15 years since the Millennium Bug

[Paddy]

Most problems were caused by IT departments testing the servers by setting the date to 31.12.1999. The rollover worked but caused havoc when they reset it to the current 1999 date.

[BrilloPad]

Load of fuss over nothing. Gave IT a bad reputation for years afterwards for ripping customers off.

[VectraMan]

The web forum software the company I worked for used showed the date as 19100 instead of 2000, but that took 5 minutes to fix and was the only issue. Load of fuss over nothing.

[woohoo]

Load of fuss over nothing. Gave IT a bad reputation for years afterwards for ripping customers off.

Good for you, prompt and early trolling.

[BrilloPad]

Good for you, prompt and early trolling.

I was post 12 so hardly early. I was not trolling - I mean it.

If you disagree - you are entitled to do so. I worked in 1999 testing loads of stuff that were just never going to fail. The users resented the huge payments made - not just to me.

Anywhere with any "real" danger - like ICI - turned off all their paint machines at end Dec and restarted them in early Jan.

[colinrobinson]

Made absolutely bugger all out of Y2K (was an OS/2 server techie at the time) but remember all the old geezers who had worked in Cobol et al years before, driving to contracts in new Mercs and telling agents not to phone them with gigs at less than £650 a day. Took great delight in telling them that their next chance to make some money would be in 8000 years time

Did actually hear a PM say "Makes you wonder how they coped in the year 999" though

Rates dropped drastically afterwards though and have never recovered. had to keep the merc for a fair few years.

[TestMangler]

Rates dropped drastically afterwards though and have never recovered. had to keep the merc for a fair few years.

Strangely enough, I hit my best ever period contracting in early 2000, when a lot of other people seemed to be struggling. there were a glut of internet bank startups (IF and a few others) which drove rates for environment/config management and test management through the roof. Had rates in the 800s for a year or so and rates in general above 600 for about five years. Made up for not getting on the Y2K bandwagon I suppose.

One friend of mine built an extension which doubled the size of his house with Y2K money and still calls the extension 'The Millenium Wing'

[Archangel]

Load of fuss over nothing. Gave IT a bad reputation for years afterwards for ripping customers off.

My team had to amend over 3000 assembler and COBOL programs otherwise the financial institution I was contracted at would have gone under.

Simple stuff like mortgage applications would not have worked (we won't lend to people -38 years old).

Interest calculations would have credited mortgage borrowers with 99364 days interest and debited savers with the same.

Etc etc hardly a lot of fuss about nothing

[colinrobinson]

Strangely enough, I hit my best ever period contracting in early 2000, when a lot of other people seemed to be struggling. there were a glut of internet bank startups (IF and a few others) which drove rates for environment/config management and test management through the roof. Had rates in the 800s for a year or so and rates in general above 600 for about five years. Made up for not getting on the Y2K bandwagon I suppose.

One friend of mine built an extension which doubled the size of his house with Y2K money and still calls the extension 'The Millenium Wing'

Seem to remember SAP and ERP being the thing to get into next, never did though re-training cost seemed prohibitive.

[NotAllThere]

Seem to remember SAP and ERP being the thing to get into next, never did though re-training cost seemed prohibitive.

By 2000 you'd have missed the boat. Part of the drive for the implementations of SAP was that it was one way to ensure the bug didn't manifest. The rates pre-2000 for SAP were twice what they were afterwards. The contracts were few and far between, and very dull maintenance type stuff. Investing in training has never been a good way of getting into SAP - customers demand experience.