The winds of appraisal season seem all too familiar. HRs deciding the budget for the cycle. Employees frantically trying to put their best tasks forward on a scrappy Google document at the last minute. Managers bracing themselves to negotiate pay hikes with their reportees. And HR. But this year, things are looking slightly different. With the current economic situation, some companies have ‘indefinitely postponed’ appraisals. Some aren’t increasing base pay and thinking of unique ways to reward...
Jan 16, 2023•24 min•Ep. 22
This episode is about a group of Indians, who worked in food delivery and ecommerce startups in India. Now they work in food delivery and ecommerce businesses around the world. Starting with Jakarta and Singapore, but now also Seoul, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Buenos Aires, and Riyadh. We’re going to interview three such people, and ask them how and why they moved. What they found there. And what is that aspirational thing they’ve been chasing. And spoiler alert: it's not for the money. And to b...
Jan 09, 2023•28 min•Ep. 21
For the past 19 episodes, we at CTC have spoken about hiring in many shapes and forms. But what do the numbers tell us? And more importantly, what do the numbers hide? To kick things off this year, we spoke to Ruchee Anand, Senior Director of Talent Solutions at LinkedIn, who shared some data-driven insights around hiring in 2023. Why are some women leaders going the self-hiring way? What is 'The Great Mismatch'? Talent pools are getting bigger, but is that really a good thing? Listen in to find...
Jan 02, 2023•27 min•Ep. 20
Tasked with keeping us together and happy, the advocates for employees in most organizations are usually in the HR department. The people we complain to when management systems break, when there's a sexual harassment complaint, when we aren't receiving the recognition and reward we deserve, they're usually in HR. But the universe of HR is experiencing a moment of transition. Inventive SAAS products are being built to solve HR functions. HR tech is reducing human intervention, or removing it alto...
Dec 19, 2022•29 min•Ep. 19
Unlike its dubious cousin 'the layoffs', there's not much brouhaha around the hiring freeze. And with good reason. Most hiring freezes are unofficial. They're never really revealed to the world. But that's not to say that the freeze hasn't gripped Indian companies. What if the hiring freeze is an opportunity for the employees? Is it a faster way to grow within the ranks since the jobs outside have dried up? Or is it just a race to the bottom? Are employers taking notice too? Read Vanita's story ...
Dec 12, 2022•25 min•Ep. 18
A group of men set out to build a Brave New World. A world with new ideals. A world where the old structures of power are destroyed, and newer ones, more fair, more transparent, rise from the ashes. A brighter world, a better world. They dream of community and belonging. Eventually they live long enough to watch the new world become so much like the old. They watch their heroes fall from grace. They see the weaknesses in the system, they see their brothers exploit them. They watch innocent peopl...
Dec 05, 2022•27 min•Ep. 17
Breaks always seem tempting. But in a job market that is as brittle as it is in late 2022, does a career break even make sense? Even if the times were better, what happens after you take a career break? Does your career ‘rise from the ashes’ once you’re back? Or does the pause affect your growth in the long run? In this episode, I speak to Vatsal Sanghvi (Consultant, Omidyar Network India*; former Category Manager, Flipkart) and Issac John (former Head of Marketing, Discovery India; former Marke...
Nov 28, 2022•28 min•Ep. 16
The CEO of Better.com fired hundreds on a Zoom call. The CEO of HyperSocial posted a selfie of himself crying while he did it. Byju Raveendran wrote to his employees saying that he would be laying off 5 percent of them but that he was losing 5 percent of Byju, meaning himself. This was so poorly received that it became a moment in pop culture of its own. Unacademy laid off 125 people in April. In July they committed to no further layoffs. And then they laid off 350 more in November. And then Ama...
Nov 21, 2022•36 min•Ep. 15
In a world where your to-do list doesn't seem to ever end, should you create task lists or block 'chunks' of time? More importantly, what does your manager at work want? We speak to Arpitha Desai (Legal & Public Policy professional, ex-Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas), Tara Khandelwal (Founder at Bound, ex-Penguin Random House) and Sachin Jaiswal (Director of Product Management at Swiggy) to find out. Tell us what you'd like to hear in the next episode of CTC! Please fill this form , it won't ta...
Nov 14, 2022•33 min•Ep. 14
The Metoo movement normalised calling out bad behaviour, but it concerned itself much more with naming and shaming individual harassers. Not the workplaces that emboldened them. Not the cultures that created conditions for it to happen. But sexual harassment isn’t an interpersonal issue. It’s workplace issue. It’s the organisations that must be held responsible for behaviour tolerated by its employees. 25 years after the first Vishakha Guidelines were passed, we discuss the ways in which the law...
Nov 07, 2022•37 min•Ep. 13
The roots of the founder’s office may lie in bureaucracy, but the allure of it has managed to seep into the world of business. Almost suddenly, the smartest and brightest minds from some of the country’s top B-schools are embracing a whole new kind of an obscure yet attractive career track. ‘Thoroughbred Generalists’ ( as one of our guests describes himself), are quickly picking up roles at the Founder’s Office . What do people at the founder’s office even do? What are the problems that they sol...
Oct 31, 2022•34 min•Ep. 12
CEOs, executives and business leaders have discovered therapy as a weapon to build better products. There are now therapists who are specialised in working with founders and business leaders. There are now therapists stepping into roles that would have been otherwise led by HR. This is therapy not just as a health care benefit. This is therapy to build better businesses. This is therapy as a strategy tool to get more out of their employees. To hit goals faster, better, and with less collateral d...
Oct 18, 2022•31 min•Ep. 11
Titles are a funny thing. In organisations, they’re supposed to denote the work that you do and your position in the hierarchy. But more realistically, they’re a currency. A currency used to trade respect. And when ‘inflation’ strikes, this ‘currency’ is bound to show some side-effects. In the Indian context, startups aren’t the only ones indulging in title inflation. It’s the larger corporations too. So if everybody’s the culprit, who’s the victim? In this episode of Cost to Company, we speak t...
Oct 10, 2022•34 min•Ep. 10
Myntra announced unlimited wellness leave. So did Meesho. So did Gojek. Netflix brought its global unlimited leave policy to India. Makemytrip announced uncapped leaves. As did Inmobi. A number of smaller startups like Nova Benefits, Pega Systems, Zuddl, have all announced unlimited leaves. Even The Ken has an unlimited leave policy. And you would think that in the middle of the Great Resignation, startups that are giving unlimited leave would see the number of leaves taken go up. You would thin...
Oct 03, 2022•35 min•Ep. 9
Tell us your story ideas around careers & workplaces and become a part of the show: https://theken.typeform.com/costtocompany Goodbyes are never easy. But they were never this important either. In a market where great talent is scarce, companies are paying top-dollar to ‘offboard’ their employees in the best way possible: ensuring that their exit is as smooth and uplifting as their entry. We speak to Kartik Mandaville, CEO of Springworks and the Arun Vigneswaran, Head of People Practice at x...
Sep 26, 2022•35 min•Ep. 8
Every product manager has their own voice, their own style. In the beginning, it’s all about gut instinct, intuition and understanding why humans do the things they do. From that point on, the paths digress. Some communicate as little as they need, some bring all stakeholders on the table with fullest transparency, some bring them on the table for the What and Why but not the How. Some play good cops and bad cops, some dispense information very sparingly, some play with the information they have...
Sep 19, 2022•39 min•Ep. 7
“It’s a chicken and egg problem, honestly.” - Abhishek, a management consultant who recently shifted to Bengaluru. As the pandemic slowly begins to recede, many offices are opening up. Employees are (voluntarily and involuntarily) shifting back to cities which house their office spaces. But they’re not coming back to work just yet...because their colleagues aren’t either. There is intent, but little incentive. When work can happen from anywhere, what does Gen Z actually want from the physical of...
Sep 12, 2022•23 min•Ep. 6
Bruce Lee says this utterly enjoyable thing. “Showing off, is the fools idea of glory”. But there’s also the core human need to be seen, understood, recognised and thought worthy by those around us. And when it comes to work, there's material benefit, money, promotions and growth, that can be gotten with just the right amount of showing off. So what is the right amount of showing off at work? What is worthy of recognition and what isn’t? And what are some of the best ways to have our achievement...
Sep 05, 2022•29 min•Ep. 5
“As middle management, we know for a fact that there's really nothing much in our control.” - Ishaan*, former manager at a prominent e-learning startup. In the 4th episode of Cost to Company, we’ll speak to four middle managers who’ll tell us, no holds barred, about what it feels like to be stretched from both ends in an organisation, during an unforgiving year that has inflicted mass layoffs due to the slowdown. They’ll talk to us about their struggles, their strife, their confusion. And hopefu...
Aug 29, 2022•20 min•Ep. 4
Cost to Company is a brand new podcast by The Ken. We tell you how your workplace is changing before you hear it on slack. Hosted by Sneha Vakharia and Shreevar Chotaria, each week Cost to Company brings to you a fresh narrative, told from multiple perspectives, around significant but underreported aspects of our work lives. Hit the follow button to listen to it first!
Aug 26, 2022•1 min
Google docs has satisfied customers. Evernote has happy users. Jira has grateful managers. But Notion has Notion Nation. It has evangelists, Notion certified Ambassadors, Notion certified badges and Notion certified Champions. It has a subreddit with 220 thousand subscribers, groups in 32 different counties, on Telegram, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and Discord. The India chapter of notion has its own logo. Which is the N of Notion with the Ashoka Chakra behind it. We welcome you to the Cult of N...
Aug 22, 2022•25 min•Ep. 3
It was the day of Wasim’s engagement. He was wearing his favourite kurta for the big occasion. It was the first time, in many days, that he was genuinely happy . Just then, he gets a call from Byju’s HR team: “ We regret to inform you that your employment with Byju’s has been terminated. ” If 2021 saw the high of the VC influx, Bored Ape NFT projects, and salary hikes; 2022 is going through a slowdown, a crypto winter, and thousands of job losses. Who bears the brunt of a global meltdown? Who wi...
Aug 15, 2022•21 min•Ep. 2
On Feb 11th of this year Subhash Chaudhury, CTO and founder of Dukaan, posted the salaries of nine new hires. That tweet went viral. The very next day, the CTO of Chingari, also posted salaries of six new hires. This tweet also went viral. Salaries are the one part of our jobs shrouded in secrecy. We know, without anyone specifically ever telling us, that they are not to be ordinarily shared with our colleagues. We don’t want to be impolite. And businesses like paying as little as they need to. ...
Aug 08, 2022•40 min•Ep. 1
