Andrew Ho at Work
You are here: Andrew Ho > Work
When I work, it is usually in front of a computer, or discussing with others what will happen within a large system of computers. Right now, I'm working doing web backend architecture development, and also building general infrastructure for web services. I spend my days worrying about application servers, scalability, concurrency, failover, and replication.
My personal programming speciality is scalable, rapid, robust Perl programming, and my experience runs the gamut from architecting large scale systems, to slinging around XML, to shell scripting and systems administration. Read about why you should hire me, or read my résumé (available in many different formats) to find out more about me.
I have a few technical book recommendations you may find interesting.
Tellme Networks, Inc.
Right now, I am a senior staff engineer working for
Tellme Networks, Inc. Microsoft.
I joined Tellme in early 2000 doing
Scheme programming
that drove parts of the 1-800-555-TELL service, and,
since then, my role has been doing general software infrastructure
development.
Tellme develops cool phone and mobile search services and also helps businesses automate their telephony systems by outsourcing their infrastructure. We answer calls on our network and provide top-notch voice recognition technology and unmatched experience with designing voice user interfaces. For some dramatic, real-life examples of what we do, call AT&T Toll-Free Directory Assistance at 1-800-555-1212, or the Tellme voice portal at 1-800-555-TELL. Or, dial *8 or 411 on any AT&T Mobility phone. Our clients are everywhere—when you track a UPS or FedEx package on the phone, you're talking to us.
Here are some old photos of Tellme's office in Mountain View. Despite some recarpeting and lots of shuffling around, the office still looks pretty much like this.
The Tellme workspace has always been open—no offices, no cubicles, just an open space. This is the engineering side of the office.
This is the other side of the Tellme office, the side nearest to the entrance. That's Joe Ardent's home-built recumbant bicycle is in the foreground.
And Before...
When I first came out into the Bay Area, I was working for the consulting firm Taos, the Sys Admin Company. They are a consultant rental house with a fairly respectable track record, working out of Santa Clara with extensions in San Francisco and Boston.
The first and last company I worked for under Taos was Talarian Corporation, a medium-sized middleware company in Los Altos, just miles away from my home. Talarian was a great place to work because the people were so great—and I still have friends there. In July 2000, they went public, but that turned out to be a bad time to do it, and the market thrashed them. In Q1 2002, Talarian was bought by Tibco. Chomp! Sigh.
This is a pretty bad picture of us, but here are Yoevita, Carrie, myself, and Ray (looking exceptionally slackerish, even for him, in this picture), at Talarian's big sales meeting in Palo Alto last year.
