I was born in 2000. I’ve always heard that Y2K was just dramatics and paranoia, but I’ve also read that it was justified and it was handled by endless hours of fixing the programming. So, which is it? Was it people being paranoid for no reason, or was there some justification for their paranoia? Would the world really have collapsed if they didn’t fix it?
In: Technology
I worked Y2K for a major bank for about 2years.
It was never going to be the end of the world, but it could have really, really sucked. The financial system would have been fucked for at least a week or two, cleaning up for months, and it would have been years before it was *all* sorted out.
As it was, about 100 of us worked the “response center” that NYE, and booked about 5000 tickets. Most were minor – an entire series of voicemail systems rolled over to 12/32/1999, some nonessential software packages segfaulted, but a small percentage still required operational responses. Some card access systems expired all the cards issued or updated in December.
It was a non event because a whole bunch of people worked really, really hard to make sure it was.
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