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Prestige, Power, and the Hidden Costs
Yesterday, more than half a million people in India wrote the Civil Services exam, to compete for a few hundred jobs. From my firsthand experience, I can vouch that the kind of responsibilities these jobs give you while still in your twenties is...
Recent Posts
Why Intelligence Without Accountability Is Dangerous
One of my IIT professors had a stellar academic reputation. But after he quit/retired, he abandoned academic rigour and started making random...
Why Comparing Career Choices Is a Dead End
During my MBA, a college friend visited us in Philadelphia. And during our conversation, I asked him about his career plans. But he had no 'plans'...
The Myth of the Top of the Hierarchy
I once met a mega business leader in his office in Mumbai. And on the office wall, there was a photo of the Indian PM with another head of state,...
How Seniority Can Hide Incompetence
I once knew a guy who had spent decades in investment banking and had climbed up the hierarchy but he was clueless about finance and deal-making. I...
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Are Meetings Hiding Your Insecurities?
Why do we spend so much time in meetings, even when it's a horrendous waste of our time and talent? One might say, "What choice do I have?" Who wants to ruffle feathers by declining or pushing back on meeting invites? That's partly true. But...
The Mid-Career Trap And How to Avoid It
Mid-career can be a dangerous place -- you might become too expensive for the roles you can perform, and unwilling to take the roles you can get. This happens because aging is mandatory, but upskilling is optional. As we become older ('senior'), in...
Education Without Values Is Dangerous
Before we graduated from college, our electrical engineering professor (I think it was Dr SS Prabhu) told us, "As you graduate, it is not enough to be technically competent -- you also need a value system, without which, you are no better than a...
When You’re Lost, Being Busy Is the Worst Thing You Can Do
In my first startup, I outsourced my product development to a small IT services company. In the beginning, things seemed okay. But soon, I was struggling with product-market fit (aka, nobody wanted my product). Instead of staying laser-focused on...