Dear Dennis:
I find myself in the position - analogous to asking a lawyer for advice.
Your answer is the advice and it has been thoughtful and complete. I thank
you. I have followed most of the sites your recommended and yes there are a
considerable number of Y2K jobs posted and your explanations are certainly
rational and possibly true. Why then do I still feel the unease with the
answer? A metaphor comes to mind.
Assume you own your house. Your budget is tight but you are making all your
payments. The roof starts leaking. Estimates indicate that you need to
spend $5000 to get it repaired. You do. In one week, your roof does not
leak. However your finances now have to carry a $300 a month payment for
two years with strains your budget and causes you to defer trading in your
old car and taking a vacation. This week you had a good roof, next week you
have a good roof - however, in the meantime, your lifestyle has been
inadvertently challenged for no noticeable gain. Roofers have gained some
income and automobile manufacturers, airlines, hotels and a foreign country
have lost revenue.
Y2K is similar. One year, we had a perfectly good computer system. Year
2000 comes and we have spent a trillion dollars and hopefully, we have a
perfectly good computer system. However, someone - the taxpayer, the
shareholder, the Company, the Utility, the airline is now carrying a debt
that inhibits there options over the future.
So, not only am I not satisfied with the estimates of shortages of roofer's,
I am very concerned about all the cost and it's effects on the economy -
even if everything is made Y2K complaint. However, what if the roof
continues leaking and the roofer says, it is not his fault, it is the big
windstorm that happened a week later that is the cause of the new leak.
Now, you are out $300 per month and you still have a leaking roof, caused by
external factors outside your contract. Do you take your Contractor to
Court? Do you spend another $5000? Do you put a bucket on the floor for
the next two years?
These are the kinds of questions that Y2K is going to force us to answer,
for even those who have spent the money are susceptible to external
problems. How resilient is business, utilities, transportation and
government in regards to financing this problem and what if all the money
poured in only provides a partial solution - is there more money in the
kitty?
A number of writers have made the point that we can expect problems to
continue for a number of years after the crisis point - how resilient is our
economy going to be in this time of turmoil?
I would appreciate a second opinion re labour and costs both before and
after the Y2K date.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
>Hi Thomas,
>
>
>>Dear Dennis:
>>
>>Thanks for the website. I went over and glanced through a few of the
>>listing - now note, I am not looking for a job, I am just trying to
satisfy
>>my curiosity about the incongruency of the continuing call for massive
>>amounts of money - up to trillion dollars and the dearth of demand from
the
>>labour market. I will take your assessment of 620 jobs, but what I
>>noticed when I read some of the requirements, was that some were for out
of
>>the country and some seemed to be extremely short contract jobs. Anyway,
>>620 hardly constitute a demand. I did a search for Technical Writers at
the
>>same site and came up with 3338 vacancies.
>>
>>I appreciate your effort but I'm still not satisfied. To use up a billion
>>or a trillion dollars, I would expect to see a demand that dwarfed all
other
>>job categories and was funneling major groups of students, retired workers
>>and quickie trained workers into jobs and I am not finding that and I
don't
>>know why. Either there is no work being done, or their is no need for the
>>work to be done, or everyone is so busy planning that no one is doing or
the
>>whole damn thing is the biggest hoax ever played on the public.
>>
>>Respectfully,
>>
>>Thomas Lunde
>>
>
>First, it is pretty late for people to be just starting on solving this
>problem. I strongly suggest that most such work is in progress and thus
>doesn't necessarily show up on the job market.
>
>Second, the DICE board turns over every few weeks, so the demand is
>probably continuing.
>
>Third, fixing y2k code takes a considerable amount of experience. It is not
>something that I would want a recent grad or 'quickly trained' programmer
>to try to fix. It is SO EASY to fix one problem and create a few new ones.
>The code is written in languages, in many cases, that are not being taught
>in colleges anymore. Further, there are not many programmers that would
even
>want to work on this kind of one-shot problem unless they have nothing
better
>to do, as this is not a career building skill.
>
>It is ideally suited to older, semi-retired programmers who would like to
>extend their working years another year or two.
>
>Whether this is the group who are filling this need, I don't know. After
all,
>there were not so many programmers 10 to 20 years ago as there are now.
Many
>of them are in to the newer skills like Java and other web based tasks. So
>it may be that those willing to take on these tasks are being very well
paid
>and are working long and hard.
>
>If you qualify for this type of work, I don't think you would have a
problem
>finding employment.
>
>BTW, I am in my early 60s myself, a recent victim of a Lockheed owned
company
>that has closed its doors, and might be able to do work like that, but I
have
>no interest in it. I'd much rather try to find work building new things
>rather than fixing old ones.
>
>If you were REALLY curious, it would be interesting to track the DICE job
>board and see how quickly those Y2K jobs are removed, supposedly because
>they are filled. You might track just the Canadian ones to make the job a
>little easier. Don't get in the trap of drawing conclusions from a small
>data set. Take a few hours and analyse at least a few hundred requests.
>Where are these jobs? How long? What industries? What size companies?
>
>I expect that most large companies are near completion of their analysis
and
>fix-it phase and are now in their testing phase, which requires a different
>skill set. The smaller companies, in many cases will be replacing software
>rather than trying to fix it and this, too, requires a different skill set
>and probably does not show up anywhere as a Y2K cost when, in fact, it is.
>
>I've heard tell that many less sophisticated counties have yet to make a
>serious effort and may be in the worst shape.
>
>..................... dennis
