Naive Anecdote of Y2K Problems In Real Life

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Spoke with a friend last night who is not particularly Y2K aware and works for a community college office. She is the archtype of the "ordinary knowledge worker" on todays information assembly lines. She mentioned that their new Y2K compliant system has been a nightmare. Specifically:

1. It doesn't do what they used to be able to do computationally and won't without lots of enhancements. No programmers are available or can be assigned into the indefinite future (year or two).

2. She must now do lots more manual work even with the system. That is not temporary (see 1. above).

3. She and co-workers were stressed by maxed out schedule requirements even before its introduction (think JIT management of people as well as things). Now, they are approaching burn-out. She is looking for another job.

4. She does not claim the system will prove non-compliant, but noted they are not using any of the compliance features yet and won't need them before late this year or next. Based on her experience with it so far, she is not optimistic that it is actually compliant.

Remember, this is an anecdote. NO DOUBT, many new systems are being introduced successfully and increasing efficiency. However, with my own IT experience, I WONDER how many such "anecdotes" are just beginning to pile up and how many more are waiting in the wings. (Actually, I know, because the anecdote/experience pipeline is growing daily).

Thousands of anecdotes? Millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? (Speaking here of the experiences of real people worldwide).

At an absolute minimum, Y2K will introduce significant "noise" and "stress" into the world system, affecting 4Q 1999 and 2000 productivity negatively to a degree that cannot yet be factored quantitatively into the models.

At a maximum?

For now, it is just "death by anecdote" .....

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), June 23, 1999

Answers

Or by a thousand slashes.

Yes, BigDog, have a similar anecdote. Am assisiting a teacher with a Mac troubleshooting class. The admin has installed a new and improved computer system, that had all the sign-up information completely messed up. All the adult class students were commenting that the new system is easier than the old but all their data is wrong.

Someone will be tearing some hair out.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), June 23, 1999.


Thanks to both of you. Real life experiences are of big concern to folks like me, who are no longer in the work force. I rely heavily on just such information. Death by a thousand paper cuts comes to mind for me, Diane. LOL

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), June 23, 1999.

My company recently installed a compliant Oracle system. Since then, they have had to generate all invoices manually, with a shipping backlog as a result. It's been over a month now, and invoices still can't be generated by the new system. There are many other problems as well, but this is the one I'm most aware of.

-- regular (zzz@z.z), June 23, 1999.

Regular: is it just a printing problem, or does the invoice generation process not work?

Are you recording A/R at all? Aging it? What about A/P? Can you print invoices?

Methinks you have a suit on your hands.... what you describe is definitely production-stopping, and not what one expects within an "automated" system.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), June 23, 1999.


I don't work in accounting, so I can't answer all of your questions. The new system cannot generate PO Numbers and/or invoices. That is the extent of my knowledge about it. I will try to ask those more "in the know".

-- regular (zzz@z.z), June 23, 1999.


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