The Long Shadow of Y2K 257
Hugh Pickens writes "It seems like it was only yesterday when the entire world was abuzz about the looming catastrophe of Y2K that had us both panicked and prepared. Ten Years ago there were doomsday predictions that planes would fall from the sky and electric grids would go black, forced into obsolescence by the inability of computers to recognize the precise moment that 1999 rolled over to 2000 and for many it was a time to feel anxious about getting money out of bank accounts and fuel out of gas pumps. "Nobody really understood what impact it was going to have, when that clock rolled over and those digits went to zero. There was a lot of speculation they would reset back to 1900," says IT professional. Jake DeWoskin. The Y2K bug may have been IT's moment in the sun, but it also cast a long shadow in its wake as the years and months leading up to it were a hard slog for virtually everyone in IT, from project managers to programmers."
"'People were scared for their jobs and their reputations," says CIO Dick Hudson, Staffers feared that if they were fired for failing to remedy Y2K problems, the stigma would prevent them from ever getting a job in IT again. "Then there was the fear that someone like Computerworld would report it, and it would be on the front page," Hudson adds. Although IT executives across the globe were confident that they had the problem licked, a nagging fear followed them right up until New Year's Eve. While most people were out celebrating the turn of the century, IT executives and their staffs were either monitoring events in the office or standing by at home. Afterwards came the recriminations and backlash as an estimated $100 billion was spent nationwide for problems that turned out to be minimal. Others says the nonevent was evidence the Y2K effort was done right. "It was a no-win situation," says Paul Ingevaldson. "People said, 'You IT guys made this big deal about Y2K, and it was no big deal. You oversold this. You cried wolf.' ""
This kind of hype was exactly the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
We see exactly the same reaction today about all the issues that face us (whether personal, local, national or world-wide). The considered, thoughtful and measured responses that would (given a chance) produce equitable solutions with a minimum of fuss get washed away by the ignorant but vocal commentators in the media. These people don't care about the problem, or finding a solution. All they want is the cameras pointing in their direction.
Oversold? (Score:4, Insightful)
A great many computer systems used two digit dates, and would treat '00' as a date in the past. Changing this fundamental fact would take an awful lot of work; not changing it would mean that all these computer systems break on Jan 1st 2000.
Allot of work was done, and most all important computer systems didn't suffer from any serious problems.
What is being oversold?
I suppose there were 'cowboy' consultants exploiting the problem by offering to come in and look at your recently acquired IT infrastructure, charging huge amounts for a simple thumbs up. That doesn't undermine the severity of the problem though.
Re:This kind of hype was exactly the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The reporters that had no idea still irritate me to this day when they mention Y2K. I've seen again and again supposedly enlightened reporters whimsically refer to Y2K as a big "myth". It was a serious problem and the reason nothing bad happened was down to the fact people did so much effort in preventing it. The hype (although blown our of proportion) was due to the truth that there was a genuine problem and it required a large amount of man power to fix it (and a large segment of companies waited until the last minute to fix it). And yet reporters go on spouting arrogantly how Y2K was a giant scam, or boogie man spread by IT.
Basically there are fools who only see money down a drain, because people have a tendency to ignore disasters unless they actually happen. Planes dropping out of the sky might of been an exaggeration by rumour mongers, (I'm not sure, anyone care to correct me?), but serious global problems aren't such a dumb idea as a result of a few major systems crashing.
Re:No-win situation (Score:2, Insightful)
That's how I feel about the global warming issue. If we succeed in stopping the effects of climate change, all the nay-sayers will claim it was a waste of money and less effort will be taken to prevent the problem going into the future. If we don't, we could really screw up the planet.
There's one question to ask here. Which of Earth's many past climates is the one that we should hold steady?
Re:Oversold? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all two-digit computer systems "break" because of that limitation, mind you. It only becomes an issue for systems which do comparisons between dates on different sides of the discontinuity. Admittedly that's most of the computing tasks that use dates, but it's not universal. And "break" has many different senses: the media often portrayed it as everything Y2K noncompliant keeling over and dying or entering some worst-case-scenario failure mode, when in many cases the errors were benign. That's what was being oversold, really: the danger.
Re:My findings on Y2K hype. (Score:2, Insightful)
You've got that right. Especially when there is money to be made, or power to be grabbed/transfered/co-opted. For a great example of this, see Man-made Global Warming (MGW).
Over the years I've seen a number of these panics and I have learned to first consider who benefits from the mitigation. If they are the same ones who are screaming the loudest I become very suspicious. As far as MGW goes, the anti-capitalists and anti-Americans are quite prominant in the cast of doomsayers. Just something I observed. Did anybody else notice that the key "remediation" that came out of Copenhagen was for the "West" to agree to transfer untold billions to the developing nations?
As regards Y2K, the consultant houses were very busy publishing papers predicting doom, unless of course we did the "smart" thing and hired them (at inflated rates due to the severity and time-critical aspect of the problem) to fix it. Now, I'm not saying Y2K was a myth. There were clearly issues that needed to be addressed. I was working as a developer in a fairly large medical device company at the time. We did a thorough code audit and found and fixed a number of problems -- most of which would have merely displayed funny dates to the user. But, if the problem were truly as massive and far-reaching as the shrillsters were claiming, there is *no way* we would have been so successful in cleaning it all up. Not possible. And so the problem, in reality, was significantly less serious than we were led to believe. And much wealth changed hands.
The Agony and The Ecstasy (Score:4, Insightful)
Ecstasy
The attack of 9/11/2001 took out the WTC and other buildings near ground zero. This was the heart of the financial district and the IT base of many firms.
In the hours following the attack, the offsite backup sites for many of those firms seamlessly took over. Nobody noticed that.
I firmly believe that without Y2K remediations, 911 would have been a big IT disaster too.
Agony
At the successful conclusion of Y2K remediation efforts, the upper and middle level managements treated themselves to celebrations at luxury resorts. Meanwhile, many IT grunts who put in all the extra hours got nothing more than pink slips. In most cases, the companies didn't even offer to buy them a beer as thanks for their long hours.
It was the most ungracious treatment of labor I ever witnessed. Compare it to calling Viet Nam vets baby killers.
Re:This kind of hype was exactly the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oversold? (Score:5, Insightful)
A great many computer systems used two digit dates, and would treat '00' as a date in the past. Changing this fundamental fact would take an awful lot of work; not changing it would mean that all these computer systems break on Jan 1st 2000.
Allot of work was done, and most all important computer systems didn't suffer from any serious problems.
What is being oversold?
I suppose there were 'cowboy' consultants exploiting the problem by offering to come in and look at your recently acquired IT infrastructure, charging huge amounts for a simple thumbs up. That doesn't undermine the severity of the problem though.
The problem wasn't with the IT folks... Not even the 'cowboy' consultants who tried to scare up some income. The problem was with the media coverage.
There were reports on how all your money would vanish overnight, trains would derail, nuclear power plants would melt down, missiles would launch themselves, planes would fall out of the air... The same kind of silliness and paranoia we're now seeing in relation to the 2012 thing... Except it was being reported as real, impending, and IT's fault.
If you talk to someone who was working in IT during the whole Y2k thing, they'll probably tell you stories about long hours and stress and frustration.
If you talk to someone who was working in management during the whole Y2k thing, they'll probably tell you similar stories about long hours and stress and frustration.
If you talk to some random person on the street about Y2k they're likely to mention how the world was supposed to end and it was all kinds of hyped up and nothing ever happened. They never saw anyone putting in long hours. They never saw the effort that went into making sure that nothing happened. All they saw were the crazy news stories and docu-dramas about the impending disaster.
The problem is that now, because nothing tragic happened, the IT industry in general has lost credibility with the general public. So when someone suggests that we're running out of IP addresses... Or that GPS may start failing soon... Or that there's some nasty bug on the way and you really ought to update your computer... The general public just rolls their eyes and ignores the warning.
And, of course, it doesn't help that the media continues to report on things they don't understand...
Remember the DST change a little while back? Our local news programs were reporting that you better run Windows Update and patch your computer or you'd lose data. They literally said you'd lose data. Because your computer didn't know that it should automatically change the time by an hour...
And then there was all the paranoia about Conficker. I believe I even saw reports about Conficker on CNN. We had clients who were afraid to turn on their computers, even after we'd assured them a dozen times that they weren't infected.
Re:This kind of hype was exactly the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed - but unfortunately the hype these days has swung completely the other way, with Y2K viewed as a collosal non-event, and it's the programmers and Government - not the media who overhyped it the first place - who are portrayed as being stupid and worrying over nothing.
The point, AIUI, is that there were some genuine issues that needed fixing. And if nothing happened - well that's because they fixed the problems! But far from being praised, it's now widely assumed that Y2K was entirely a hoax, and that any money spent fixing it was a waste.
I wonder what will happen with the 2038 problem - I fear that attempts to fix this genuine problem will be hampered by the ignorant masses going "Oh it's just another Y2K, it's a load of old rubbish, what do these experts know!"...
Re:This kind of hype was exactly the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm reminded of Nassim Taleb's alternative-universe story about unsung (or worse, derided) heroes in The Black Swan: A congressperson pushes through legislation mandating reinforced aircraft cockpit doors in 1998: as a consequence, 9/11 never happens, because would-be hijackers know they're not going to be able to break down the cockpit door.
The congressperson loses the next election because, hell, hundreds of millions of dollars were thrown away on a non-existent problem!
Re:No-win situation (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought it was known as "banking".
Re:Just wait for the 2010 bug (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? You do understand that even today some back-end systems are run on very old machines with very old programs. The reason they don't get updated is that it costs money to update. Unlike the average /. geek, businesses don't replace their systems whenever something new appears. If it works, there has to be a reason to update. The Y2K bug was such a reason. But like other areas, even when experts warn of something doesn't mean management is listening especially if the problem isn't happening today or tomorrow.
This phenomenon is not relegated to just IT. You remember that event called Hurricane Katrina? The Army Corps of Engineers warned that the levees were not enough. Their warnings started almost 30 years ago. Every year the asked for money to address the levees; every they were promised money but not actually given any. Then the levees broke and the government leaders wanted to blame the Corps. The Corps had documentation that they warned the government well in advance.