Y2K scare

That’s an interesting question for someone that works with technology, like me… I would say that technology didn’t exactly changed my job, but that my job changed along with technology. I have already mentioned how the internet was the most important invention of my lifetime. Additionally, I have described my first computer and explored the evolution of the personal computer. Today I will touch on one of worst world crisis related to technology. This event shaped the jobs of millions of people after it, including mine. It entered to history as the Y2K scare.

The Millennium Bug or Y2K scare

In November 1998 I was hired to work in a telecommunications company at the IT department. As we moved to 1999, the fear became palpable. There was a threat to everyone’s job in the company. The stakeholders and clients also faced uncertainty. This situation affected revenue, which is never good. But there was the possibility of apocalyptic chaos as well. That was known as the Millennium Bug, or Y2K scare. In short, till that date computer systems used to store the year with two digits, like 99, instead of 1999. The fear was that on January 1st, 2000, a Saturday, those systems would interpret the date as January 1st, 1900. That day was a Monday. There was widespread panic. People thought everything depending on technology would inevitably break. Concerns ranged from trying to withdraw money from your banking account and not being able to, to airplanes falling from the sky.

Cover of the Time magazine from January 18, 1999

Uncountable events

To remediate this, I participated in several committees and innumerable meetings. We made plans which as a first step implicated in applying patches, or upgrades, to all systems in the company. When I say all, I mean all. We listed everything, each little part in the corporate machinery. And in all information technology levels. These included operating systems, databases, programming languages, vendor systems, BIOS firmware, etc.

Second, we created Quality Assurance environments where we simulated moving the date to the first year of the millennium. Then someone thought that this wasn’t enough. We shouldn’t simply change the date. We needed to let the system initially think that it was December 31st, 1999. It would then naturally advance to the next day. Then that wasn’t enough either. We shouldn’t test the systems in isolation. We should do a companywide test with all systems in tandem. That was done twice. Boy, that was a stressful year!

A Best Buy sticker from 1999 recommending that their customers turn off their computers ahead of midnight

The New Year’s Eve

Needless to say, I didn’t pass that particular New Years’ Eve with my family or friends. We all passed it at the company, we needed to assure that all systems moved correctly to the new date. There was a checklist for that, and every department needed to give their sign off. The bright side was that the company prepared a rather symbolic supper for the employees and we had some fun. And also we were relieved that no major issue occurred. Crisis averted!