Asim Hussain

Asim Hussain was the regional developer relations lead at Microsoft. After realizing the scale of the climate emergency he worked to shift his role, taking on developing an entirely new field in tech called Sustainable Software Engineering.

“It's about building carbon-efficient applications. So an application does whatever it does, but while minimizing carbon emissions. It is an emerging discipline at the intersection of climate science, software, hardware, electricity markets, and data center designs. It's so tough because not many software engineers want to figure out these cross-industrial questions.”

Let’s begin by talking about your climate story. What motivated you to begin and how did you get where you are today?

I had always acknowledged climate change but was not active on the issue. I now understand this is described as ‘light green’. That’s around 68% of people who think Oh, I recycled that's enough. I did care about it but didn't expose myself to the truth and the depths of the issue. 

Last year I started digging in a lot more had a kind of awakening. I began to see the scale of harm and damage caused by the activities that we do and the systems we have in place. Once you see it you can't unsee it. It's hard to look away and it created this drive within me to be part of the solution.  

I reached out to a friend who was in the Green Party (in the UK). He is in the tech space and connected me to a few people. One these people recommended I join Climate Action Tech, it was nice to be part of a community and my involvement got deeper over time. 

At work, I was EMEA regional developer relations lead at Microsoft. I had about 14 people reporting to me. We were in technical evangelist style roles, where you basically speak at conferences and we travel a lot. So I started doing small things. For instance, I asked my team to calculate the carbon cost of a trip with every trip request to me. I wanted them to be aware of the impact and then weigh it against the value of it.

How did you take your ideas forward at Microsoft, and what is your role today? 

We had a big reorg at the same time as the wildfires in Australia and California last year (2019). I saw this as an opportunity to create a new role for myself. 

I approached my manager and said: “Look there is a green audience of developers. I'm one of them. I want to make choices about what technologies to use -- where to host stuff, how to build it -- based on their environmental and climate impact. I think a lot of people are asking the same questions and there is both an unserved audience and an opportunity here.”

Microsoft is doing much better in regards to its green credentials than giants like Amazon. So within this green community, I recognized that it is a two-horse race between Google and Microsoft. My proposal had a real business opportunity to differentiate. 

This is important because within Microsoft there are some people who don’t care about climate and there are allies who will listen to your case and support you if it makes sense. I have learned to not waste my time talking to people who are not climate allies. It is more effective to find the allies give them the arguments to make it easy to support me.

“Once you see it you can't unsee it. It created this drive within me to be part of the solution.” 

So you put together this business proposal and got support, what does that mean for your role now?

When I first started, I thought that I’d gather information, speak to experts in the area, document everything, and then start talking to developers about how to become green engineers. What I discovered is there's actually not much out there. So my first job is actually to launch a new computing field called Sustainable Software Engineering.

My role right now covers a range of activities that you need to do to kickstart a discipline. I’m finding out the best way to be sustainable as an engineer, getting it documented, demonstrating it in an easy-to-observe kind of way, creating, tutorials articles, etc. My dream is to develop Microsoft certification for Sustainable Engineering.

What does Sustainable Software Engineering Mean?

It's about building carbon-efficient applications. So an application does whatever it does, but while minimizing carbon emissions. It is an emerging discipline at the intersection of climate science, software, hardware, electricity markets, and data center designs. It's so tough because not many software engineers want to figure out these cross-industrial questions.

We’ve created the eight principles of sustainable software engineering. Our next challenge is to create really concrete actions on how to apply them because it’s still fairly academic right now.

It sounds like it’s aimed at every technology choice that's being made in a company.

That is the dream. I’ve never been to a meeting where someone has asked: “What's the greener option?” It’s because no one really knows the answer. I want people to evaluate every choice that they make against these eight principles. 

So you have had the challenge of starting a whole new field from scratch. What’s next?

My goal is to kind of get a lot more people involved. I used to wake up every day thinking “what are you doing Asim? This isn't possible”. But people have started giving talks on this without any input from me. So it feels like the ball's rolling. In the next few years, the goal is to get it rolling and rolling so it doesn't need me anymore.

“I’ve never been to a meeting where someone has asked: What's the greener option?”

How did you build support for this idea internally at Microsoft?

Sustainability is a priority for Microsoft, which has made my job a hell of a lot easier, but I still need to build support. There is this book about moral foundations called The Righteous Mind that helped me understand how to communicate with people who are not climate supporters. 

So according to this book, one of the moral foundations is care and avoiding harm which is basically how humans are hardwired to care and feel for each other. Climate supporters are really impacted by people who make this the crux of this argument. 

But people who lean more to the right and especially climate deniers are less motivated by the foundation of care/harm and are more motivated by the other foundations. One of the other foundations is around authority and subversion, respect for authority, and criticism of those seen as subverting authority. So I focus more on how Satya is leading Microsoft in this direction and therefore going against sustainability is being subversive. That argument interestingly works better on those on the right than those who identify as left.

What's your relationship with the climate crisis now versus pre awakening?

I've got to say I'm happier now than I was before, even though I'm more deeply aware of the scale of the problem. I have a lot more hope now. I'm always speaking to people who are working on climate solutions in their own capacity, people like you. 

I'm not blind to the fact that we are extremely far away from solving this. But at the same time, imagine fighting this battle 30 years ago, it was much harder than it is now. 30 years from now the next generation will have a better platform for the next iteration. I’m now part of that machine working on the problem and it feels good.

How has getting involved in a community served you?

Now I speak to loads of people, but when I started I didn't know anybody doing anything. And all I heard was the negativity all the time.

The first thing that I say if you want to get involved and want to do something, go join whatever community is most appropriate to you. Join them, find other people to speak to because you don't want to be alone when you're thinking about this stuff.

What else do you want to share with people who are thinking about transitioning into the climate space?

I think that's the challenge that we have right now is there's a lot of people who want to do something but we haven't presented them with the things that they need to do to be the most effective. My job is to activate the deep greens and give them something to do. 

Everybody I know who's got a green role inside Microsoft has fought for it. So essentially, they all deeply care about sustainability, and they found the touchpoint between what they care about and what their company's goals are. 

In other words, go to the CSR page of your company and see how you can align with their sustainability goals. And remember, there is always bigger fish. There is always someone higher up than your immediate manager who may be an ally. The only thing is you have to outline your proposal in a way that gives them material to defend their support for you to their peers and management chain.

“30 years from now the next generation will have a better platform for the next iteration. I’m now part of that machine working on the problem and it feels good.”