Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums - Mirror

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Category: 

Too_Late

Date: 

1997-06-24 00:00:00

Subject: 

One Company Must Hire 10,000 Programmers

Comment: 

This posting tells it all: a rise in cost estimates from $150m to $600m for just one firm. This will require hiring an additional 10,000 programmers (one year at $60,000/year; two years at $30,000/year).

All the happy-face stories that the PR departments send to the press have to be understood as just that: public relations. What you need to know is this: When did the repair begin? How many lines of code must be surveyed? What stage is the company in: assessment, correcting code, or testing? What is the budget allocated to fix the problem? How many programmers are working exclusively on y2k? This will tell you if the projected deadline for testing the repairs are real or just PR fluff.

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From: "Stapleton, Doug" Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 17:57:16 +1000

The experience of British Telecom is typical of the reaction as companies have progressed through the early phases of their year 2000 assessment. Initial estimates have risen from Sterling 100 million to 200 million and are currently at about 400 million pounds. Have you tried translating that back into people? That is a workforce of somewhere around 10,000 dedicated just to solving the Y2K problem for one company. The great generals of history fielded armies in the tens of thousands after considerable preparation.

Notice how a mythical schedule is being promoted... Do your inventory and assessment in 1997, repair the damage in 1998 and mop up and cope with any late testing in 1999. Look at the size of your project teams now, how long would it take to recruit train and focus a team/army of 10,000 people (and provide office space?). This is a project management nightmare of gargantuan proportions. Apart from the sheer numbers to recruit, we will apparently all be able to go out to the market and resource these additional teams, all together in 1998 ???


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