15 years since the Millennium Bug

[DannyF1966]

BBC News - How the UK coped with the millennium bug 15 years ago

I started a new job as an IT Manager in December 98, and all through 99 the Bug was high on my priority list. I remember poring over code written in languages I wasn't yet familiar with, and looking at various tools to check PCs for compatibility. The systems the company used at the time were mainly DOS-based, as I remember (the company was always behind the times technologically!)

In the end everything worked pretty well, all the software updates we did worked well I think. I remember some PCs had BIOS issues, so csv files containing the day's orders had the wrong century on the file date, but since we were looking at the file name instead to work out which was the latest one, the incorrect date didn't affect us.

On the whole, I don't think it was an overreaction at all, and the few failures that were seen worldwide only went to show that the bug was worth putting time and effort into. I wish I'd been contracting at the time though, but I was a lot younger back than and still trying to work my way up the corporate ladder

What are your memories of it?

[malvolio]

I'm constantly irritated by the number of people saying it was a load of fuss over nothing, neatly ignoring the huge amount of work that we did to ensure it was exactly that...

I had my first major problem in Sept 99, when a rolling four month scheduler went all wrong. Sadly, it was the one driving our code management systems without which we couldn't release anything - including the required update to fix the bug. Cue a day of controlled panic while we created a separate service running six months behind the date to get the update sorted and tested and getting authorisation to release code manually outside the standard process...

[mudskipper]

Started a new permie job in December '99. Was asked to check reports. Found one ORDER BY clause that needed tweaking - that was the highlight of the month.

[woohoo]

I was a perm at the time for a company that had businesses around the country. So I spent a couple of years travelling and replacing or updating software around the group. Worked incredibly long hours for months on end, I was exhausted at the end of it. So yep it annoys me when people say y2k was exaggerated.

I was paid something like 17k at the start of it and got a pay raise to 21k - what a dick, probably could have doubled my salary if I wasn't so focused on doing the work.

[barrydidit]

I had my first and only brush with it 6 months ago prepping for a data migration. Client had sold part of their business to another company and this included all mainframe applications and data. Cue a month of red tape to get agreement to not migrate a bunch of Y2K date frigging utilities and manually crafted test data which was still lurking about.

So, even though i never even started work till it was over, I managed to wring an invoice out of it

[original PM]

I had to go check the photocopier still worked.... It did surprisingly enough mind you I was working in recruitment at the time

[TestMangler]

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

[colinrobinson]

non disclosures

I had my first and only brush with it 6 months ago prepping for a data migration. Client had sold part of their business to another company and this included all mainframe applications and data. Cue a month of red tape to get agreement to not migrate a bunch of Y2K date frigging utilities and manually crafted test data which was still lurking about.

So, even though i never even started work till it was over, I managed to wring an invoice out of it

Non disclosure agreements were the reason you didn't hear about details. higher rates were attached to specific NDA's around the discussion of y2K. I identified and fixed several issues in large systems. the minor problems in pc networks were mostly fixed by MS moving the Century Logic window. this provided time to fix more of the legacy systems, data integration and embedded systems.

Life and pensions systems and calcs were a known concern industry wide but once fixed was no longer a problem. so I'm of the view it was problem averted

(oh and there is still code out there that will fail in 2099 we didn't get round to fixing, we code commented it to make it easier for you younger guys)

[ChimpMaster]

I heard legends of contractors being paid vast sums of money to support around the year 2000 tick over, as well as to make changes during the final months of 1999.

Me, I was a noob permie Cobol coder on £15k a year

[anonymouse]

Contracted on Y2K for a water company, in a team of about 10 contractors. Changed the reports & database stuff, all worked a treat, no problems reported. The permie teams were all over budget & late on delivery, so they got rid of our team. Not the only time that happened.

Nothing failed because of the work done.