Just like a few thousand others from Chennai, I first landed in the “Land of opportunity” in 1999 from Chennai as a software programmer working on a “Year 2000 Project” for a client company in Colorado before moving into the National Capital area in the new millennium.
Its common knowledge that “Y2K problem” was a burning issue then though it was a simple computer systems problem that had a humungous potential to cause severe damage to governmental systems, businesses – small and large and in turn a catastrophe to the common people who lives were increasingly intertwined on connected IT Systems. Even before the mid-1999, almost all of the US businesses and government made their software and hardware Y2K compliant thereby averting any serious problem and making the rollover from 1999 to 2000 smoothly and joyfully.
In retrospect, what made a seemingly simple “2-digit to 4-digit” year format conversion in software programs to take a gigantic proportion affecting and later uniting almost everyone and how various groups banded together to solve it successfully leaves me wondering even now after almost 14 years.
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What lesson one can take from this successful rollover -- Extensive planning, successful execution and with an estimated 500+ billion in spending by businesses themselves making their own systems more efficient averting Y2K Catastrophe for the entire nation and the world in some way?
