Y2K experience unwanted in NZ

By Adam Gifford

A computer engineer with 25 years' experience working on IBM mainframes and other systems, has left New Zealand because he can't find work here fixing year-2000 bug problems.

Bryan White says he has been unemployed for four of the past six months. The work he has done, he accepted at a relatively low rate just to keep busy.

"I've been told I am over qualified," he says.

He is one of the people, he says, responsible for writing the code that created the century date-change problem in the 70s and 80s.

"I'm surprised they don't want people like me fixing it up," Mr White says.

He has been knocked back by some of New Zealand's largest corporates, and seen the work go to graduates fresh out of university.

"Companies are doing it for the least cost per hour rather than the least cost per project, so it will take longer and not be done as well," Mr White says.

He fixed one system for 5c cents per line of code. The usual estimate is about $1 a line.

"It's not a case of the work not being there to be done," he says.

"I have found code in so-called Y2K compliant systems will fall over or give wrong results.

"In one case the system would go from 1999 to 2001, because it used the same routine for years as for months.

"A lot of systems suppress zeros, so 2000 will display as a blank and the operators will think the year is not entered."

Mr White says the problem is with clients.

"They are seeing it as a minor, no-brain project. The directive has come from senior management to just put junior people on it."

While the number of lines of code to change may be small in New Zealand enterprises, compared with some of the overseas monoliths, working out how to change them is never simple.

If the people fixing or maintaining the systems are inexperienced, they can be putting in bugs rather than taking them out, he says.

"New Zealand has many IBM legacy sites, but we have an Inca civilisation mentality - we have all these systems which no one understands. They oil the wheels and it keeps ticking over," Mr White says.

"Most sites I have worked in, no one understands how the system does what is does, no one knows how to test it out."

Graduates may understand modern tools and how to create applications, but they don't know about older systems where dates may be character strings on which the programmer must do the mathematics.

"For the old stuff, you have to understand what is happening at the bottom of the machine. Even in Cobol there is a lot of Assembler - there's even Assembler in the date routines. I know, because I wrote some of it back then, which I know is going to fail."

Mr White says British firms are offering a minimum of $1500 a day for Y2K work, a sign of their greater understanding of the problem.

Ross Stewart from recruiters Wilson White, confirms that demand for experienced Y2K specialists is slower than expected and pay rates lower than forecast, leading people to try their chances overseas.