Navneet Karnani

Software Product Engineering Veteran | Business-Savvy Problem Solver | Tech Strategy Advisor to CxO/Board | Build-Operate-Transfer

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Product Engineering Leader , who is more interested in building products, and mentoring teams, than keeping ownership of them. Business centric decision maker, who believes that everything is driven by the customer. Understanding the philosophy of the business, the customer and the team working to get to the end goal, is as important, as tactical decision making.

Strategic thinker , who can extrapolate history, into 6m/1y/2y/3y approximations, and drive towards those, while respecting that everyday business survival is important to be able to have a "future".

Passionate Techie , who has been at the cutting edge, and an early adopter of trends, helping his teams be efficient, productive, motivated, and feel challenged. After all, every tech team participant wants to learn all life long. Has over 35 years of programming, and over 25 years of industry experience.

Culture focused individual , who believes that value systems define people, so every organisation needs to define one that they will live, and every leader there, needs to align with that in their lives, not just for the sake of a "job". Leaders need to exhibit the values they expect their teams to show, just like parents need to do the same for their children.

Mentor , who believes that Product Engineering is not taught in the education system, and is doing something about it, while respecting the fact that not everyone is cut in the same cloth.


Things I do

Advisor to CTO @ OzoneAPI

Part Time

Brainstorm Strategic and Tactical Architecture challenges. Mentor technical leadership team. Advise on tactical technical challenges

Most CTOs are looking for an independent view on technology directions that they create, or their team proposes. This is where an Advisor would come in. Ask the hard questions, and bring in trends from other parts of the industry to be able to put the direction in perspective.

Mentor for Technical Leaders

Freelancer

Mentor for tech leaders in software product and services companies.

Tech Leads, Architects, and other Senior Engineers in all organisations need mentoring, outside of their everyday work scope. These same people also, in most organisations, do not have technical leadership, or career counselling available for brainstorming, because of business constraints.

I help these same set of leaders keep growing and operational. Without getting into the everyday execution.

Mentor for Technology Students

Mentor

Mentor students from Computer Science / Computer Engineering, Pre-Graduation years, to enable them to enter the industry fully trained. Like a 'Finishing School'.

I mentor students from Computer Science / Computer Engineering undergraduate courses, who are looking for real life hands on experience before they graduate. This is more like a ‘Finishing School’.

So, they will come out of this 4 month programme learning:

  • Docker
  • NodeJS/Typescript or Rust
  • MongoDB or PostgreSQL
  • Visual Studio Code, and development using Dev Containers
  • Test Driven Development, and the importance of Unit testing

MandrakeTech

Passion

Things I love, and that help me learn.

Things I work on when I get bandwidth from the awesome day job. Or Weekends. This is supposed to be fun. So, no late nights. No stretching myself thin.

My hobby projects. Including ones that are not commercially viable. But technically challenging.

Under this “head”, I try to:

  • Keep myself “hands on” - Build software for ideas that I am passionate about
  • Mentor students / lateral movers to become “employable” in the tech industry
  • Explore problem spaces that don’t have an easy route to market
  • Connect my contacts to mentees so that there is a mutually beneficial relationship. Do not “charge” for that. Its an “as-is” connect.
  • “Give back to society”, “Talk to me”, and other such initiatives

Focus on domains:

  • Personal Finance Education,
  • Software enabled tools for Personal Finance management
  • Random ideas

https://www.mandraketech.in