Meet Andrew-A Senior Development Lead on the Bing Experimentation Platform By Amanda Papp

You might use Bing for a variety of reasons. Need to search
for a recipe, or need to check out a map? How about making flight arrangements,
make dinner reservations, or better yet, want to scroll through images to get
ideas for redecorating your family room? No doubt Bing is starting to become a
household name when one turns to the internet to make a decision and make it
fast. The Bing team is made up of several individuals who grew up loving
computers and figuring out how to make things work better and faster.  I
would like for you to meet Andrew Hesky, Senior Development Lead at Bing.
Andrew’s love for computers started at the tender age of 3. Read Andrew’s story
to learn more about his team, what they do and how he became interested in
technology.

My name is Andrew Hesky and I am a Senior Development Lead on
the Bing Experimentation Platform.  We have about 10 developers working on
the platform that allows teams within Bing to quickly evaluate new features by
showing them to real users in a controlled experiment (also known as an A/B
experiment).  While running experiments, we collect petabytes of data from
user interaction logs, web documents, user feedback, and many other sources,
and then analyze that data to see which features Bing users really want. 
The platform we are building encourages faster launches, which will in turn
result in faster failures of bad ideas and better understanding of good ideas.

I have always been interested in computers.  When I was
about three years old, my uncle showed me my first computer and a video game
called “Dark Castle”.  I was hooked immediately and I spent the rest of
that vacation playing video games.  I think the first time that I got much
deeper was around twelve years old when I started to write a few programs on my
TI-82 calculator and I built my first computer from the motherboard up.

The best part about working in Bing is the people I get to work
with on a daily basis.  At Bing we have some of the smartest and most
dedicated people in the world.  Instead of basing decisions on the HiPPO
(Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), we have a culture of data driven decisions.
Anyone at any level can make a proposal which will have an impact on the course
of the business as long as he or she has data to back up the proposal.

Outside of work, one of my favorite things to do is to go
snowboarding.  We have some great mountains close to Seattle that I head
up to for day trips and Whistler is within driving distance for weekend trips.