CIA Focuses on Y2K
Problems in Former Soviet
Union
By Michael J. Martinez
ABCNEWS.com
Jan. 29, 1999


Excerpt


Most Russian programmers are trained in COBOL, an outmoded programming
language. And they're finding themselves in demand from Western
companies trying to upgrade older computer systems. The result: Russian
programmers have either headed overseas for work or signed on with
Western companies in Russia. The Russian government can't compete with
Western wages. "We recently recruited a talented young man, a developer,
who just got his H-1 visa to work in the United States," says Igor
Yasno, a Kiev native who now works as Y2K project manager for Diamond
Optimum Systems in Los Angeles. "In Russia, he hadn't even been paid
in months."


As a consequence, companies like Diamond Optimum Systems have welcomed
some of Russia's top scientists, many of them veterans of the Soviet
research complex in Novosibirsk, Siberia, who are willing to come to the
United States for jobs that pay only $19 per hour -- far less than the
high-tech industry average.