90,000 Hours (Private)

Over the last few years, something has shifted. Run clubs. Triathlons.  Marathons. Hybrid races.  Ordinary professionals are training like athletes, travelling across the country to compete, and building entire social lives around endurance sport. Somewhere along the way, being an athlete became a badge of honour. Founders started rewarding it. Networks are forged around it.  In this episode, we u...

Being an employee in corporate urban India is living in a perpetual state of frustration. Long hours, followed by longer commutes. Add infrastructural issues to the mix.  It is a nightmare. But people stay on for opportunities and growth.  That script is now flipping. Smaller cities in India are attracting talent, GCCs, and investments.  In this episode, we tell you the stories of three cities: Ma...

“What would make you quit this job a year from now?” “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” “How do you spend your weekends?” Every founder and hiring manager has a set of off-script interview questions like these, the ones you don’t really prepare for. Today, these questions matter more than ever. In a hiring process where CVs can be polished and prep can be automated, they are one of...

There is a new kind of race within AI startups and companies to hire for an old role that lends itself perfectly to selling products powered by technology that is changing as we speak.  We are talking of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE). The techie, consultant and product person all rolled into one.  Open AI created its FDE team early last year and Anthropic is rapidly growing its applied AI te...

We started 90,000 Hours because we believe careers are at an inflection point. Nothing seems to be certain anymore as old rules are actively being thrown out of the window. As we wrap up five months of this podcast, our reporting and stories reflected just that.    We have covered everything from how the American dream has shifted to how traditional networking has upended.  Across all these episod...

Generative AI has made it easy to churn out decent design, copy, code in seconds. But in this flood of outputs, who decides what’s actually good? This episode looks at taste . Not the elite kind shaped in galleries or runway shows, but the kind that helps you make better calls at work. The kind that separates polished from passable, thoughtful from just fine. You will hear from: Professor Bernd Sc...

Every generation has a way of thinking their problems are unique and that they have somehow been handed the wrong end of the stick. Most times, it is a cliche. But sometimes, it captures a rare moment that we are only beginning to understand. Ask a young software engineer at an IT services firm today, this reality hits deep. The thing is there is a general sense of dread in the air. Only compounde...

We ran a survey last month asking professionals whether AI tools had saved them time at work. About 200 of you wrote in. We heard from consultants, lawyers, product managers, software developers — even a yoga instructor. There were early-career professionals, mid-level managers, and senior leaders. Almost all of them said AI had saved them time — meaning it had managed to reduce the amount of time...

We have all heard the founder's story. The kind they make movies about. The kind of founders who see unimaginable success and build massive brands that the whole world knows about. Or the other kind of founder story. The founder whose startup fails. Who loses the company, the money, and sometimes even themselves along the way. But there’s another version of the founder story. What happens when the...

It started with a satellite dish arriving on a bullock cart.  Back in 1985, that scene outside Texas Instruments’ new Bengaluru office quietly marked the birth of India’s first multinational R&D centre and opened the doors for hundreds more to follow.  They were all looking for a slice of India’s vast, educated, English speaking, and most importantly, affordable, talent pool.  GE. CitiGroup. J...

Do you remember the first job you ever applied for?  Maybe it was during your college placement cycle. Or perhaps it was a frantic search on Naukri.com or LinkedIn right after graduation.  However you did it, and whatever role it was for, the struggle was more or less the same. You probably spent hours tweaking your résumé, asking a friend to review your cover letter, even rehearsing answers in fr...

In this week’s 90,000 Hours , Rahel Philipose speaks to Kirthiga Reddy, Meta India’s first hire, SoftBank’s first woman investing partner, and now founder of blockchain-powered credentialing platform, Verix. From taking a 40% pay cut after Stanford to steering an all-women SPAC through a turbulent market, she shares lessons on risk, reinvention, and building culture. This episode is also a first f...

India’s $283 billion IT industry is in the middle of a perfect storm: AI is rewriting old playbooks, GCCs are pulling away top talent, and clients are tightening budgets.  But this isn’t the first time the sector has had to recalibrate. In the latest episode of 90,000 Hours , we explore what’s next for Indian IT with: Krishnakumar Natarajan – Co-founder of Mindtree, Managing Partner at Mela Ventur...

For decades, studying in the US was seen as a golden ticket: a degree that promised not just world-class education, but a clear path to jobs, visas, and a better life abroad. But in 2025, that promise looks very different. We surveyed 50 Indian students and recent graduates in the US. Almost half told us they’ve either already moved back to India or are planning to. In this episode of 90,000 Hours...

What happens when AI at work isn't optional anymore?  Across the board, companies are investing in AI tools for their teams. But with that access comes a new kind of pressure to work smarter, move faster, and think more creatively.  So what does that actually look like in practice? And how does it feel on the ground?  In the latest episode of 90,000 Hours, Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur, The Ken's De...

For decades, networking was about being seen: showing up in the right rooms, handing out the right cards, and saying the right things. Today, a new generation of founders and VCs is rewriting that script with sweat, sneakers, and a shared goal to win the next point. In this debut episode of 90,000 Hours , host Rahel Philipose heads to a pickleball court in Bengaluru to explore how the startup worl...

You’ll spend 90,000 hours at work in your lifetime. How do you make that time count? 90,000 Hours is a weekly podcast from the newsroom of The Ken that helps you navigate today’s changing world of work, where the traditional 40-year career is gone, entry-level jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence, and staying relevant means constantly reinventing yourself. Hosted by Rahel Philipose,...