Wai Hom
Then Now

Short Bio

I was at Wang from June 4, 1979 until July 6, 1991. After Wang, I worked at Imaging Automation from 1991-1997 on the "project that wouldn't die". It was a replacement Green card system for the INS.

From 1997 to 2000, I worked at OrderTrust.com in the Crosspoint Towers (aka Wang Towers). I worked on an e-commerce order system which handled backend operations for companies like FOOFOO.com, ActionAce.com, and Skymall.

Currently, I work at Philips Medical Systems in North Andover, MA. I'm still a software guy with the added responsiblity of project leading six hardware engineers and fighting with that MS Project Management software. I've been at Philips since Jan 2001.


Stories and Anecdotes

I never heard of Wang until I started as a college intern at the US Dept of Labor in DC back in 1974. At the site, I programmed the Wang 700 calculator and later the 2200 system (BASIC, 4K, cassette tape, and huge 5 MB drive).

As I was about to graduate from GWU in 1979, a contractor and former Wang employee Bill Kelsey recommended that I apply for a job at Wang. So I did. To my surprise, a lot of departments were interested in me - Pradeep Barthakur's vertical apps group, VS Languages group, SK Ho's printer group, and the OIS group. When I got to the OIS group, I interviewed with Rich Kasson, Art Glatt, Pat Squires, Jeff Leach, and Harold. The most memorable part of the interview was Art Glatt. He said "Wai, I think you should join our group because we're laid back people". Then he tossed some peanuts into his mouth. By the end of the day, I decided to join Rich Kasson's OIS BASIC group.

In Rich Kasson's group, I reported to Anne Drazen. I wrote horizontal applications in OIS BASIC. I worked on an application called List Processing (not to be confused with LISP language). According to Anne, my best project leader, we had sold 1000 copies of List Processing at $1000 each in the first three months!!!

As time went on, I was reorganized into Jeff Leach's WP group and then Amnon Waisman's Visual Memory Database group. When Amnon left, I reported to Rich again. When the "powers-to-be" decided to kill the OIS/Alliance product line, I was reorganized out of Dept 14 and into the PC WANG OFFICE group (Jeanne McCann and Rich Amico). My final assignment was doing WITA maintainence (Wang Info Transfer Architecture) in the INFOSHARER group with some of the original engineers (Al Martin, Mark Workman, Ray Tang, Patti Eagle).

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