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Getting your piece of the trillion-dollar bonanza
by Amara D. Angelica
With Y2K-Day now at T-minus 16 months, corporations and government agencies are beginning to take more seriously the risk that critical systems could fail on 1/1/2000—and that’s creating a burst of lucrative job opportunities.
Consider these statistics:
•Y2K author and consultant William Ulrich, speaking at the recent Brainstorm Group Year 2000 National Symposium in San Francisco, quoted a study by Triaxsys Research LLC (www.triaxsys.com): "For tune 250 companies are progressing at the rate of just 1 percent fixes per month. At this rate, they will be 46 percent into their Y2K projects by the year 2000."
•A recent Cap Gemini America LLC (www.capgem.com) survey of IT managers also found firms falling behind schedule. Furthest behind: health, transportation and utility industries. The study reports that most of the year 2000 work won’t be performed until 1999—the start of the Y2K crisis management phase, as Ulrich calls it.
•Six of seven Fortune 500 firms have now launched a "full-fledged strategy" to deal with year 2000 issues, up from 20 percent seven months ago, Cap Gemini America says.
•A recent Gartner Group study of 15,000 companies in 87 countries reports half of all organizations worldwide don’t plan to test their computer systems for Y2K problems, which could pose a threat to U.S. corporations.
•The Gartner Group now predicts worldwide Y2K software renovation costs will be "probably well over a trillion dollars," a sizable jump from their widely quoted $600 billion figure.
So what piece of that trillion do you want?
The COBOL myth
According to Ian Hayes, co-author of The Year 2000 Software Crisis book series and president of Clarity Consulting Inc., "There is no exact number for how many year 2000 professionals are needed. Literally hundreds of thousands of people are working on the problem, at least part time. Based on Triaxsys research, we project that the Fortune 250 companies alone are going to need at least an additional 13,000 consultants over the next 18 months.
"Hiring is occurring anywhere there are large companies. The Northeast and California are two big players. But anywhere there is a hub of commerce, you’ll find increased hiring trends."
What kinds of positions are being created? For starters, the demand for COBOL programmers has been vastly exaggerated. As the CEO of one large Silicon Valley recruiting firm told TechWeek, "There’s not much Y2K work in Silicon Valley because Y2K work is mostly COBOL on mainframes, and Silicon Valley companies use more advanced technology."
In fact, no more than a third of the software needing Y2K repairs is written in COBOL, says Y2K authority and former IBM Corp. research scientist T. Capers Jones in The Year 2000 Software Problem (Addison Wesley Longman, 1998). "Following COBOL are the C and C++ languages and Assembly language" (10 percent each), followed by almost 500 other languages (listed in the book)—most with "no tools, few trained programmers and little or no support for finding and fixing the year 2000 problem."
"Skills are needed in virtually all languages, operating environments and platforms," says Hayes. "Especially desirable are skills in more obscure languages such as assembly language, Mark IV and some of the other 4GLs."
Ann Coffou, managing director of Giga Information Group (www.gigaweb.com) says other Y2K-related languages that are hot now include C++, Java, PL/1 and Visual Basic. Believe it or not, "People are still writing programs right now that are non-compliant because compliance is not in the spec," she says.
Rob DiFelice, director of contract services for the San Jose-based Heuristics Search Inc. recruitment firm, says smaller companies and start-ups are also requesting help with desktops and networks. He’s surprised by the amount of Y2K work in the Bay Area and on the East Coast. "Fifty percent of the 100 employment positions we’re requested to fill each month are Y2K-related," he says. Positions include software development, software quality assurance, object-oriented design, QA testing of legacy code and systems integration.
Heuristics Search lists these positions on its Web site (www.heuristicsearch.com), but unfortunately not under a "Y2K" key word. Says DiFelice: "On the contract side, 85 percent of the 20 projects a month are related to Y2K. Many of the firms are using object-oriented programming, so COBOL people are also picking up new software development technologies. Other needed languages include assembler and C. Testing is as big a category as remediation for both contractors and employees."
Hayes agrees: "Most of the opportunities over the next year and a half will be in testing. Current two big demands are for testers and project managers."
Master the tools
For efficiency, Y2K projects rely largely on software automation. According to Hayes and Ulrich in The Year 2000 Software Crisis: Challenge of the Century, Y2K tools fall into six categories: management (such as project management), repository technology (modeling of the organization’s systems), analysis (such as data flow), migration (including fixing date fields), redevelopment (improving the quality of fixed code) and testing/verification. The book lists tool vendors and selection criteria (for example, watch out for cure-all "silver bullet" hype, it warns). Also see the Year 2000 site (www.year2000.com) for an updated list of tool vendors.
If you want to go for the big bucks, you’ll aim for a project manager position. Check out Think 2000 software from Monterey-based Thinking Tools Inc. (www.thinkingtools.com). A spinoff of Maxis Inc.’s popular simulation software games, Think 2000 lets you simulate an entire organization, presenting a huge visual map showing detailed interdependencies between business functions and resources. A simulator screen also shows the effects, week by week, on sales and profits (and other bottom-line measures) of alternate "what if" scenarios. And it shows what "breaks" as a result of Y2K disruptions and which mitigation and triage plans actually work (without waiting until Jan. 1, 2000).
Cashing in on Y2K
OK, let’s get down to brass tacks: How much can you make?
"Salaries and bonuses for year 2000 work are really all over the place," says Hayes. "There has been some backlash building on the high salaries paid to IT workers, but the trade press reports increases in salaries across the board. There are some COBOL programmers that are making well over $100,000 per year. Some companies are reputed to be paying bonuses to year 2000 workers of up to 40 percent of base salary. Some project managers are receiving $200,000-plus per year. Senior testers can also make over $100,000 per year."
DiFelice says Heuristics is seeing Y2K programmer salaries reach $75,000 annually—or $75/hour for contract work. For high-demand technologies such as data security, senior quality assurance and project management, Y2K specialists are making up to $300,000 per year, or $150/hour, he reports.
In addition to factors such as skills, company size, geographic region, and expertise, salaries depend largely on the type of organization. In The Year 2000 Software Crisis: The Continuing Challenge, Ulrich and Hayes list five project strategies to implement the Y2K remediation effort, each offering different job opportunities and requirements:
•"Do it yourself" relies on internal resources and works at organizations that have a sufficient number of trained IT individuals. An advantage to you is job security. A disadvantage: Many Y2K tasks are repetitive and boring. Some companies are dealing with that by cross-training staff in various specialties and rotating assignments.
•Supplemental staff are contract programmers who fill in gaps in internal staffing. An advantage is higher per-hour fees; a disadvantage is lack of job security.
•Project consultants assume all responsibility for a project and are most valuable where internal skills are low to moderate and fast results are required. These consulting firms offer the highest pay, but also demand the highest level of expertise. Examples of Y2K consulting firms are Keane Inc. (www.keane.com), Gartner Group Inc. (www.gartner.com), Electronic Data Systems Corp. (www.eds.com) and Cap Gemini America, whose TransMillennium Services Group (www.careerpark.com/employer/capmain.html) has opportunities for technical solution architects, project managers, team leaders, renovation engineers and programmer analysts with strong COBOL and assembler experience on IBM MVS mainframes. See appendix A in The Year 2000 Software Crisis: The Continuing Challenge for a more complete list of firms.
•Software factories are internal or external operations that use assembly-line-style production. These offer a low cost per line of code and can handle high volumes for specific languages and programming styles. These jobs tend to be boring, but they do offer a starting point for entry-level Y2K remediation jobs.
•Offshore services are consulting companies with fully staffed facilities in countries with low-cost labor, such as India. This approach is appropriate for uncommon technologies that have to be processed manually in large volumes. Unless you’re already living in a third-world country, this may not be an attractive option.
"Job growth is primarily in consulting companies," says Hayes. "Many large companies are hesitant to hire additional skills solely for year 2000 work, fearing that they’ll have to lay people off after the year 2000. Consulting firms are looking for their year 2000 work to build long-term relationships with clients. They need bodies and they think they can use them longer term." But there are still large companies looking for year 2000 resources, he adds.
Y2K work is considered a risky career move by some because of fears of being booted out the door on Jan. 3, 2000. However, Y2K work gives you an intimate understanding of a customer’s information systems and their problems—a far better position than for most programmers, who are often limited to working on a few systems.
And with Y2K projects falling way behind and the need for cleanup management, most Y2K projects will not end on Jan. 1, 2000, says Hayes. Furthermore, the backlog of other work postponed by Y2K will create additional opportunities for Y2K specialists, demonstrating once again that one person’s missed deadline is another’s job security.
Y2K job-hunting tips
You’ve decided what kind of firm you want to target. Now, how do you find them?
Online Y2K job listings are rather sparse. Monster Board (www.monster.com) and America’s Job Bank (www.ajb.dni.us), assembled by the U.S. Dept. of Labor, do not have very impressive Y2K coverage. A search of Monster Board for Y2K jobs in the Bay Area returned just seven hits; America’s Job Bank listed nine.
Dice (www.dice.com) is a better bet, with more than 61,000 total listings. A search for "Y2K" or "Year 2000" for Northern California returned 890 hits.
Other suggestions:
•Search newsgroups such as comp.software.year-2000. The fastest way to do that is via a Dejanews (www.dejanews.com) power search for "Y2K & jobs."
•Post your résumé online, such as on Dice and America’s Job Bank, where a search for California Y2K programmers resulted in 454 résumés.
•DiFelice recommends you list yourself with at least three contract services.
•Join the SF-2000 User Group, which sponsors monthly Bay Area meetings featuring leading Y2K experts and is a good opportunity to network. Contact Anthony M. Peeters (amp@sfconsult.com).
•Monitor www.year2000.com for the latest Y2K news and job listings, which are limited.
•Y2K beginners should read Edward Yourdon’s best-selling Time Bomb 2000 (Prentice Hall, 1998) for a readable introduction and overview. Professionals looking for rigorous programming and project management methodologies along with step-by-step strategic plans should read The Year 2000 Software Crisis: Challenge of the Century and its sequel, The Year 2000 Software Crisis: The Continuing Challenge (by Ian Hayes and William Ulrich and published by Prentice Hall PTR).
•Get training in the most-requested programming languages such as COBOL and assembly language. Says Hayes: "My Raleigh, North Carolina, taxi driver was reading Teach Yourself Cobol in 21 Days [by Mo Budlong, Sams, Oct. 1997, Second Edition, which also covers the year 2000 problem]. Don’t laugh—he may be working on one of your projects."
•Prepare for post-Y2K assignments by staying current with the latest technologies and tuning in to company needs and problems.
•The Office of Personnel Management recently announced a waiver that allows federal agencies to rehire federal retirees without the reduction in salary or retirement benefits formerly mandated by law. It recommends posting your résumé on America’s Talent Bank (www.ajb.dni.us) and checking out the OPM’s USAJOBS bulletin board at www.usajobs.opm.gov. (The IRS is authorized to pay signing bonuses of up to $20,000 for Y2K recruits.)
Lastly, prepare yourself with questions to ask prospective employers, such as: Do you hire entry-level as well as experienced professionals? What are your hiring bonuses? What about financial incentives to stay with the company until January 2000? What tools and methodologies do you use? Do you offer training in modern languages, such as C++ and Java? How about flexible work schedules? What are my opportunities for advancement and involvement in cutting-edge technologies? And most important: What are your post-Y2K IT plans and how will you leverage what’s been learned?
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Estimating Y2K software
The software industry has an abysmal record of slipped schedules and cost overruns. With their fixed deadline, multimillion-dollar Y2K mitigation projects—the most complex in history—push the envelope of uncertainty and disaster.
Estimating Software Costs, just released from McGraw-Hill, should help. Written by T. Capers Jones, the pioneer and leading authority in the field, this 724-page book is the definitive encyclopedic reference and a must-read for every Y2K and IT project manager. It covers all aspects of the problem, including commercial software tools, handling excessive schedule pressure, international factors and contractual and legal concerns. Jones’ lucid writing style makes this otherwise leaden subject come alive.
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Winners and losers
At Brainstorm Group’s recent Year 2000 National Symposium in San Francisco, Y2K consultant Ian Hayes made the following predictions of winners and losers in the Y2K game.
Winners:
1. Lawyers (a lot of money for a long time).
2. Outsourcers. CEOs will see that Y2K is not the core competence of IT departments. They’ll demand guaranteed service levels and guarantees of testing. There will be a huge increase in outsourcing.
3. Software vendors offering auditing, testing and other quality assurance or control tools.
4. The developers of the first solid methodology and tool set that will be required to ensure bug-free software.
5. The public (in the long term). We’ll see better software and PCs that don’t crash several times a day.
Losers:
1. IT professionals (short term). They’ll have a black eye. There will be a big drop in people wanting to get into the field.
2. Companies with large bases of old uncertified software. It will be hard to get clunky old systems to be certified, as opposed to error-free software created with new paradigms.
3. Tool vendors with old paradigms.
4. Those who program for fun. Liability will affect everybody.
5. Al Gore, who starts campaigning at the end of 1999—just in time for the anxiety over Y2K to peak.