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Praveen Mohan
Praveen Mohan

Praveen Mohan

Senior Manager, Java Platform Group

Oracle India

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Praveen Mohan is a member of:

Contribution to the field
Contributions to Java and JavaFX at Sun Microsystems and Contributions to Vertical Search Platform at Yahoo. Both Sun and Yahoo gave me lot of opportunities to evangelize the new technologies across various conferences and universities which I value a lot.
Working Life Management:
Yahoo culture allows people to work from home when needed as long as you are on track with what you do. I commit to work with office time in mind and estimate the work accordingly. I use evenings/weekends to explore new stuffs on the product. Occasional stretching is never a problem.
Prized Accomplishment(s):
While I was at Sun Microsystems, I got a chance to co-author a book on JavaFX - Beginning JavaFX from Apress (http://www.apress.com/9781430271994). This was very satisfying and helped me sharpen my writing skills. A good example of where a deep understanding of the product would take you.
Degrees That Matter:
No need of any certification.You need Deeper and thorough knowledge on the product to be tested, on par with developers, passion towards testing and finding bugs.Think unconventionally or out-of-the-box,Build a DB of all the errors people make,Overcome the trained incapacity and a mindset to explore
The Journey So Far:
I started my career(1999) with a small start-up company where I spent nearly 3+ years. This was the time I had the most learning in my career and then I switched over to Cognizant and had only a brief tenure there. Joined Sun Microsystems in 2003 and spent nearly 7+ years there. Now working with Y!.
Advice For New Professionals:
People today get carried away by the job titles and nature of work. For any job, what you do is not important, rather how you do is important. Try to bring in perfection and innovation in what you do and the accolades/rewards will come to you automatically. Same applies for QE as well.
Job Profile:
I am leading the Quality Engg team for Vertical Search Platform at Yahoo India - a search engine that powers nearly 140+ yahoo properties globally. It is one of the most respected platforms in Yahoo. As the lead, my role is to drive this team to quality excellence and make it the best prod in Y!.
Plans For The Future:
Building and driving strong quality teams that can handle complex mission-critical, distributed platforms with more white-box approach to testing and knowledge on-par with the developers. Building a team with utmost effectiveness and Agility.
The Decisions That Matter
The most important career decision was to switch over to quality when I joined Sun and I got a chance to lead the Client-Java quality teams at Sun. It gave me wonderful exposure on Java and it's internals and also some of the best technologies in the world. Sun made me a good quality engineer.
Career Profile:
My responsibilities include understanding complex problems in QE domain and coming up with appropriate solutions and assessment of efficiency and effectiveness of the testing efforts across the org. Coming up with out of box solutions/white-papers. Evangelize on new features in the product across Y!
Done Differently:
If I have to start all over again, I would still choose a QE Job but I would probably take more risks than what I did in the past and would bring in innovation in a much more radical manner without worrying too much about a potential failure. Would like to be much more adaptive to changes.
Changes In The Professional Environment:
Environment is becoming more Agile now compared to before and time-to-market becomes a key due to high competition. The notion of best quality product has changed to a mere 'working software' since one can not afford to have extended QE cycles. One good byproduct of this is more white-box QE
Required Reading:
It largely depends on the product that you work on and I would suggest to master the product in all aspects and read books related to that. What you need is a mind-set to explore the product and never-say-done attitude, Questioning attitude – Question everything, even the fundamental assumptions.
Growth Strategy:
Keep Learning new stuff and adapt to changes quickly. Technologies are evolving every day and the moment you stop learning, you become obsolete. Develop selflessness. Put team's interests before self and give due credit to others in the team. Develop self-motivation and take initiatives.
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