The Millennium Bug will eventually be eradicated, and when it is, thousands of legacy programmers who have been fixing Y2K-vulnerable systems could be out of a job.
"These people will need to re-skill and re-position themselves if they are to guarantee future employment and mobility," says Bryan Hattingh, MD of the Bryan Hattingh Group (BHG), the IT human resource specialist company in the JSE-listed AdVsource Group.
Hattingh, himself a programmer in the late `70s, explains the roots of the Y2K bug against the backdrop of an era when 128k of memory was considered substantial.
"We programmed on a Siemens 4004 single partition mainframe with 128k of memory which did all the processing for more than 50 companies, working 24 hours a day, and processing all application development work. We used a two-digit year date field to conserve memory. As developers we couldn`t have imagined our programs would still be running 20 years later."
As the Y2K issue came to the fore over the last five years, there was a global resurgence of demand for Cobol programmers. Simultaneously, there was a parallel demand for Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers (MCSEs), as large corporates had to ensure their thousands of PCs were Y2K-compliant.
With the Y2K challenge having been resolved or close to resolution, many organisations can now contemplate change that would have been difficult or impossible before. "These organisations have been able to take a long, hard look at their IT and use the chance to strategise and define new systems, processes and procedures. This creates an opportunity for programmers, but only if they acquire new skills.
"While their Y2K skills should continue to be in demand for the next two to three years, programmers cannot afford to be complacent," says Hattingh.
"The entire method of doing business is changing throughout the world. The drive to compress the value chain means the only way to add value to the loop now is through people and their level of service delivery. The demand for faster product development and take-to-market affects everyone, including programmers."
In addition, programmers now need to be more than mere propeller heads. It`s the age of the super-user: Programmers who understand business and can see how systems can influence, impact and enable business. Human capital is going to be central and strategic in this equation. Product lifecycles are shortening at a prolific rate. Time to market is shorter, as is the time to acquire new skills.
"A shortfall of a million IT-skilled people is predicted for the middle of 2000 in Europe alone. The demand will largely be for leading-, almost bleeding-edge, skills and there is little time to acquire such skills."
Hattingh`s advice to Y2K programmers is to learn as much as possible about the business as they can, to ensure their marketability post-Y2K. The best starting point is the systems on which the business is run.
"They must look at ways in which the business is affected by these systems and at areas of improvement."
Some of tomorrow`s hot skills are in the areas of object technology, component-based architectures and interactive rapid application development. Java, C++, SmallTalk and visual programming languages are key areas of need. Programmers must know where mainstream enterprise systems development is moving, keeping themselves in touch with industry research. They need to speak to reputable resourcing consultants to secure objective and qualified input.
"Career management is becoming critical and people who take the time to do this will reap the benefits. This in turn creates an opportunity for the emergence of professional career managers to guide IT professionals into the next century," concludes Hattingh.
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