I remember hearing a story on NPR years ago years after Y2K with someone knowledgeable on the subject that addressed this question. He gave basically the same answer you did: a lot of effort went into avoiding disaster and a lot of people treated it after the fact as if it was hype or hysteria. I recall the interview because it changed my significantly thinking on the subject. (I wasn't in the industry at the time of Y2K.)

He also noted that a lot of American firms worked with Indian firms to resolve it. Indian engineers were well suited to the problem, according to him, because they had been exposed to a lot of the legacy systems involved during their studies.

He said an interesting consequence of this was that many American companies concluded they could use lower wage Indian engineers on other software projects so it helped initiate a wave of offshoring in the early 2000s.

I couldn't find the story I heard in the NPR archives, but they do have a number of stories reported right around that time if you want to see how it was being discussed and treated by NPR at the time:

https://www.npr.org/search?query=y2k&page=1

I did find this NPR interview with an Indian official from 2009 that notes Y2K's impact in US-Indian economic relations:

But I think the real turning point in many ways in the U.S. relations was Y2K, the 2000 - year 2000, Indian software engineers and computer engineers suddenly found themselves in the U.S. helping the U.S. in adjusting itself to the Y2K problem. And that opened a new chapter in our relations with a huge increase in services, trade and software and computer industry.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120738...