The "Year 2000" (or Y2K) software crisis is undoubtedly a major The total cost for mainframe computer users in Ireland has been estimated at anything from £200 million to £500 million, but for Y2K-savvy programmers the Y2K problem is also big business.
"We're seeing a lot of demand for staff qualified in this area," says Denise Early of the Marlborough Group, one of Ireland's largest recruitment agencies. "It's taken a while, but firms do finally seem to be reacting to the problem."
And satisfying that demand is posing problems. For smaller firms using generic software (such as Microsoft Office), the stock answer is to upgrade to the newer "Y2Kcompliant" versions. Much of the demand for programmers comes from larger financial institutions still using older mainframe systems. Most of these systems are custom designed, and are often so important to the day-to-day running of the business that they cannot be shut down.
The skills needed to re-engineer these systems are also very old. For some developers, especially older ones, this has been a boon. Skills which just a few short years ago made them prime candidates for retraining are now placing them in high demand. An extreme example of this is the case of several major European banks, which have taken to hiring the original designers of their systems out of retirement. As demand grows, however, the need to introduce new talent into the equation becomes more urgent. Unfortunately that's not proving simple. "No one anticipated the present demand for COBOL," says Ian Bewick, managing director with Skillbase International. COBOL was formerly one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Nowadays, however, many people are afraid to invest time in skills that may again become obsolete soon after the year 2000. One tactic is to offer applicants opportunities to retrain in other areas. But Bewick says the problem won't go away that quickly. "The likelihood is that Y2K work won't end on January 1st, 2001. There'll be clean-up work to do for a while after the millennium arrives."
This, coupled with the relatively high salaries offered for Y2K work, is beginning to attract younger talent. In many cases, too, firms are finding the need to prepare for the year 2000 gives an opportunity to upgrade systems that previously were too important to shut down, and to perform some much needed modernisation too.