I'm a programmer/analyst working on a large mission critical system in the financial industry. The other day, I was looking at the job openings posted on www.dice.com. In my specialty, I ran across a job with some Illinois state government agency seeking to hire people to fix whatever problems come up after 01/01/2000.

Had to shake my head! I guess this agency has a fix on failure strategy. I think it was some sort of child or welfare related agency. I don't know if reason for their fix on failure policy is they couldn't hire enough people to get everything fixed or what. But this is one agency of the Illinois state government located in Springfield, Illinois that is hoping to hire for whatever Y2K brings.

I for one will be keeping my current job till at least next August, then probably move to work in another city. While talking to head hunters in various cities, a pattern emerges. For "Big iron" senior programmer/analyst like myself, who work on very large mission critical systems, companies ARE doing some hiring to staff up for both current needs and to have talent on staff for whatever Y2K brings.

Interestingly, companies tend to not want to hire short term contractors -- they want to hire permanent staff. I for one like working as a contractor, since they get paid for overtime! 00!

Another thing I've noticed. Using the www.dice.com site as an example, when I do a search using "COBOL IMS DB/DC" as keywords, now I get over 500 job listings nation wide. Last year about this time, I was getting over 1400 job listings. Also, FWIW, last summer the job market was super heated for programmer talent. I asked for and got a 15% raise, plus another 5% "merit" raise, plus an incentive bonus payable next August if I just stay where I am and not quit! Last August, people were VERY hard to find AT ALL. Those programmer's that were available were all wanting 100K per year to do Y2K work. Now, the market is more like it was before the Y2K demand hit. What I hear from head hunters I talk to is that most companies are finished or winding down with their Y2K work. The going rate is more like 60-70K.

I'm guessing that not everyone is ready, though. Especially when I see ads wanting to hire people for fix on failure! My take, FWIW, is that a lot of campanies have done whatever they are going to do. For some, like the organization I work for, the Y2K work has been done and tested till the cows have come home. For other companies, based on conversations with other programmer friends at other companies, the companies have done some combination of test their applications and get vendor compliance statements for network/hardware/cots stuff. And some companies don't have the ability -- financial and/or technical capability -- to do much remediation work, so they are just planning to "wait and see" -- then fix on failure. Mostly, it's governmental and especially school dsitricts taking this approach.

Last month, I had to take a trip to the emergency room. I noticed a lot of "Y2K OK" stickers on equipment. I also noticed these stickers on equipment in my doctor's office last week. But while talking to my aunt, who works for a doctor, she said they would be fine for Y2K. But when I asked her how long they could operate if the supply pipeline ran dry for her office, I could tell she didn't understand the concept of supply shortages at all. I used the analogy of what happens to automobile production when some subcontractor goes out on strike -- the whole assembly line shuts down for lack of a small but essential part. My uncle is VP of HR at a local midsized comany. I asked him how they were doing the other day. He said "I think we will be ready". I asked him about the issue of supply chain disruptions. He said "I think I pretty much understand it" -- at least he knows enough to know there is more to it than he does know or understand, but I could tell he did NOT have a handle on the concept, let alone was his comany adequately prepared.

In short, IMO, lots of companies out there think they have a handle on Y2K. The remediation efforts are either finished or winding down -- at least judging by demand for programmer talent I would say so. But my feeling is that most people really don't understand the issues very well. I detect a lot of people who think they will be fine if things go bad, but if they do go bad they will be in major trouble.

One thing I draw from this is an increasing sense that the "sleeping giant" and "mass panic" may not materialize at all this year. It seems that "those with an ear to hear" have already heard; those not able or willing haven't gotten it and aren't likely to, either.

I do sense, and have been told about plans to "stock up a little" for a BITR -- and that's about it. No expectations that electricity will go out, or supply chains will run dry. I seriously doubt any "panic" by the DGI or DWGI crowd will amount to more than a "Christmas rush" if that. I guess this is good! Also, preping amounts to a full ice box, cabinet of food and about $50 bucks in cash for the BITR crowd.

As for the GI people I know who have preped, Their buying is pretty much done. Intrestingly, they have tended to GI and PREP at different times over the last year since no "trigger event" has set 'em all to preping at once and thus no shortages have been produced.

One more thing I've noticed about the GIs I know. Most got it more than a year ago. They have been in a hurry to "beat the rush" as to buying preps. Now (and I've noticed this on this forumn too), it seems like exhaustion has set in emotionally/intellectually. Even those GIs with a "little more" preping to do have started to resent being broke from buying preps and seem more inclined to blow money on entertainment and normal luxuries instead of their remaining preps. I'm thinking this is due to emotional exhaustion regarding Y2K. Especially in the face of so much general apathy from the DGI/DWGI crowd.

I still find it hard to believe there will not be a panic rush to prep. But I was also suprised to not see much Y2K demand for programmer talent till last year -- and it lasted a little less than a year. Heck, I thought companies would be paying BIG BUCKS to folks like me for two or three years -- and so did lots of folks writing for technical mags. The Y2K demand for technical folks has been pretty much a flash in the pan so far. I'm thinking that if Y2K does cause a lot of demand for technical types next year, there sure aren't going to be a lot of people like me to go around. The amount of concern and demand sure has fooled me up to this point. I thought the panic would be in full swing by now. Bummer! No several hundred dollar an hour rates for programmers to work on Y2K stuff -- BUMMER!! Oh, well, maybe next year. BUMMER! I hate to wait!

-- Anon (Anon@work.now), August 27, 1999

Answers

Anon, how's John doing??

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 27, 1999.

Ray,

You must have me confused with another "anon". I don't know who you are talking about.

-- Anon (Anon@work.now), August 27, 1999.

As a pure y2k strategy, FOF might make sense only for outfits so small they could do everything manually if they had to (or do now). But as a partial strategy, FOF has always been used daily by everyone everywhere. Following rollover, FOF will necessarily be the order of the day, no matter how remediated, tested and validated you *think* you are. It makes sense to look now for the talent you'll need when things start to break rapidly (and they will, they will). That doesn't necessarily imply they're not doing anything about y2k now, only that there will be more to do later.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), August 27, 1999.

Anons' thoughts display wisdom. He is beyond "Grasshopper".

-- A. Hambley (a.hambley@usa.net), August 27, 1999.

Anon wrote:

"...my feeling is that most people really don't understand the issues very well..."

Anon, I get the same impression from the bankers I work with while performing Y2K assessments. Most think that interface testing is just regulatory overkill (if they understand the concept at all), and as a consequence interface testing has been poorly done in most cases. I'm going to be extremely surprised if the banking system doesn't have serious interconnectivity problems after rollover.

-- Nabi Davidson (nabi7@yahoo.com), August 27, 1999.

Anon,

That was actually a thoughful post.

Now, from your inside the belly perspective... care to take a stab at these banking industry questions?

Any banker owners want to respond to this .... point by point?

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 001JYj

Be assured... we recognize its not your area of expertise. Just... "curious" as to your response.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), August 28, 1999.

Ms. Squire,

That was a thoughful reply!

Yes, I AM inside the "belly of the banking industry". I even do the Y2K testing! Since I don't even like banks, but just happen to be working at one as a programmer/analyst right now, I don't do much industry analysis. Plan on quitting next year after they pay me my retention bonus money and going to work somewhere else!

FWIW, I will say that when I do Y2K testing, the test work just fine. We do the same test over and over again to give outside banks a chance to test with our bank (and you KNOW which one I work for :)

The test all work fine. We test the 12/31 and 01/03 "rollover" and the 02/28/00, 02/29/00 and 03/01/00 "leap year". Plus, we have tested the application software in a Y2K LPAR extensively. All I can say is everything works fine. I don't expect everything will be perfect.

I don't think Y2K will happen without some problems somewhere in the banking industry; but I don't think the banking system will collapse. After doing my preps, I'll even leave some of my money in the bank (now I'm a shill for sure, huh :) ). What I hear from the business folks is their expectation that only a few small fries might have trouble. As a percentage/importance, these few bad apples won't bring the system down. The business people just plan on doing what they do now in the event of a problem -- they do a manual work around using the phone and fax; they get the numbers from the org that's down and key it in, then procede as normal.

There are times I'm aware of that some external org has trouble. In the past, a deep snow has shut things down at the Treasury, for instance. They managed to do what they needed to do -- and no disruptions resulted. Also, some "data feeds" from external orgs were down once I heard -- for a couple of weeks. The manual work around worked just fine -- but was a pain, and just extra work for the clerks.

The biggest threat I see is not that application software will go down. It's that telecommunications could cause disruptions if they go out. At my "org" -- and you know which one I'm talking about, Diane, they have redundant diesels with enough fuel to run EVERYTHING here on full blast for a long time. Several "inputs" of water, electric, ect. They also have detailed contingency plans in the event the "site" where I work was "gone" --- such as an earthquake. They actually have -- for years -- physically worked thru the contingency plans by getting on an airplane, going to the backup site and running everything. All goes fine on these test.

The "org" I work for has gone overboard in testing and retesting. They have done everything they can think of to be ready for Y2K. From my vantage point on the "inside" -- since I'm the one doing the testing, I can vouch for the "PR spin" that the system test out Ok. -- but I'm just a programmer, not an "officer" or "spokesperson".

As to the questions posted, (and I'm doing this from memory), I don't think there are that many super large banks in the US. From what I know, they have been mandated to test and be compliant and have done so, but I don't know what's going on in the "press release" area, or even if they are allowed to realease their results. I don't keep up on the public communications stuff. As to overseas banks, I only know what I've read here. The biggest misconception I detect is that if some bug or problem does pop up that that would bring the whole system down and it would stay down. Such is not likely to happen. Production problems are not unknown. My beeper does go off occasionally. I fix the problem and go on. There are manual work arounds for most problems that have already been done during past production problems. I'm not saying caos can't happen. I'm just saying that based on my experience here over the last few years, the system works quite well in less than 100% perfection. Again, if telecommunications goes out, then I predict the banking system would be in trouble, but how serious for how long, I don't know. They DO have tested proven contingency plans for most things. If I thought the banking system would collapse, I would advise my retired parents to take their money out of the system -- I haven't. I DO find the Y2K sermon's put out by the ABA a laugh! Talk about IQ and PR not mixing!

Plus, judging from the post I've read here, if I were to do the research, get the answers to whatever questions were posed, I think many would just dismiss whatever I reported as being "disinformation" from a "shill" if it was positive and not TEOTWAWKI -- since I work in the banking industry at the "big one". You know what I mean Diane?

I really do care about Y2K, am not a shill or "secret aaaaaagent man" or some such thing (but did think that would be a fun job during my junior high years :) ). My thoughts are, what contibution could I rally make? Even if I snooped around and reported the straight facts, I don't think I would be believed. The pollies wouldn't believe me if I reported negative info (the guy's a fraud masquerading as an insider); and the doomers wouldn't believe anything positive (the guys a PR shill/disinformation agent masquerading as a programmer trying to lull the sheeple to sleep). So what do do? What I've said above is what I know to be factual. But what value is it? It's just my small view from the "inside". Best wishes, Diane.

-- Anon (Anon@home.now), August 28, 1999.