I only played a minor role in Y2K. I did one small, explict fix for a metal buildings company in Houston, but in the years before that - yes, people were working on Y2K for *years* before the event - I worked for a database tools company and one of things I wrote was code to help people convert date fields in their databases to be Y2K compliant, so in that I indirectly helped a lot of people I imagine.
It boggles my mind to see people who think Y2K was a joke.