README
Who is Hussain
This is my personal README, serving as an introduction to who I am as a person, a professional, and an engineering leader. As I am a person just like you (you’re not a bot, right?), it helps to start here to understand my values and working style.
Hi, I am Hussain, Director of Engineering at Axelerant. Over the years, I’ve transitioned from primarily interacting with machines to focusing deeply on empowering people and engineering teams. I like to think I am funny, and that certainly helps with people. Unfortunately, machines are still deciding on this—though when I asked ChatGPT and made a typo, it found it hilarious (and thankfully, insightful and thoughtful).
My current focus lies strongly in Developer Experience (DevEx), Platform Engineering, DevOps, and Machine Learning. I work on designing and building robust, scalable systems that make engineering teams highly productive and sustainable—such as Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), Cloud Development Environments (CDEs), and CI/CD pipelines. I spend my days exploring AI-native tools, Kubernetes ecosystems, and cloud architecture (AWS, Azure) to solve complex problems and improve how we build software.
While I am naturally comfortable behind a code editor, my role as Director of Engineering also involves structuring teams, performance management, and career development. I stress learning fundamentals and theory, balanced with a healthy dose of pragmatism. I care about you as a person first and firmly believe that your well-being comes before any work or cause. I describe more about my working and management style below.
Even though I am an introvert, I enjoy gatherings where technical topics are discussed, ranging from local meetups to large conferences. For a significant portion of my career, I focused heavily on Drupal and its ecosystem. I have built and helped others build numerous Drupal solutions, and I continue to work with broader systems that sometimes include Drupal. My open-source contributions can be found on GitHub and Drupal.org.
I love travelling and trying out different cuisines, taking photographs of places, people, and food wherever I go. I tweet (x-eet?) and Instagram a bit, and you can find me as hussainweb online almost everywhere.
For more details about my journey, you can check out my overall timeline, the tools and gear I use, or my writing on my personal blog.
A little bit more about me
The little I know
While my early career involved deep immersion in the Drupal ecosystem, where I became an Acquia-certified Grand Master, my focus today is far broader. Over two decades, my journey has spanned from hobbyist to leading entire engineering service areas.
Today, my technical interests are heavily geared toward DevOps, Platform Engineering, and Machine Learning. I have a passion for streamlining engineering processes. Recently, I’ve optimized CI/CD pipelines with modular GitHub Actions, modernized infrastructure using Terraform and Kubernetes (AKS), and established robust development environments using Nix (releasing my own nix-starter-config) and tools like resticprofile. I also actively integrate AI-native workflows into my day-to-day work—recently leveraging AI tools like Cline to build and refactor complete web applications at an unprecedented pace.
Beyond raw technology, my core focus is on engineering leadership. I am deeply invested in structured mentorship—such as developing a Mentorship Playbook and using the Action-Ambition-Aspiration model. I regularly navigate cross-team priorities, mediate technical conflicts between teams, and drive engineering standardization efforts that measurably improve our developer experience and output quality. I firmly believe that building effective structures and fostering a collaborative environment is just as crucial as writing good code.
I am a responsible open-source citizen who consciously designs solutions that benefit both the immediate product and the larger developer community. I enjoy meetups of all kinds, frequenting groups related to DevOps, Machine Learning, and Data Science. Having previously helped organize tech meetups and camps in Bangalore, I hope to do the same in the Greater Toronto region now. I am also an avid listener of various podcasts and have even co-hosted one in the past.
My pursuits
I love travelling and have been able to travel to various countries while attending and speaking at conferences. I have presented a talk at every DrupalCon and almost every DrupalCamp I have attended. I have also presented talks remotely to distributed audiences and at several meetups.
Apart from this, I do a bit of photography and cooking. I like trying out different restaurants and cafes and write about food, books, and movies. My love for travelling complements these pursuits perfectly. I am always on the lookout for a city’s cuisine wherever I visit. Oh, and I love coffee and love trying coffees from different places, which is also something that goes perfectly with my travel. I write about this and more on my blogs infrequently and hope to do more.
My Working & Management Style
I’m looking forward to talking to you and knowing more about you. This section describes my working style, values, and motivations to help us have more aligned and productive conversations.
I stress learning fundamentals and theory, balanced with a healthy dose of pragmatism. I care about you as a person first and firmly believe that your well-being comes before any work or cause. I try to be nice, but not at the expense of being honest. I believe in giving feedback that needs to be heard rather than what just needs to be said. Ultimately, I think it is more important to be kind rather than being right.
My Values
Enthusiasm
I am deeply interested in doing the right thing, the right way. Of course, “right” is subjective and changes from time to time which is why I am also actively learning what the right thing might be at any time and what would be the right way to do that thing.
Openness
I can’t sugarcoat things I need to say. It’s not that I don’t, but I can’t. Which means that I put in the extra effort to be nice. I work on the principle of being open and then kind. Usually, that happens at the same time but there are times when they don’t.
Competency
I believe you should do what you like to do. That is what makes you competent. If you are doing something you don’t like to do and hence will never be competent in it, you’re wasting your time, and others’.
Curiosity
You can’t be enthusiastic about learning if you are not curious.
Humour
I believe in building trusting relationships. Humour is a quick way to get there.
Trustworthiness
I constantly work to build trust. Mainly I do that by doing what I said I would do. I am not perfect but I do what I can.
My expectations
My basic expectation from anyone on the team boils down to these things:
- Play for the team
- Always learn
- Do what you said you will
- Finally, take care of yourself
DRI model
Directly Responsible Individual is someone responsible for seeing a task or a project done. When I delegate, I prefer to assign the responsibility for decision making and success on the owner for that task. This doesn’t mean I don’t give feedback, but it means that the person has the freedom to meet the objectives of the task in the best way as long as it meets the conditions.
Process and Software Development
We usually follow sprint or Kanban based development styles. You can read up on the specifics of these elsewhere (Google is a good place to start as any), but I’ll share what I look for here.
Clean Pull Requests (or Merge Requests)
Your PR should be complete, atomic, and clean. Keep PRs small so that they are easy to review. They should be as small as possible but not smaller. It should also pass any style and correctness checks.
Consistency
Keep your code and system consistent. If you are naming fields or variables in one way, make sure you follow that in all places. Using camelCasing for parameters? Use that everywhere. It is best if you follow a team agreed code style.
Know your stuff
Look at competency in my values list to understand more. I recognise you may be at a different stage in your learning but always keep learning from your mistakes, from feedback given to you, and from incidents caused unto you. And always be curious about how to do something better.
What you may expect from me
Honesty
Like I said before, I am kind but not at the expense of openness. I will tell you how you are doing in the best way I can. You can always ask me for feedback on specific or general things.
Learning
If I feel that you could be learning more, I’ll tell you to. I believe we learn every minute, even if we don’t want to. I want to make it intentional and deliberate so that it helps you in your goals.
My view on one-on-ones
I believe 1-on-1s are the most important tool for a manager and team member relationship. I try to keep any 1-on-1s predictable but driven by the team member. I am here to support your growth. I do that by helping you find alignment with the organisation so that growth is resonant and efficient.
My view on feedback
Open, kind, right. That is the order of attributes I use to prepare feedback. I believe in continuous feedback delivered using the most appropriate means to cause the impact I desire in you. Further, my feedback is my own. It is my view of behaviours I noticed in you. If you think it is not justified, I would love to know why.
About this document
This document is my personal readme which describes a little bit about me, my values, and what you can expect when you talk to me. This document is inspired by Matt Newkirk’s article on sharing your manager readme. I have extended the idea to be more holistic as a person rather than just a manager. If this idea helps or hampers the brevity of this readme (which IMHO is very important in communication) remains to be seen. Please share feedback by tweeting at me.
License
I am happy for my work to serve as an inspiration for your own READMEs, but since this content is about me, personally and professionally, I am licensing this work under a non free cultural license and restricting commercial usage.
hussainweb’s personal README is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
