Y2K The truly crazy headed for the hills with fortified bunkers and ammunition. The more cautious bought water and tinned food. Even the most optimistic drew some extra cash the week before. Everyone speculated about the outcome. But in the Information Technologies world, we worked. We checked code. We corrected code. We tested code. We rolled dates forward and backward and forward and backward until our nerves were paper-thin. We upgraded hardware. We upgraded operating systems (to cope with the new hardware). We upgraded compilers (to cope with the new operating systems). We modified more code (to cope with the new compilers). And then we began the cycle again of testing and rolling forward and testing and rolling backward. We initiated great, complex Y2k projects. We compiled project plans. We filled in endless forms about the state of our Y2k projects. We wrote monthly reports about the progress of the Y2k projects. We went to meetings where we were told how the future of the company depended on the Y2k project being completed in time. We dealt with panicked business people. We soothed troubled nerves at dinner parties. We were asked to predict the outcome by distant cousins who knew we were in IT. We became overnight experts in the working of diesel generators, photocopiers, motor vehicles and washing machines. And, collectively, we averted the disaster. Like superman of old, the IT professionals of today managed to intercept nothing less than the END OF THE WORLD. In an industry where projects run notoriously over the most pessimistic time estimates, we met the deadline. The clocks ticked over to the year 2000 with nothing more than minor glitches. And were they grateful? Did the world thank us and laud us as the heroes we quite clearly were? No! Not most any way! They turned around and called it all hype. They questioned the money spent. We did our jobs so damned well that the only question remaining was whether there had been any need to do the job at all.

So, to all those IT people out there who slaved away at the Y2k problems over the past few years, who endured the pressure of fearful but helpless managers; who lost endless sleep testing things at night because there wasnt a separate test machine; who canceled their December vacation; who couldnt be in exotic places to welcome the start of the new millennium; who stayed sober on New Years eve because they were on standby; who went to work on the 1st and the 2nd of January to boot up the machines - I say put your feet up, pat yourselves and each other on the back and go and get some much needed sleep with a smug smile on your face. We did it. We saved the world. The IT people across the planet are heroes - even if unsung ones. Like housework, what we do is not appreciated unless we dont do it. But like the housewives of old we go on doing it, knowing that it is good, honest, necessary work - and that it gives us inordinate power. So, my fellow programmers, system administrators, database administrators, operators, analysts and support staff - CONGRATULATION ON A JOB WELL DONE. Ours may be the youngest profession on the planet, but this 21st century belongs to us.

-- (Southeastern@my-deja.com), January 18, 2000

Answers

Thanks.

But we don't know what damage is occuring in databases across the country. We saw a spate of failures in the sorts of things that are obvious like ATMs. It's possible that the same rate of failures are occuring inside the big systems. And it seems to me more probable.

I'm still bracing for economic damage.

Watch six and keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.2all), January 18, 2000.

Hey, eyes--r u back? You're right. It can't all have worked that well.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 18, 2000.

And made fun of because we fixed it...because there never was a problem in the first place. Therefore, we were wrong.

-- Larry (cobol.programmer@usa.net), January 18, 2000.

Yup Mara

Now that the crisis is "over" an IT pro get's some time to post now and then. Been lurking lightly the whole way thorugh though.

Larry

How true. Damned if we did and damned if we didn't, eh.

Keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.2all), January 18, 2000.

Programmer machismo is contemptible. Don Quixote would have made a perfect Team Leader.

Work your unpaid overtime if you want. Sing the company song while you get stuffed from behind by a laughing manager. I work my hours, take my fat pay packet, and then go and have a life. That's why I don't have to fix my mistakes later; I don't make any.

It's exactly that kind of willingness to work harder not smarter that got us into this idiotic situation in the first place. "We need to hit market now! Just cut corners, we'll patch it later. How hard can it be?"

Windmill tilting retard.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), January 19, 2000.