When enough was enough - practical and emotional drivers for leaving big tech to bootstrap Metacast | Arnab Deka & Ilya Bezdelev (AWS, Google)

Software Misadventures

Should engineers and product managers “stay in their lanes”? What big company habits should you keep vs unlearn when transitioning to working at a start-up? Could an ayahuasca retreat give you more clarity on your career goals? Ilya and Arnab join the show to share their journey quitting big tech to bootstrap a podcasting startup.

Arnab and Ilya are the co-founders of Metacast. Before starting the company, Arnab was a Principal Engineer at AWS while Ilya was a Sr. Product Manager at Google and Principal PM at Amazon before that. While at Amazon, Arnab and Ilya worked together on various projects including AWS Chatbot, which they started from scratch and launched into a successful AWS service.

Show Notes:

• Sign-up for the podcast app that they’re launching soon: metacast.app
• Newsletter about their startup journey: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/

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Segments:

[0:00:00] Starting Metacast

[0:05:39] Should engineers and product managers “stay in their lanes”?

[0:11:56] How to decide when to explore options vs committing to a decision

[0:14:46] Do you have to be a specialist to be successful?

[0:18:20] Quitting Amazon & Google

[0:33:52] Spiritual retreat

[0:47:09] Trying therapy

[0:51:33] Orthogonal weaknesses

[0:57:31] Big co habits to keep vs unlearn

[1:04:32] Metacast Milestones