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I remember hearing a story on NPR years ago years after Y2K with someone knowledgeable on the subject that addressed this question. He gave basically the same a
by klenwell 7y ago
I remember hearing a story on NPR years ago years after Y2K with someone knowledgeable on the subject that addressed this question. He gave basically the same answer you did: a lot of effort went into avoiding disaster and a lot of people treated it after the fact as if it was hype or hysteria. I recall the interview because it changed my significantly thinking on the subject. (I wasn't in the industry at the time of Y2K.)
He also noted that a lot of American firms worked with Indian firms to resolve it. Indian engineers were well suited to the problem, according to him, because they had been exposed to a lot of the legacy systems involved during their studies.
He said an interesting consequence of this was that many American companies concluded they could use lower wage Indian engineers on other software projects so it helped initiate a wave of offshoring in the early 2000s.
I couldn't find the story I heard in the NPR archives, but they do have a number of stories reported right around that time if you want to see how it was being discussed and treated by NPR at the time:
https://www.npr.org/search?query=y2k&page=1 https://www.npr.org/search?query=y2k&page=1
I did find this NPR interview with an Indian official from 2009 that notes Y2K's impact in US-Indian economic relations:
But I think the real turning point in many ways in the U.S. relations was Y2K, the 2000 - year 2000, Indian software engineers and computer engineers suddenly found themselves in the U.S. helping the U.S. in adjusting itself to the Y2K problem. And that opened a new chapter in our relations with a huge increase in services, trade and software and computer industry.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120738550 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120738...
- ZainRiz 7y agoIt was also really difficult to detect bugs since no good testing paradigms had been established yet. This created an exploitable opportunity for the few who knew how to write automated tests. During the Y2K panic Sun Microsystems (IIRC) announced that they would pay a bounty of ~$1,000 per Y2K bug that anyone found in their software (due to the lack of automated tests, they didn't even know how to find their Y2K bugs) James Whittaker (a college professor at the time) worked with his students to create a program that would parse Sun's binaries and discover many types of Y2K bugs. They wrote the code, hit run, and waited. And waited. And waited. One week later the code printed out it's findings: It found tens of thousands of bugs. James Whittaker went to Sun Microsystems with his lawyer. They saw the results and then brought in their own lawyers. Eventually there was some settlement. One of James' students bought a car with his share.
- superhuzza 7y agoThat's a fantastic story, I'm impressed the professor didn't try to take the whole settlement.
- thisisnico 7y agoSome people have character.
- reaperducer 7y agoIt's sad to live in a world where people are impressed when someone does the right thing.
- dhhwrongagain 7y agoIt’s sad to live in a world where people are naive enough to assume that doing the right thing without incentive is commonplace. You must be great to negotiate with.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- airstrike 7y agoThanks for sharing. This is why I love HN
- tic_tac 7y agoThis should be its own post on HN! Great story.
- blahblah12 7y agoOn another note, having listened to James Whittaker talk while at Microsoft, he was a phenomenal storyteller and speaker.
- ZainRiz 7y ago+10000 his talks are amazing to listen to
- ladyattis 7y agoYep, this was something that many firms were delaying spending on it. It's pretty frustrating because this seems normal. Only do something about an issue when the time horizon is near rather than take it on when it's further out.
- bridgerj 7y agoI think a more accurate way of describing the Indian engagement is that a lot of recruiters and Indian firms discovered there was very little vetting of candidates, and that almost anyone could be put forward and start earning money for the recruiter or offshorer. It was money for jam.