The symptom, not the fix
“Checkout times out on Fridays” tells me more than “we need to move to queues”. The diagnosis can wait for the call.
Contact — open for next quarter
Tell me what's breaking.
One paragraph is plenty to start with — the system, the symptom, and roughly when it needs to be better. I read everything myself, and if it isn't work I should take on I'll say so quickly and point you somewhere more useful.
- Typical reply
- 2 days
- Hours
- 09–18 GMT
- Capacity
- 2 days / wk
- Next start
- Q3
Enquiry
Six fields, none of them a sales funnel
That's with me
Thanks — I'll read it properly and come back within two working days. If it's urgent, email hello@ashabhussan.dev directly and put “urgent” in the subject.
Writing the message
Four things that turn a vague reply into a useful one
None of these are required. Include what you have and I'll ask about the rest.
One number
Requests per minute, rows in the biggest table, how long the nightly job takes. Scale changes the answer more than the stack does.
Who's on the team
How many engineers, and who will carry the pager when I'm gone. I build for the people staying, not for the handover document.
The real deadline
Board date, contract renewal, peak season. If there isn't one, say that too — it's an honest and perfectly good answer.
Saving us both a call
Where I'm useful, and where I'm honestly not
Good fit
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A backend service that worked fine at a tenth of today's traffic and now doesn't.
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Shipping that has become a ritual — three people watching a deploy that should be routine.
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A migration everyone agrees on and nobody has started, because the risk isn't written down anywhere.
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A small team that wants a second pair of eyes on an architecture decision before committing a quarter to it.
Not my work
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Pixel-level front-end design. I'll implement a design system; I won't be the one drawing it.
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A rewrite decided before anyone measured the thing being rewritten.
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Staff augmentation through an agency, billed by the hour against a fixed ticket queue.
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Anything where the team has already been told the answer and needs an outsider to agree with it.
Not sure which column you're in? Send it anyway. Reading the selected work is usually the faster way to tell.
After you send
From message to signed, in about two weeks
No pitch deck, no second-round discovery workshop. Most engagements are agreed over one call and one short document.
Who you'd be working with →-
Within two days
A real reply
Either a few sharper questions, or a straight “this isn't mine, talk to someone who does X”. Never silence.
-
Week one
Thirty minutes, cameras optional
Bring an engineer who knows the system. I'd rather spend the call on the actual failure mode than on introductions.
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Week two
One page back
Scope, the first slice I'd ship, what it costs and what I'd need from your side. Short enough to read in a meeting.
-
Then
Access, and the reading week starts
Repos, dashboards, the last six incident threads. Nothing changes in week one — that's deliberate.
Practicalities
Asked in almost every first email
How quickly can you start?
Two days a week open from next quarter. For a genuine incident I can usually find a day inside the current week — say so in the message and I'll answer the same day.
Will you sign our NDA?
Yes, a standard mutual one, usually same week. Tick the box on the form and keep the first message deliberately vague — “a payments service with a retry problem” is enough to judge fit.
What does an engagement cost?
A weekly rate for contracts, a day rate for advisory, both quoted after the call and both fixed for the engagement. Nobody counts hours, and there's no charge for the first conversation.
Do you take full-time roles?
Rarely, but I read every one. If the problem is interesting and the team is small enough that I'd still be writing code, it's worth the conversation.
Can I just send a design doc?
Please do. One document, one read, comments back — no charge, no obligation to hire me afterwards. It's the most useful hour I give away and it's how a fair few engagements started.
Recruiters and agencies?
I work direct with the team that owns the system. If you're representing one, I'm happy to talk once I can speak to the engineering lead.
“I sent four paragraphs on a Sunday expecting a calendar link back. I got actual questions about our retry logic instead, and by the call we already knew what the problem was.”
Direct
hello@ashabhussan.devMon–Fri, 09:00–18:00 GMT. Out of hours I'll see it, but I won't answer it well until morning.