About Mush Khan

I’m Mush. I live in Boston, where I lead software teams at Amazon Robotics. The rest of the time I’m photographing the night sky or playing guitar.

My work is software for places where code has to deal with machines, and with the people who run them. It’s unglamorous in a way I like. A robot doesn’t care how elegant the design was, and neither does whoever is on shift when it stops. Lately I’ve been studying the power grid, because it turns out to be the same kind of problem.

What I believe about leading people is short. Look after the team. Say out loud what’s broken. Don’t build anything that only works if somebody burns out keeping it running. Most of what I’ve learned the hard way comes down to one thing: a problem you hear about early is cheap, and a problem that gets hidden to keep a status report green gets expensive fast.

Before Boston, and before robots, I played lead guitar in a Dhaka rock band called Owned. ABC Radio named us Band of the Year in 2011, and we put out our first album the year after. I never stopped loving heavy, complicated music. These days that means working at prog-metal riffs in time signatures I can barely count, learning to sing and play acoustic at the same time, which is harder than it has any right to be, and getting loud in a basement with friends.

I’ve also never grown out of play. I lose weeks to RPGs. I built a Spider-Man Noir costume for a convention. There’s a BMO on my desk whose job is to remind me that work is not as serious as it sounds in meetings.

When I’m done making noise, I go looking for quiet. Some nights that’s a drive up to the White Mountains with a camera and a tracking mount, and a few hours of standing in the cold while the sky turns. One exposure never holds both the shadows and the highlights, so I shoot several and blend them. It’s a decent rule for most things. Other nights it’s the piano, playing the same progression until it finally sounds like something.

Hank came along for most of it. He was a Bassador, half basset and half Labrador, with a nose that turned every walk into an investigation. He survived cancer. He was with me for more than eight years, and he lived to 14. He loved music as much as I do, and he loved a sunny walk even more. Most of what he had to say, he said with a contented sigh on the balcony or a look from those big hazel eyes. He never wanted anything from a day except to be in it with me. I’m still trying to learn that.

This site is where I keep what I make: the photographs, the tools, and the recordings. Thanks for coming by.