they began testing. The whole cycle took one month. They tested days after we patched the OS and firmware. I fed them 12/31/99, 02/28/00 and 02/28/04. As far as I know, no corrupt data handling tests were attempted.

This was followed by a brief stint at a wireless communication company. Testing? Not hereabouts. I did find out that some clerk is phoning our vendors and asking if they are Y2K compliant. No papers to sign, just asking. Stock options? No thanks.

After this I spent a brief time at one of the countries largest office supply companies. (1999) Why to Kay? Whats that?

Presently at a large chemical firm. Great news. They have a Y2K remediation effort under way. And I mean a good one. They are working closely with their vendors on this. I havent been here long, but they have found a few bugs. Nothing big so far. Of course, Im kinda of isolated from the Big Iron so I dont expect to see a lot of bugs. Any criticisms? Well, they havent set any time aside for the testing, so they are squeezing it in or making time. Some of the lower level management occasionally tries to let a piece of an application slip because they are having trouble configuring it.

And that brings me to another point. Is it just me, or are the IT people around me becoming stupid? I am well aware of the practice by certain genius to retire the highly paid IT drones and replace them with larva fresh out of college. The larva work much cheaper. Why didnt anyone think of this before?!

Ill tell you why. The highly paid people only attain those pay levels by working for decades at what they do. And with those years comes a little commodity known as Experience. Funny thing about experience. There is still no substitute for it. Because not only does it involve knowledge of the subject matter that you can get from a book, but all the little quirks that DONT show up in the books. Plus, along the way you work out problem solving skills that have to be seen to be appreciated. Ah, but can you prove this, Professor Open you ask. Well, here is the proof that I offer. In a significant number of cases, the people who were retired came back as....you guessed it! Consultants! So they really weren't able to be replaced with larva after all! But since they are now paid out of a different budget, the HR droids who originally hatched the money saving plan can still point at reduced payroll. Stop me if youve heard this one. Now, Im going to cringe and sprout a few more gray hairs when I say this, but... In the old days people who cranked out code knew their business, and knew the environment that they wrote code in. And did their own system administration in any case. (Which is probably why I was an operator way back when). Now, they come running to me. They ask what happened to the application they wrote. They want to know if there is a problem with the system (meaning the OS or hardware). I search the system logs and find zilch. Then, as if in some deranged IT version of the movie Groundhog Day, I start asking the same questions I asked them the last time. Like, Where do you write your application logs to?. They scurry off. They return. (Keep in mind, they WROTE THE CODE!) They point out the log files. I bring them up on the text editor and jump to the end. Sometimes, if theyre lucky, they actually have an exit code to show for their efforts. I report the error code to them. They ask me what it means. At this point I sigh and tell them they will have to talk to the programmers who produced the code. They look at each other, then back at me. They leave. Perhaps they will back in a few days. Could it be that languages like Visual anything only succeed in allowing dimmer bulbs to write our code for us? And if they have so much trouble fixing their own code, how do they find errors in real programming languages like Assembler, C and the much hated COBOL?

And one more slightly off topic thing. Just watched some of two, maybe three hours of TV that I watch each month. As always, I have an alternative channel to switch to during the commercials on the discovery channel or TLC. This time it was UPN, which between the hours of 8 PM and 9 PM EST showed something called seven days. A show about someone traveling back in time to rescue a downed US (female) pilot from the vicious, rape practicing Serbians. Now, I know that the depiction of the Serbs behavior is fairly accurate. However, propaganda doesnt have to be lies, either. In my opinion, this was propaganda. Designed to make people feel less uneasy about going to war with Serbs. And although they didnt have to make up any atrocities out of thin air, they ignored the behavior of the Kosovars in this little piece. Once that is adding in to the equation, then NATO intervening in Kosovo is like NATO siding with losing side of a Sicilian style vendetta.

Take note of a portion of a NYT article I found on the net:

In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times November 1, 1987

The New York Times Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1;

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.

The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.

A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.

The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Vicious Insults

Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.

Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.

[deletia]

Radicals' Goals

The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.

Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.

There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance.

The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

Worst Strife in Years

As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo' ' in all but name.

[deletia]

''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

Attacks on Slavs

Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.

In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.

[ There is much more after this. But we already know about the Serbs]

Hope this helps you to keep your...

eyes_open

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.net), June 03, 1999

Answers

Thanks for your y2k observations.

-- Will (sibola@hotmail.com), June 03, 1999.