MySQL Support People - Those Who Joined Oracle to Work on MySQL

In this post I'd like to mention my colleagues from MySQL Support who had joined the team when Oracle already acquired Sun (and MySQL as a part of it), in 2010-2012. There were several really great engineers among them:

• Jesper Krogh - with his 31 public bug reports, numerous blog posts (check also this one), ps_tools and presentations, Jesper is well known to MySQL community. He had joined Oracle as Senior MySQL Support Engineer in March, 2011 and is a Senior Principal Technical Support Engineer at Oracle now. Check one of his "Verified" bug reports for SYS schema, Bug #77853. His tutorial on Performance Schema from 2013 was a really great one!
• Santo Leto - he had joined Oracle in December 2010 (as contractor initially) and made a good career there as Principal Support Engineer and then, since April 2013, a team manager of EMEA MySQL Support team in Oracle. We worked closely together during his first year(s) in Oracle. Santo was a reliable SSC, good MySQL Cluster Support engineer, Windows guru of a kind, and a contributor to the MySQL Community, as one can conclude from his 54 public bug reports. Check the oldest his bug report that is still "Verified", Bug #33287. I'd never forget a terrible weekend shift he took in 2012 and managed to survive, when MySQL Cluster was failing for one major European telecom provider... I had to step in to help with all customer issues not related to that terrible incident (that made me think this software is really not supportable unless you can involve its developers, the idea I still deeply believe in). I can not tell you how good Santo was as a team manger, as I quit in August, 2012, well before he switched to management. Recently Santo also quit from Oracle and now he is a Global Manager, Customer Support at Neo Technology, creators of Neo4j.
• Arnaud Adant - he is one of the most brilliant MySQL Support engineers I've ever worked with. Really good skill set for the job and proper attitude, since day one. Arnaud joined Oracle as Senior Support Engineer in January, 2011, became Principal in 2012 and worked there till May, 2014. Then he left to do some Java development for some time, but now he is back to MySQL/MariaDB world as a DBA at Jump Trading LLC. In Oracle Arnaud was one of the core support providers for EMEA customers. He had always contributed to MySQL Community, and I see 17 public bug reports from him (probably he had several accounts and reported more), to say nothing about his great presentation and tutorial from MySQL Connect@Oracle OpenWorld conference. He also did some bugs processing, check my Bug #68079 that is still assigned to him formally :) I am really proud that I worked with him for more than 1.5 years and consider him my good friend in real life.
• Umesh Shastry - he had joined Oracle in May, 2011, when everything in MySQL was already done "Oracle way". We worked closely together since his first days and till my last day in Oracle, as he had always been interested in my work on bugs, experience and approaches to the job. Umesh had worked a lot as a key Support engineer for MySQL Cluster during EMEA hours and soon gained a well deserved respect from MySQL Cluster developers, customers and many "old-timer" colleagues in Support. After I left Oracle he started to work more and more on public bugs processing and eventually, in 2013, he ended up in my Bugs Verification Team, doing large part of my job. When Sveta Smirnova joined me in Percona, Umesh (who now is a Principal Technical Support Engineer) took over some of her job duties as well, and at the moment he is the most important person in the processes of community bugs verification and bug fixing in GA MySQL versions. Just trust me, he is the key to success for MySQL Community in everything related to bug fixing in Oracle. That's why I mention his name many times in each and every post in my "Fun with Bugs" series. Umesh had reported 13 public bugs for MySQL, but you should understand that his job is mostly to have as few non-processed bugs as possible.
• Anand (Ananadakumar S) - he had also joined Oracle in May, 2011 and now he is a Principal Support Engineer there. I can not find any public bug reports by him (as he mostly worked on usual MySQL customer issues in Oracle, based his previous production MySQL DBA experience), but check Bug #50285 for his comment. We started to work closely together probably only during my last months in Oracle, in 2012, so I had few time to work on proper habits towards bugs and MySQL Community with him. Still, I remember him as a reliable and useful tam member.
• Uma Bhat (Uma Hoysala) - she had also joined Oracle in May, 2011 and worked in MySQL Support as a Senior Support Engineer more or less till October 2015, when she switched to management role. She is now a Product Support Manager at Oracle. I can not find public bug reports, but check Bug #11696 for her comment.As with Anand, we started to work closely together with Uma on bugs, compiling from source and similar boring matters only during my last months in 2012. But bugs processing aside, Uma is well known for her community contributions to MySQL (check her blog posts here).
• Bhupinder Singh - he is a Principal Technical Support Analyst in Oracle now, probably still working mostly on MySQL Cluster customer issues. I think he joined MySQL Support some time before May, 2011. I see one public bug report from him here and one more from this account, so he seems to be interested in NDB cluster for a long time. We had not so many chances to work together as I tried my best to keep myself as far from MySQL Cluster as possible, and it was possible for me during weekdays and EMEA hours (when we both worked), thanks to hard work of my colleagues named here and in the previous post.
• Staffan Flink - he joined in January, 2012 as a Senior MySQL Support Engineer and was a very reliable colleague in that role. As far as I understand he left Oracle soon after me, in November, 2012, Now Staffan is a MySQL DBA / Operations Engineer at eTRAVELi. Staffan is a member of Sweden MySQL User Group, but otherwise I do not see any his public contributions to MySQL Community recently.

That's all whom I remember at the moment of those who did Support engineer's job on a regular basis and contributed to MySQL Community in a way I can find. Please, correct me if I missed somebody (it happens all the time, but I have to rely on my memory only, and it's selective and faulty at times).

Next post will be devoted to pure MySQL Support managers, those who had rarely (if ever) worked on technical issues from customers, unless we, Support Engineers, made terrible mistakes... Stay tuned!