Now that December 31, 1999 is only a couple of days away, can any of you IT Professionals who have been working in the trenches (or friends/relatives of IT Professionals who have been told stories) tell us what you know about your company, your city/town etc. Whatever your status is now is probably what will be next week also, so can't you tell us what you think? Obviously, no one wants you to risk your job so don't tell us the name of your company but can't you at least let us know what you are seeing in your area? How about it?

-- carolyn (carolynnicks@msn.com), December 22, 1999

Answers

I work for a major Bank in Canada. I've been in the IT business since 1976 at IBM and at my current Bank. I've been an operator, analyst, systems programmer, technical manager and technical auditor of mainframe systems. So I guess I've got some experience. I've been working on Y2K for 3 years now. My Bank has been working on Y2K since late 1993 and in earnest since June 1995. We announced that we're 100% compliant in July for ALL applications and systems. Nevertheless, we're still preparing for unexpected system problems as well as infrastructure problems. We have contingency plans for all aspects of our business (HVAC, hydro, water, telecom, etc)and will have technical staff on-site around the clock from Dec.31 - Jan.4. We know we haven't found ALL the bugs - you never do in large systems - but are pretty confident that whatever turns up internally can be handled. Externally, is still an unknown despite the assurances from government and utilities. I've been able to verify our own testing but of course, no-one is disclosing their test results in any detail. The bottom line, based upon my years of experience, is that there will definitely be problems - most of which will not be made pulic - and hopefully not too many concurrently to overwhelm the support staff. I don't know if that's any reassurance for you, but I think it's worth while knowing that not all companies are in bad shape.

-- POITS (bwpoirier@sympatico.ca), December 22, 1999.

Why we're toast. Ok you haven't seen me much on this forum over the last year because I've been in the trenches. My list why we are we are toast is as follows.

1. In 1992-95 when corporate America could have had a shot at fixing the problem they made bad decision #1....Instead of going outside and hiring expert programmers they opted to go cheap and recruit within the ranks to do remediation. Not COBOL or FORTRAN professionals, just wannabe's (like me). 2. Budgets were cut every year, with important tasks put on the back burner. (We've got plenty of time) 3.IT managers want to hear and report only good news... if there is none the official mantra is "we are on track" 4.As late as last month, our off the shelf y2k compliant software was being downgraded to not compliant, not supported. 5.When the Federal Gov't could have made a difference, Bill was more concerned about "fine cigars". When he finally got that off his mind it was too late to save the country, so they went to plan two. That is promote the spin, believe the spin and then when all hell breaks loose, come in and try to be a hero. (Bill like anyone else in his current position will do anything to try and erase the black mark in the history books- I mean anything-not much he could do at this point would lower the annuals of his recorded history...Washington cut down a cherry tree and could not lie....Clinton was playing with cigars while the country was facing it's biggest threat since the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missle crisis. (ok enough bashing..on the positive side Clinton does seem to have compassion for those many would not like to think about}. 6. Most people (IT/IS included)didn't fully understand the full ramifications of what y2k compliance really meant or what level of staff was needed for a complete fix. The company CEO and SR staff didn't want to hear about the cost when it finally sunk in to the IT staff. 7.100% remediation was never possible. (The problem is simple, the fix improbable) 8.Many smaller companies have decided to fix on failure. (They're toast). That means that 7-25 million more people will be un-employed by Juy 2000. 9. We were never alowed to do end to end testing using live process scenarios. (to costly) 10. We were not allowed to get outside help for IV & V because the company was afraid of news getting out and proprietory processes.

I've got at least a few more but I think you get the idea.

ps Sorry for any mis-spells, I'm tired

-- Polly-Morphic Doomer (greenem31@aol.com), December 22, 1999.

Thanks for the question and the response, seems like it's going to be pretty close to as I anticipated. I'm not happy about this!!! Not looking forward to when the "sheeples" get the drift. Damn, Damn, Damn, wish someone one was to "blame". INSTEAD OF "EVERYONE" WHO KNEW AND KEPT THEIR MOUTHS SHUT FOR "POLITICALLY CORRECT" REASONS. May the "price they pay" be much less that I what I expect. After all, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

-- Michael (michaelteever@buffalo.com), December 22, 1999.

My wife runs the lab for one of the most successful medical practices in our city. Yesterday, she told me her office manager informed her that they just learned that their voice mail system was not Y2K compliant (their vendor lied to them) and that they were purchasing and installing a "new system" (not a remediated system, a whole new system) from a different company.

Although they have yet to begin work, they intend to have this new voice mail system installed and working before...January 1, 2000.

The practice my wife works for reported on a Statewide Government Survey a few months ago that they were 100% Y2K compliant and had contengency plans drawn up and had reviewed and trained the whole staff on these contengency plans. (The results, with updates, of this Statewide Survey is posted on the web.) Funny thing is, my wife has never seen or heard about any "contengency plans", ever!!!

Now, apply this to every corporation, to every city, to every government and every nation around the world, who has responded to a self-reporting survey. If this is typical of the type of responses, then indeed we are toast.

Consider all the water/sewer systems, chemical plants, nuclear waste facilities, defense department contractors, hospitals, power plants, gas and oil pipelines, service stations, etc...if enough of these facilities have "fudged" their self-reporting in order to paint a rosey picture, then it will indeed be TEOTWAWKI come January 1, 2000...just 10 days from now.

Prepare.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 22, 1999.

My employer is officially 100% compliant--but in the real world there is still known non-compliant software up and running. Do the bosses know? Who knows, but one thing is for sure. Nobody is stupid enough to tell them!

Murphy's Law is about to become the Law of the Land.

-- cgbg jr (cgbgjr@webtv.net), December 22, 1999.

Our software is 100% compliant, gaurented to work (when patches "properly" installed).

BUT

That says nothing about the clients underlying CPU or his operating system. I know we are going to get a lot of calls on 1-3-00. Our first question will be, "What kind of computer do you have?, click there, click there, read me the numbers."

"Sorry the problem is in your computer, didn't you get our message that 386's and 486's would not work?"

"Yes, but we could not afford new computers."

"Well you have to buy them now, sorry."

-- fixer (the truth@now.what), December 22, 1999.

I work in the support department of one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world. Our stuff runs the show, datawise, for scores of the Fortune 1000 companies and good size chunks of the government. I'm not a techie, but I handle service call dispatching and escalations so am in the loop. Could spend all night spewing all the ready? not ready! tidbits that I've collected from customers but won't, because they're showing up one way or the other in other posts on this board.

There are only two types of calls coming in at this late date and neither should be hard to guess:

There are the customers that thought they were compliant months ago, but just found out that they aren't now. Could be their own internal fault, as employees and consultants come and go and don't always leave clear tracks. Could be because we keep releasing more updates and patches. Some of these folks are righteously furious at having to do anything to their systems at this late a date, but getting screamed at by some big shot CIO actually makes me start to warm up inside, because, you know, they care. We rush them the upgrades or fixes and by now they'll have to apply them directly to their production system, since there's not much time to test. We'll see how it goes.

Then there are the accounts that are just now getting around to checking into the issue. Though most of these are the smaller businesses, I am appalled at how many governmental ops are pulling this as well. We'll send them the necessary software and instructions and then will be there to hold their hands, but there's no chance of them prepping to perform a major upgrade and test routine before rollover. We'll see how it goes.

Should point out that there are those that are not calling on y2k issues now. These are primarily the big boys--the major banks, finance, and insurance companies that starting fixing their systems far ahead of everyone else and consider themselves done now. There are several large IT departments that are under orders to make no changes at all until well after the rollover. We'll see how it goes.

We work in the same schzoid void that has been referred to repeatedly. Most of the developers, support staff, and management are quite certain that y2k will be a non-event, for our software/company at least, and at the same time our days have become completely dominated by preparing for it. A key point is that this is no longer a technical issue to our management but a legal one. The stance is that we have compliant software (ya ya I know...) that we've been practically begging our customers to upgrade to for the last year--hell, were giving it away at this point--and they are truly expecting only the customers that haven't upgraded to be calling in y2k issues after the rollover. Our prep meetings entail going over scripts the legal department has written for us to start parrotting at 1/1/00 00:01am, the gist being "You had your chances already and we'll give you another one now so don't dare try to blame us" and my favorite "You are NOT having a y2k problem, but you MAY be having a POTENTIAL y2k problem". There's a worry that we won't have enough lawyers available for spot consultations over the weekend.

We'll see how it goes...but no matter what happens, it's going to be strange.

-- Woofy (woofy@warpspeed.now), December 23, 1999.

Nuke power diagnostics and monitoring: testing was "Set the date to 1- Jan-2000 and 29-Feb-2000 and make sure the GUI still works." No rollover testing, no checking of the data. Why? Because we were contractors, and we were running late.

Phone switch: outstanding Y2K errors. We're not going to fix them. Why? Because it's only on some systems, and we're running late.

Spot the common theme? "It's too much time and money. Forget it."

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), December 23, 1999.

i was talking to one of the guys in my office who worked on some "surveys" done by the Government to determine the readiness of certain industry sectors (it would be too obvious if i named them). they asked questions but also looked at documentation. he was stunned when a FAIR NUMBER of the manufacturers said they had NO DOCUMENTATION FROM THIRD PARTY IV&V EFFORTS (same as Maine did) BECAUSE ALL REPORTING WAS DONE VERBALLY ONLY!!!!! SOUNDS LIKE SOME LAWYERS CAME UP WITH A PLAN TO LIMIT LIABILITY.

-- tt (cuddluppy@nowhere.com), December 23, 1999.