An insane amount of money and overtime went into changing software and data to make sure that a lot of bad things did not happen. It’s not that the Y2K bug was a nothing burger, a lot of people worked very hard to make sure critical systems were changed.
I have been telling people this for 26 years now to no avail. I wish I hadn’t busted my ass now so all the motherfuckers since then who claimed IT is useless could eat the giant dick of downtime.
As it always goes, they only acknowledge you when your actually fixing problems. The work you did that made everything work as it should was never acknowledged the way it should have been.
We haven’t changed. Companies will not spend more than they have to on IT if they think they can deal with it until next quarter. This was no different, plus developers of software didn’t expect their stuff to become legacy and not updated with better programs. Memory was premium, so a few less bytes here and there that would work fine for a few years was what they did.
Half a century is a bit of a stretch, but I otherwise agree. It should not have gotten to the level of trouble it became, but I also dislike the implication in the OP that it was just a non-issue meant to scare people; it was a problem that indeed came to a head because many companies kicked the proverbial can, but a potential real problem nonetheless (especially in medical/insurance/monetary systems rather than “planes will rain from the sky” sorts of issues).
An insane amount of money and overtime went into changing software and data to make sure that a lot of bad things did not happen. It’s not that the Y2K bug was a nothing burger, a lot of people worked very hard to make sure critical systems were changed.
I have been telling people this for 26 years now to no avail. I wish I hadn’t busted my ass now so all the motherfuckers since then who claimed IT is useless could eat the giant dick of downtime.
As it always goes, they only acknowledge you when your actually fixing problems. The work you did that made everything work as it should was never acknowledged the way it should have been.
A lot of stupid businesses and government entities waited until the last fucking second to fix a problem they knew about for half a century.
The overtime should have been exponential for them kicking the can down the road for literal generations.
We haven’t changed. Companies will not spend more than they have to on IT if they think they can deal with it until next quarter. This was no different, plus developers of software didn’t expect their stuff to become legacy and not updated with better programs. Memory was premium, so a few less bytes here and there that would work fine for a few years was what they did.
Half a century is a bit of a stretch, but I otherwise agree. It should not have gotten to the level of trouble it became, but I also dislike the implication in the OP that it was just a non-issue meant to scare people; it was a problem that indeed came to a head because many companies kicked the proverbial can, but a potential real problem nonetheless (especially in medical/insurance/monetary systems rather than “planes will rain from the sky” sorts of issues).