Remembering the Millennium Bug: 25 Years Since Y2K

I started my career 26 years ago. The first year of my career was dedicated to preparing companies to cross the threshold from 1999 to the year 2000 without any glitches. Now that we've reached 25th anniversary of that event, I’d like to pause and reflect on what it was like.

Demand

1999 was a great year to get into the technology field. Every company on the planet took inventory of their systems and realized that they needed to make some significant investments to transition the millennium turnover gracefully. That wasn’t just good for the technology-makers, but for those of us who made a living by implementing systems.

There was a shortage of talent in the marketplace like never before, and never since. That was great for me. I had some education, some certifications, but no professional experience. In any other time, it may have been tough for me to get a start. In January 1999, I had no problem at all finding work.

The Great Tech Refresh of ‘99

Every company I’ve worked for has had a difficult time eliminating technical debt and decommissioning legacy systems. It’s just hard to do. With limited time and limited resources, these activities get jumbled in amongst other priorities. Sometimes they happen and sometimes they wait.

In 1999, every company eliminated their legacy technology portfolios and drove out the technical debt. They had to. Y2K was an existential threat and the deadline wasn’t moving, no matter what. For the first time, and the last time, companies around the globe got a nice clean slate of modern technology and did away with the old stuff.

Worldwide, $308 Billion was spent on Y2K remediation, and I got to be a part it.

Hawaiian shirt day

Rather than the typical business casual attire, my first tech job issued me a Hawaiian shirt as a work uniform, with a flair button on it that read “Count the days: Y2K.” I was living the scenes from the movie, Office Space, in real-time.

The reason was clear: The Y2K bug was scary and stressful. The Y2K remediation squad needed a relaxed presence so we could give our nervous business clients the care-free feeling of a tropical vacation.

I’m not making this up.

Tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1999

On the weekend of the grand event, I took a shift in the “Y2K Command Center.” I want every one of my readers that can say “me too” to give me a shout in the comments section.

We had custom “Y2K Command Center” apparel. Our snacks were delivered alongside napkins with “Y2K Command Center” embossed on them. I guess we hadn’t quite spent all of the budget on tech and labor, so we wrapped up the project with style.

We were poised, ready for anything…

We waited in anticipation…???????????????????????????

And then…

Pretty much nothing happened.

If I remember correctly, we had one voicemail system in one of our remote offices go kaput, but everything else hummed along nicely as it should.

What happened?

On one hand, I was a little disappointed. I’ve watched plenty of disaster movies, so my imagination was very capable of playing out an elaborate Armageddon-style global technology meltdown. The real thing was anti-climactic to say the least.

On the other hand, I was proud. We worked really hard to eliminate the risk and remediate the root cause of the problem. We were well-funded, well-organized, and well-skilled for the task. We got it done.

The best-case scenario for any technology go-live is “crickets” and Y2K was just that. Congratulations, technology industry. We nailed it!

To this day, many believe that Y2K was a joke and a waste of money. As someone on the ground, I believe it was a disaster averted. Yes, it was hyped-up by the media beyond belief, but there was a real technical problem and there was real money and talent deployed to fix it.

An experience to remember

I’m glad I got to enter the technology profession in 1999. If I had started a year later, I would have missed the fun. This really was a one-of-a-kind event that had major implications for years to follow.

What are your Y2K stories? Please share them in the comments below.

This article was adapted from a post on zachonleadership.com on December 27, 2019.