Inside the Mind of an AWS CTO: Innovation, Risk-Taking, and Building a Global Tech Career

Speaker A: You have to have faith in yourself. You have to have faith in your abilities. Even if you don't know something, try to figure it out, try to learn it, try to understand. Continuous knowledge seeking and understanding is probably one of the main pillars of what brought me here.

Speaker B: You're listening to Flipping the Barrel podcast, a women's perspective in oil and gas. We are your host, Macy and Jamie,

Speaker C: and our mission here is simple. To bring you the untold stories of this industry.

Speaker B: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another Flip in the Borough podcast. We are here at Kolide in Houston, Texas, and we've got the pleasure today of interviewing Hussain Schell, CTO of AWS Energy and Utilities. And we're really excited because we met Hussain at a dinner like a few months back. He sat at the edge of the table. We had no idea who he was. We just started to talk to him, um, and we thought, like, he's super cool and interesting guy. Lots of stories. And then I think only at the end, I think we asked you for your email or something, or you gave us your business cards and we're like, oh, my gosh, this guy's the CTO of aws. I should have probably asked better questions or it was just really funny.

Speaker A: This is why we're here.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Didn't you actually look him up on LinkedIn and then I think you messaged him.

Speaker B: I had messaged him and we didn't get a response and he ghosted me.

Speaker C: Yeah, he's here today.

Speaker A: I'm making up for it now.

Speaker B: Yes, you are.

Speaker C: Oh, we have to say, Hussein, just listening to you, that day at that dinner was when Masa and I were like, yeah, we've got to learn more about Hussein, who he is, where he came from. And we had the pleasure of getting to know a little bit about you. But we really want to dive into that for our listeners today because your story to me is just one of those immigrant. But it's more important of, like, when you came here to the US you came with nothing. And I really want you to tell us about the early beginnings in Lebanon, what that was like living there and your aspirations. And then tell us what it was like when you came to New York.

Speaker A: Okay, we'll start there. And it's a long story, but first and foremost, thank you so much for having me. This is a pleasure. I've been really meaning to be here and to join you all and just chat and see people interested in the story and what we're doing and some of the kind of innovation that we're doing in the industry. But first let me introduce myself again. Hussein Shaal. I'm the CTO of AWS Energy and Utilities. I'm, um, also in charge of subsurface transformation for the business unit. I have been with with AWS for about three years and previously I was the CTO of Energy for Microsoft. Before that I was head of Strategic Customer Engagements, which is a long title, but what it really meant is we had a special team that was driving a lot of the innovation and the partnerships that Microsoft Energy had with some of the top customers like Chevron and Exxon and Total and others. Prior to that I was head of High Performance Computing product for Energy in Azure and I was at chevron for about 11 years before moving to Microsoft in 2017. And I can start with any of those. But let's start from the beginning. Around Lebanon and where I'm from and how I grew up. I've been in the States now in July, it's going to be 26 years. So I've spent more time here than I've spent where I grew up. I grew up, born and raised in Lebanon in a very small, used to be a small town called Baalbek. A very, uh, very ancient city, very proud city, Lots of history, uh, dating back to the Stone Age. Like we have some caves that they don't even know where they, how long they've been there. And uh, then there's a lot of ancient temples and ruins and civilizations that went through. So lots of history and people are very proud of it. So I grew up there when I was 18. Actually when I was 16 I started sending letters to universities in Canada in, in the uk, primarily London and in the US and just like of my Lebanese fellows we. There's a lot of war and events that were happening in Lebanon in the 80s and early 90s and late 90s and so there wasn't a lot of opportunities for many of us. And the Lebanese by nature have immigrated for thousands of years. And uh, fun fact, there's more Lebanese outside of Lebanon than there is in. Actually in Lebanon there's about 4 million Lebanese or 4 and a half I think, because there hasn't been a consensus in a long time, but there's about 9 to 12 million overseas. So between Brazil, US, Australia and Europe, there's a significant amount of Lebanese immigrants. So I left all of them. I went to Canada, to the Canadian embassy first because I had an acceptance from a college in London, Ontario, I'm trying to remember. Yeah. And they did not give me the Visa. So I left disappointed. There was no reason. They just didn't give me the visa. And then I went and applied for a visa in the UK embassy and they did not give me a visa as well. And at the time, late 90s, the US visa is the most difficult to get as an immigrant or as a student, especially from the Middle East. And I just, I had some friends of, uh, family, uh, or family friends in New York City that helped me get the i20, which is the approval. And I went to the embassy and the consulate there was for some reason was very impressed with my English, being from a small town in the Bekaa Valley, which is far from the big city like Beirut, etc, And he didn't ask me anything about where, what I'm going to study and why I'm going and all of that. He just said he was, kept asking me, like, how did you learn English so well? And there's a funny story behind it because my dad had a radio station and a tv, uh, station, like a local radio and TV station. And I was in charge of taping all of the cartoons for the shows. And so I learned English and from music, from movies, from cartoons, and I used to practice how you pronounce things, et cetera. So I had a, um, better English than typical Lebanese, let's say at that time, just from my education. And at the end of the interview he's hey, just one advice. I would recommend you go somewhere else in a different campus from where you're going. It was Queensborough Community College in New York City and he was in Bayside, Queens. It was far from the city, in the suburbs of New York City. I had no idea. I just had an acceptance from a college. And I was like, yeah. He said you should move and go somewhere else. Go into the city, to Manhattan, you have more fun and blah, blah, blah. M. I'm like, okay, that means you give me the visa, right? Oh, yeah, we're done. So that's what happened. And I got the visa after a month. I got it in June. I left Lebanon in July to start the semester.

Speaker B: So did you stay at that college?

Speaker A: No, I did not. And so I ended up in New York City, landed in jfk, walked out of the airport. A friend of my uncle lived there. So he was just weird. And I, I asked my parents all the time, like, how did you let me do that?

Speaker C: Yeah, I was about to ask you,

Speaker B: what were your parents?

Speaker A: I was like, but it's so typical and normal. Like I have many friends that have showed up at some strange. I didn't know how he looked like I didn't have a picture. So I get out of JFK and I'm like, I'm looking around, like to see people, and I can tell someone is Middle Eastern. I'm like, okay, maybe it's this guy. So I walk up and talk to him and say, hey, I'm Hussein. Yeah, come on. So I stayed at this. With this guy's, uh, in this guy's apartment. Very nice area in New York, by the way, if I remember correctly. Brooklyn Heights. So overlooking the whole city, Manhattan, the island. So anyways, so I stayed on that

Speaker B: apartment and be a multimillionaire today.

Speaker A: Maybe, Maybe. So I stayed with him. He took care of me for a week. And we looked for an apartment closer to the campus and I couldn't. There is no dorms, there's no housing like that. It was all just commercial, uh, and I'm sorry, residential. So I found this guy, an old American guy by himself. He turned his attic into a one bedroom, like a small bedroom and a small bathroom, half a bath. And then his kitchen was the common kitchen for me and him. But he had a rule. If he's in the kitchen, I'm not allowed in the kitchen. Coming from Middle Eastern culture is very strange because everybody lives in the kitchen. It's like, you hang out. But anyways, so I stayed with him. He had a huge husky. And the husky was literally maybe like about five feet. And he was huge old. And he would stand on me and put his paws. And I'm six four and he would put his paws on me. And I've never hung out with dogs in the past because from m. Middle Eastern culture, he was very strange. But I loved it. It was close to campus. It was literally you walk and you cross the highway and you're in the campus. And then I would sit in a bus and just ride the bus for two, three hours, just exploring the city, like sitting there, just looking, seeing what area looks safe, what area doesn't. For hours, for weeks I would do that. And then I would call my parents using the phone cards. At the time, there was no cell phones, no Internet, uh, no voiceover IP at the time. And I would call them like, hey, everything is great. It was going to hang up, start crying.

Speaker B: That must have been really difficult.

Speaker C: Yeah, I was about to say, make it sound like, oh, I went and got this visa. And then I. But what was going through your head? Did you ever question like, what am I doing? And why am I doing this?

Speaker A: Every day. Every day. But there was no other option. And sometimes when you just, you have no other option when my parents are well off, but they weren't rich. So you couldn't go into the big universities in Lebanon especially, there's a couple of really good universities. And so you had to make it work. And so I would, uh, I found out there's like an area or a street in Queens, Astoria, Queens, where there's a lot of Middle East Easterns, a lot of Egyptians and Jordanians and some Lebanese. And I would go there, walk around, have some food and then just feel like home. Go back to Bayside, Queens, which is like 20 minutes from, 30 minutes from there. But it was a, it was an experience that kind of shaped my life, I would say for the last 25 years.

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Speaker B: A question for you and I'm going to skip very to today. You have I think two children. How do you instill that in your children where they didn't have to have no option? Like how do you teach them?

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know if I'm doing a good job. According to my wife, I'm uh, spoiling them. You just have to keep reiterating that there are people that are in need. There are people that, you know, don't have food at the table most of the time. There are people that start from nothing, like myself. You keep telling them where they belong, where they're from, the original family or heritage. It's very important, and they love that. Like, they. They're extremely excited to go to Lebanon and see their family and their cousins and their uncles and aunts, and it's like one of their favorite thing to do. And I have family that visit me now, that come here and visit, and so it's important to continue to tell them about. You got to work hard for something that you really passionate about. You were. You got a plan about what you're going to do in school, your tests. You got to study. One of my daughters is. Is into soccer, and she's been playing in a competitive league for the last, I, uh, think four years. And she's really. She's good. She has talent, but she needs to practice, and she needs to hone in that talent. I keep reminding her, like, hey, Baba didn't start from where he is today. I had to learn, I had to study. I had to do a lot of programming. So I try to do that, but at the same time, they're like, they're daddy's girls. If they want something, I can't say no. And my wife is always in the way of, um, doing that. And so I try not to do it all the time, but, yeah, it's difficult. It's a very different generation, too. Like, we grew up. We're called the war generation. We grew up where survival was important, and where I'm from, used to get attacked and bombed all the time. There was a lot of chaos, and. And so you get used to that mentality of, you got to do it regardless. There's important people counting on you. Back home, I have three sisters and a brother and my parents still alive, thank God. And it's important to be there, to be a rock, to be a support, and that drives you. And it's been my primary driver since I was 18 when I came here. I came here, started going to college, and I can go into the next chapter if you want.

Speaker C: Tell me, though, you said that really shaped you into who you are today. What do you think? Like, you bring that into your leadership and your learning. What part of that do you like, hone in on from all those learnings?

Speaker A: I think if I want to look at it from a career and from a leadership standpoint, it really stresses the Fact that you're always looking for solutions, right? You're stuck in some, especially in technology, like you're trying to solve a problem and so you can look at it from so many different ways, but you have the tenacity and determination that there is a way to solve it. And how you bring people from different perspectives, different ideas, different opinions to say, listen, I understand the diversity of opinion and the way you would, uh, go about solving this problem. But we have to solve the problem. That's the most important part for our customers, for our partners, for our company, for our team. And that determination and that drive and that tenacity that I had to deal with personally. And how to go to school and study because it's so expensive for an international student, how to prove yourself to the company that you're interviewing with that you're different from others, differentiate yourself from the normal kind of candidate. I even talk to people like that, I mentor about how everybody, one professor told me this, everybody sells themselves. And it's not in a negative way like you. You're always selling your experience, your knowledge, your background, your, uh, kind of anything that you have that you think differentiates you from others is important to hone in and improve that and sculpt it and make it, make it clear for people so that they can believe in you. And I have to say there's a lot of people that took a chance on me that I would have never, that I've never met in my life or I would have never expected them to do, especially when I went to college, I graduated, and then I started looking for jobs and there was a small little company that it's hard, as you know now with the H1B and sponsoring international students. It's a process and you have to pay, you have to go through it. It's a lottery. So you're betting on this person to make it. And they did. And it's when it was just the start that made me get into the whole professional career. It was a small company of 10, 12 people and they did accounts receivable recovery, which they go through thousands of spreadsheets and files that they get from their customers and they look for opportunities of, of missed warranties, of payments over payments, etc, and they recover that. And so I had to be, they didn't have to take a chance on me. I'm just some random dude from Lebanon who just graduated.

Speaker B: What did you graduate?

Speaker A: MIS Management Information System. And I was, I think, one of the few Middle Easterns in the, uh, room when I was doing so because I thought you're going into computer science and programming and it's not, it's more about the business applications and the understandings of systems and architecture and then the, the uh, computer science aspect of it is minimal in my opinion. It's really understanding the applications of technology in business. That's also another, another theme. I'll tell you about that. Another theme for me in my career is that I've always been able to sit down with the business team, whether it was in Chevron or in Microsoft or in Amazon. And it's honestly my M experience in Chevron that differentiated me from many of my colleagues is that I was always in an embedded IT in a business unit, whether it was in pipeline when I started to upstream to drilling and completion. I was always sitting with the engineers, understood what they did, tried to relate from where they're looking at, and then brought my experience in technology and tools to help them. And it's been the case throughout my career, almost now 20 years of experience. It's always been that way. And I love that you earn trust with people that you're trying to solve. And of course I've interacted with CIOs and CTOs and IT professionals, but it was always in the spirit of supporting a business problem. So back to your question. If I was a good student, I graduated with a 2.9 GPA, so I was not a great student. I was. I had A's in all my MIS classes, A's and B's and B plus, for example. I ACE database, I aced a.net class, programming class and a whole bunch of technical classes. But I got D's in my finance and accounting and C's and all that. So how is it not. And again, you have to. I did recruiting when I was in Chevron and the first thing you look at is GPAs. And I was probably one of the only recruiters that did not look at that. It was one of the factors. I looked at what people built, what people worked on, how they developed their character. When you're talking to them, tell me what you've accomplished. GPA is one thing, is one factor. And I've had. People have argued with people all the times. No, if they're below 3 or 3.5, they're not even considered. I'm like, that's horrible.

Speaker B: Yeah, I wouldn't be here.

Speaker A: I wouldn't be here. A lot of people like me would never be here. And, and look what I hope, thank God I accomplished. And it was again because People gave me opportunities and a chance to shine or do something and be successful. So that small company I worked for and then after about a year and a half I started applying for other companies and I got in Chevron and again it was a group of people that are still my friends to this day from 2006 is when I joined Chevron. That gave me an opportunity to be there. They didn't have to take a chance on me.

Speaker C: What do you think made them give you that opportunity? Like what do you think stood out for you?

Speaker B: From what you said, you only been

Speaker C: working for a year and a half at this small company.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, so why would Chevron be like, this is the guy?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: I don't really know. Like I can give you many answers, but I don't really know. People for some reason gravitate towards me. Since I was in college I was able to develop friends very easily. Some people, some of my friends, my best friends make fun of me and say, Hussein is not, he's not intimidating. And girls, you approach me and like friends and people that I've never met and then like I would only meet them once and then in few months we'd go back to a restaurant or a club or a bar or whatever and people would still recognize me for some reason. So that always was in the back of my mind. But specifically for Chevron, it was a junior role that I was applying for and they wanted someone like a support analyst, which is typically the kind of like the starter of anyone who's graduating with an MIS or, or a computer science for that matter. And it was an interview with six people. Uh, my first interview, the panel, and they were very serious. It was in a Chevron pipeline, 20 plus years of experience in many of them that were interviewing me. And the conversation just was very, uh, I just told him about my story, where I came from and how I ended up at their desk and what I did for that small company. I had to be their whole IT department. They had a SharePoint farm, they had a website, they have a mail, they had an Outlook Exchange. And then I built an application for them for a, ah, vendor management system because they were interacting with a lot of vendors. So I did all of that and I think they like the fact that I was, I was going after problems that the company needed me to and I had to figure it out and a lot of things that pipeline, the support analyst had portfolio of 2030 applications and you're not going to be an expert in all of them, but you're going to have to go figure out how to support and fix it.

Speaker C: I think for me, when you talk about the interview and getting into the doors that you've been able to. When you talk about your story and what you had to go through, I think that says a lot about you as a person on, like, your tenacity and your willingness to try something and to push through it. For me would be like, okay, I'm gonna give a chance on this guy because he came over from nothing and has become something. So when you look at building a team today or you're looking at even the jobs that you have taken outside of you moved from Chevron and you went into Microsoft because you've said a lot about how people notice you and you get along with everybody. That can't always be true, though. You've led a bunch of teams. I'm sure at some point you came into an issue where. So for those listening that are like, I had felt the same way about myself, and then now I'm up against these people that m my colleagues. And like, how do you overcome that? And like, how do you make sure that people's other personalities don't weigh you down and make you think twice about what you're doing?

Speaker A: Yes, it, um, happens all the time. And it's just part of life, part of corporate career, etc. And I think the important part is not to make that the focal point of what you're trying to accomplish. And what I mean by that is the important part is that you are able to go through these differences, discuss them professionally in an environment that allows you to understand their point of view and take that into consideration or not. That's a, uh, sometimes a compromise. You have to. And I think you spend more people, more time with people at work than you spend with your family. So you have to make it work. You don't have to like each other. You have to be best friends. We have to be professional. And you have to work out your differences, Whether me personally or employees of mine that have had differences. And I had to go through that process with many of them and myself of. I'm trying to understand as much as I don't necessarily like working with this person or I don't like what they're doing, I have to make what I need to make successful, and I need to separate that and not make it a dependency. Now sometimes, unfortunately, you have superiors that are in that position that you don't necessarily like what they're doing. And that was something, to be completely honest. And I Love my, my Microsoft colleagues. One of the reasons why I left and changed careers was that there was a direction in periods in my management where I was, that I was not on board with. And I tried to work with it and I tried to be a, uh, good employee and I tried to deliver and I did for my customers. I kept the focus of my customers and partners as priority and I tried to solve the problems, the internal problems. To say this is not the direction we had planned, this is not the direction it has worked for many years. This is going to cost to cause issues with our customers and partners because we are changing how we have talked to them about what we were doing, etc. And unfortunately they did not listen to me. They listened to others or they did not listen. They just did what they did and it was a path that I was not able to overcome. And so at that point you have a very difficult decision. Do you continue to be where you are very uncomfortable with potential impact on your career? Just again, um, goes back to where I was an 18 year old. Do I stay in Lebanon, close to my family, in a comfort zone and not necessarily achieve the potential that I have, or do I go somewhere else and look and the team at Amazon has been phenomenal. I've joined them, we've been able, I've been able to impact the way they think, their strategy, what we're doing with customers and partners, what we're doing with products. I have now phenomenal friends and close colleagues and academics. Same thing with Microsoft. I still, my whole team, I talk to them all the time and the uh, colleagues that I worked with. But you have to make a choice. And I always tell my employees, my mentees or anyone that I work, or even people that interviews, I need to understand how you resolve conflict because we will have conflict all the time. You just can't get away from that. And as long as you're professional, as long as you're honest, as long as sometimes you have to compromise and uh, things typically work out. I have been really lucky. Again, a knock on wood is that I didn't have as many conflict as many of my peers who have had even longer or less experience than I have. I'm usually the leader or the person who's trying to bring everyone together and lead from the front and explain to people what we're trying to do, be very clear, be very conscious of where people's strengths are and weaknesses and try to bring this person into this conversation and that person in that conversation instead of setting people for failure or Putting them in an uncomfortable position, which creates conflict or unnecessary burden on the customer or the partner. So I've always been extremely careful about emotional intelligence and understanding where people come from and their backgrounds and trying to make them successful. Because if they're successful, I'm successful. I cannot do everything myself. It's just impossible. I'd love to think I can. It's all about the team, the organization, and you have to bring people to understand the same strategy, the same vision, and hopefully they'll buy into it. Some people don't, and that's okay. This is not the right place for you. Okay, let me help you go where you're supposed to be. Right. You have to do that because you never know where these people end up. They might end up being superior or they might even another company all the time, or they might go to another company. Now they become your customer.

Speaker B: Oh, yes. They become your customer.

Speaker A: A lot of people. Absolutely. So it's. I like to keep bridges. I don't burn them.

Speaker B: I remember when we spoke to you, you mentioned that you received some feedback. Maybe at, uh, a career conversation. We don't have to mention the company, but pretty much like, obviously you had these high goals and expectations and you're climbing your corporate career. And I think it happens to many of us where we kind of hit a plateau in what that manager thinks of you.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: Like, you may have potential, but they don't think that you were faced with a little bit of that where maybe you wanted to, hey, maybe I could be CTO one day of this company, or maybe I can continue to climb the ranks. And it was like, yeah, not here. You don't have the talent that in his eyes. And we're talking about the organization, but a lot of times our careers are personal decision. One person.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: So he didn't think you were that great. Bring us to like, that feedback. How do you internalize that? That for sure hurts anybody's ego when you're so excited to keep climbing in this company. And then what did you do with that fuel? I think you left afterwards.

Speaker A: But yes, I was definitely raging. Let's put it this way, because I was a high potential. I was promoted almost every other year. I had worked on some of the biggest IT projects. From a business enablement standpoint, I did really well. Like, people like me worked with me. Just this has been a pattern of my career. But when I was asked or, uh, when the feedback was given is that this is not the path for you, we think this is the path for you. Which I didn't agree with. I put all of that anger and disappointment, and I have to say it was more disappointment than anger to be honest with you, into looking at what is my path, what do I want to do in the next 10, 20 years of my career? And it was very clear to me based on my background, my technology work and development and programming is that there's one path for me to go. And I started just putting so much work into doing certifications and learning about the technology of the company that I wanted to go to and understand how can I again differentiate myself from anyone else who's going to apply for this role? And I spent six months doing so. Within six months I was offered three roles and I left. And so I was very adamant and uh, of course I had to consider the financial implications of that. Being in a comfort zone, being in a place that is from a career standpoint, yeah, you can make a lot of money. You can, excuse me, you can graduate and you can make a lot of money. I'm sorry, not gradual. You can retire. And I could have been successful in many different roles but the idea of someone defining that path for you at that level of authority was not something that I was willing to compromise with. So I left and uh, again I left into an unknown world. I didn't. I had one person that I knew that worked in, in the next company and I just went full throttle into how do I make myself different from my peers. I knew their technology better than their own architects and that was a feedback I got from the manager that I was working on. Wait, you came from outside? Better than the team that I'm working with. So anyways I put my full focus on making sure that's the case. And then within six months I was asked to move roles and take over uh, Microsoft whole HBC business for energy. I had never done anything around HPC00 background. I knew what seismic processing and imaging and reservoirs simulation and some of the business problems that it solved. But technically I've never done that. I've never been had to learn that, understand that and figure it out. Because I was asked, this is what we want you to do and this is the next step in the career, at least that uh, I made the bet. It was literally at the same time I was being asked to go to Amsterdam and be there, the data and analytics specialist over there. And the other offer was we need you to run this engineering team program management in engineering to go solve a very big hairy problem of how do we run high performance computing and supercomputers in the cloud because it was too expensive. It didn't work. It was broken and there was no offering. And all these companies wanted it to work. And so I made a decision and it was a big personal decision because I really wanted to go downstairs.

Speaker C: Yeah. I got to say, I love Amsterdam

Speaker A: and the team there was amazing. They loved me. I had a great relationship with the, uh, with the executives there that were running the business unit and the whole organization. Where in engineering, I didn't know anybody. It was someone who saw me in a meeting and saw how I interacted with the customer. Shell at the time. And it's have a very funny story. It's too late. But I went 360 where I'm now I'm working with Shell and some of the same people I met in 2017that uh, went a different way. But anyways, so, yeah, I feel like

Speaker B: this is like one of the most important parts of the podcast and of your story because I feel like I've seen so many people that all face what you faced because that's the corporate world. There is going to be someone above you that's going to tell you what they think is best for your career. I mean, I heard it all the time. We think you should do this. And you're like, but I like, love this. And I know that I'm really good at this and I know I, I could do this one day. But it's what falls within their playbook of you need to these skill sets or whatever it is that they want. And having worked with so many people and meeting so many people, that happens a lot. But people just put their head down and go, okay, they're right. But they're not willing to take that risk. So I'm like hearing your story. I want people to hear and be like, if that's you, or if you feel that and you truly don't agree with it, it's your future and it's your life. So take a risk. But that's the thing is people aren't willing to take risks.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you left an amazing company. That's a huge risk.

Speaker C: The company that you worked for was like a different bear. Yeah.

Speaker A: M. And I love everyone over there. Like, in every single company I've worked, I've had best friends, close friends, people that I've considered my family and I still talk to for 20 years. And it's nothing personal. It's just a matter of I don't agree with this path that you laid for me. And I'm going to look and explore others and I'm going to take the risk. And it's a very high risk. But with a higher risk you get higher reward. And if you don't try, you'll never know if you can succeed. Uh, when somebody heard it the other day, it's like all the shots you don't take in basketball are missed shots. Right. So it's important to do that. And I've been, and maybe it's my personal background, the way my life has evolved is, allows me or makes it comfortable for me to do. Now I have to think 100 times before I make that decision because it's not about me anymore. Single at the time, now I'm married, I have kids. I, uh, have like.

Speaker C: That's exactly what I was going to ask you before we close this. I feel like it's a different world when you don't have children. I think people's homes, life really start to, as they go in their career, start to change the way that they make their decisions because they can't just go to Amsterdam or they can't just say, I'm just going to leave this because all their family's on their insurance. Yeah, there's consequences. So, so now where you're at today, and for those that are listening to this and maybe they're in the situation, but they have kids at home, they're the breadwinner. What kind of advice would you give there? And looking at the decisions you've made, would you have changed anything if your wife wasn't working and you had your two, you two girls?

Speaker A: No. That's a great question. And I struggle with it a lot. But just to remind, I left the first company when I was just married, so we just had a baby, I think. Yeah, she was 1 years old. And then I left the second company when I had two kids three years ago. It is possible, but you have to be prepared for it. You have to prepare yourself mentally, financially and physically. And, uh, why I say physically is when I change companies. The pace of big tech to oil and gas traditional companies is very different. The travel requirements I was talking to literally at some point in time to almost 60, 70% of oil and gas companies in the world that I was asked to go talk to or present or. And that required a lot of travel and a lot of patience from my wife and understanding that this is time where you should do this because you're not going to be able to do it when you're 40 or 50 or whatever. Right. And so that helps prepare me for that big jump. And I would encourage anyone to do so because it's extremely rewarding and the worst thing that could happen is you go back and do what you are doing in a different company or in the same company. Because again, don't burn bridges. Build them, continue to have them. I have amazing relationships at Chevron, I have amazing relationships at, uh, Microsoft, and I do have now amazing relationships about aws. And I know if I call up someone and say I'm stuck, somebody will help me because I've fostered so many of those relationships in my career that even partners like oilfield services and technology partners and startups that would need someone like myself or others that are looking like. So I always encourage it. Maybe I'm not a good advice giver to someone who's very comfortable in their career and I have nothing against that, but I'm the one who's always taking the risks. And now we're, we're thinking about, okay, what are we going to do in the next 10 years? Are we going to stay in the U.S. are we going to change? And, uh, who knows what the next chapter brings?

Speaker C: I love it.

Speaker B: I love it. No, this is a phenomenal podcast.

Speaker C: What I just love about your whole story and I just love stories like yours because you came over with no plan besides the fact that and there's some university like you knew like nothing about. And, um, the area. I find it so intriguing because looking at you now, you're like the CTO of AWS Energy and you utilities, you're based out of Houston now, but who knows what will happen in the future. But it's crazy to just take a look back of what if you didn't take all that risk in the beginning? And oh yeah, maybe you were young then and you can say taking risks when you're young are easier, but there is some sense of having that ability to do it later in life when you are financially stable or you do know who you are as a person. When you're younger, you don't know who you are. You don't know what you want. I think the way that you continue to do that throughout your career has really set up a lot and it shows where you're at today. And yeah, I think your story is so inspiring. He's saying so.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Your daughters will listen to this.

Speaker A: Maybe they won't. They'll think their dad is cool. I think I'm, uh, a clown. But listen, I tell everyone I talk to everyone I Mentor everyone I've interview. You have to have faith in yourself. You have to have faith in your abilities. Even if you don't know something, try to figure it out, try to learn it, try to understand. Continuous knowledge seeking and understanding is probably one of the main pillars of what brought me here. And so I don't have the answers. I don't have all the answers. I have some answers. I have a lot of questions that help me get the answers and it's important to do. And anyone who's in their early career, graduating mid career and they're thinking about a change, you'll have my LinkedIn just reach out. I talk to a lot of people just randomly and uh, I don't mind it. It's just like meeting someone at a bar or at a coffee shop. It's okay to talk to people and because again, you never know where these people are going to end up.

Speaker C: You've heard it straight from Hussein, you can reach out to him.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. But thank you so much for having me.

Speaker B: Thank you so much.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: My last question, do you know Jeff Bezos?

Speaker A: I do not.

Speaker B: I thought you could maybe invite him on the phone.

Speaker A: Unfortunately, I have not. I, um, have not met him.

Speaker C: No, not yet. Not yet. Hey, there is a. You never know.

Speaker A: I've met Matt Garman who's our CEO at AWS in Monaco SLB forum a couple years ago and I've met Satya Nadella who's the CEO multiple times at Microsoft where we had to present.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Awesome.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker C: Now you can all know who Sani said you can reach out to him on LinkedIn. And then if you want to follow Flipping the barrel, of course, Flipping the barrel on LinkedIn, flipping the barrel on Instagram, you can email us Flipping the barrelmail dot com. We're never gonna get rid of that Gmail.

Speaker B: Any contacts, any contacts, make sure that it's marked not on your spam.

Speaker C: But thank you all for tuning in and thank you, Hussain again for coming in today.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Speaker C: Thank you everyone. Thanks,

Speaker A: Sam.