Scaler Pod - The Software Engineer's Podcast · Scaler Academy

SCALER POD 10 ft. Arpit Bhayani #AsliEngineering | His Journey, System Design, and Being Curious

·1 hr 40 min·5 clips

Arpit describes getting promoted at Practo after six months, feeling the ground slip under his feet with goosebumps.

This episode of Scaler Pod features Arunath and guest Arpit Bhayani, a software engineer known online as #AsliEngineering who recently joined Google. They explore Arpit's career journey, leadership philosophy, and technical insights from his experience at companies like Practo, Amazon, and Unacademy. Arpit describes his early career shift into a DevOps role at Practo, where he demonstrated extreme ownership and received an unexpected promotion within six months. He recounts leading the formation of an SRE team at Unacademy following a data breach, despite having no prior people management experience. A central theme is his strategy of deliberately placing himself in uncomfortable technical domains to accelerate learning and growth. He explains his three-step model for aligning stakeholders as a leader, focusing on wins for his team, organizational goals, and benefits for cross-functional partners. Arpit contrasts the mindset required for product engineering, which prioritizes correctness for end-users, with platform engineering, which allows for faster, iterative solutions for internal teams. He outlines the typical evolution of a data platform, starting from simple database queries to a complex ecosystem involving data lakes, pipelines, and tools like Apache Spark. Arpit also shares a personal goal-setting ritual he has followed for eight years, which led him to start a technical newsletter in 2020. A surprising moment is when Arpit recalls the visceral feeling of his first promotion, saying the ground felt like it slipped from under his feet and he still gets goosebumps. He mentions meeting an author of a research paper he admired just six months prior, now a colleague at Google. An interesting claim is that platform engineers can afford to make and quickly fix mistakes, unlike product engineers, because they serve internal stakeholders. He argues that leaders must act as "grease in the machine" to ensure the organization functions smoothly. Arpit emphasizes quantifying everything with data to build alignment and convince other leaders. He advises that early-career engineers moving to platform roles need breadth and the ability to learn quickly, applying first principles to a plethora of tools. The tone is conversational and educational, blending personal anecdotes with practical career and technical advice. The style is interview-based, with the host asking specific questions to guide the discussion through Arpit's experiences. Software engineers early in their career or aspiring to move into platform, DevOps, or leadership roles would find this episode highly valuable. Listeners seeking deep, narrative-driven stories or highly specialized technical deep dives might prefer to skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded story about curiosity, self-teaching, and learning beyond exam answers.

Arpit Bhayani's conversation treats curiosity as an engineering habit, and it draws a clear line between exam-centered schooling and real learning.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want an engineer's career story that stays practical, curious, and slightly restless.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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