Cost to Company

There’s a specific idea we have about moonlighting:  a trend that emerged in the pandemic.  Engineers tasked with sitting at home and delivering their product saw that their skills were so valuable, that it was possible to extract more money out of them by working in two places at once. So a person would either consult with multiple organizations on the side, or work in more businesses than one, u...

What was once touted as the biggest work trend to emerge from the pandemic, is on its way out. Companies are slowly but surely realising that the 'work from anywhere' model isn't sustainable in the long run. Or even in the short run, in some cases. Meesho, for one, had announced an extravagant WFA policy in February 2022. They scrapped it only a few months later. But it's not just the employers wh...

Earlier this month, Cost to Company received a striking message from a Ken subscriber called Uzma Rushdi. She wrote, “Mumbai is suffering from a lack of new talent inflow. Unless there are dramatic changes it will be Calcutta in 20 years :(” Around the same time another thing happened. A group of 35 startups in Mumbai created something called TEAM (Technology  Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai),...

In 2023, amidst the thick of the layoff season, you'd think that 'employee ghosting' (a phenomenon where prospective employees don't end up joining an organisation without any providing any communication) is a thing of the past. But that's quite not true. Although in a reduced state as compared to 2021, ghosting still exists. Companies and their HR professionals are coming up with some ingenious w...

A good executive coach with many years of experience, working in an Indian metro city, typically costs between 20 thousand rupees to a lakh a session. There are multiple reasons for this. First, training to be a certified coach is expensive. Second, executive coaches work with such a niche, small, group of clients, so they get to and need to charge to the world. But this, the steep price tag, info...

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 ‘i...

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...

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...

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 product...

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...

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. T...

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*; forme...

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...

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...

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 emplo...

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...

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 strat...

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 corporat...

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...

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...

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 c...

“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 l...

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? Wha...

“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...

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!