Inner Scorecard

A former AWS Principal Solutions Architect told me that working a corporate job is like farming resources in World of Warcraft. Safe, predictable, and you never discover the secret levels. Then he compared life to a poker table where you push all your chips to the middle and leave anyway. I had to hear how this man thinks.  ⁨@cloudwithraj⁩  spent 6.5 years at AWS, reaching Principal level (fewer t...

A 17-year Amazon and Gap veteran who ran 100+ promotion pane;s, trained thousands of professionals, and was a bar raiser (1000+ interviews) told me the #1 reason people don't get promoted. It's not your work. It's that nobody knows who you are. I had to sit with that one. Myra Deshmukh spent nearly two decades on the other side of the table. She was the one deciding who gets promoted,...

A serial founder told me comfort and happiness are two completely different things — and that one distinction explains why most high earners are miserable. I had to hear the full story. Varun Hasija is the guy whose viral post about quitting his ₹1 crore job made national headlines across LiveMint, NDTV, Times Now, and Business Today. He's a DCE alum who rejected Amazon twice to join startups...

An ex-Amazon leader told me good work is table stakes and if you think strong results alone will get you promoted, you're playing the wrong game. Then he broke down the 1% rule of networking that built his entire business. Jason Yoong spent seven years in advertising going from assistant to VP, joined Amazon on the marketplace team, cliff-jumped into a startup that raised $8M on a PowerPoint d...

What if I told you dopamine is not about pleasure and your inability to stay focused or motivated isn't a character flaw? It's your brain doing exactly what it evolved to do. I sit down with Dr. Sankalp Garud, a cognitive neuroscientist from the University of Oxford — to unpack one of the biggest misconceptions of our generation: how dopamine actually works, and why understanding it could...

A Silicon Valley VC told me FU Money is a lie — and then explained why everything you buy will get cheaper in 10 years. I had to hear him out. Sanjiv Goyal is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and futurist who's been building at the intersection of tech and impact for two decades. He watched the PayPal revolution up close, invests in lab-grown protein and solid-state batteries, and on...

In this episode of The Inner Scorecard, I sit down with Lt. General Devendra Pratap Pandey, a highly decorated retired leader of the Indian Army, former GOC Chinar Corps & former Commandant of Army War College. This conversation is about something most civilians struggle with today: how to think clearly about geopolitics without getting consumed by noise. We go deep into what global conflict a...

I sit down with Corina Taban (ex Meta, Microsoft, Ubisoft) to unpack a problem a lot of high performers quietly live with: you have a “great” job on paper, but you feel bored, drained, or stuck. We go deep on the psychology behind motivation and burnout, why your manager can make or break your work life, the “golden handcuffs” effect that keeps people trapped, and the communication skills that wil...

What does it mean to win at both the inner and outer scorecard of life? What does it take to lead a 10,000+ person organization at Amazon while simultaneously undergoing 150 chemotherapy sessions? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Karuna Shankar Pande, a former Vice President at Amazon who recently stepped away from his high-power corporate role to pursue a personal mission of impacting 1 milli...

What does it really cost to make VP? I asked my ex-boss, Andrew Willingham, what it really cost him to make VP. Andrew is one of those rare leaders who people would willingly follow into any battle. I wanted to understand how he builds such high-trust, high-velocity teams and how he kept getting promoted—from individual contributor to VP—while navigating the intense culture of Amazon. The conversa...

This episode of The Inner Scorecard features Arnav Gupta , an engineering leader at Meta who has built a career defined by high agency and outlier decisions. We go back to the university days, and everyone knew Arnav as one of the best coders, but nobody could've guessed he would go on to solve some of the hardest tech problems out there. From rejecting Facebook and Zomato straight out of college...

This video took 25 years in the making. Decades of knowing each other and this conversation is what comes out of it. Rawal and I go way back to third grade, and this episode is us sharing a very real piece of who we are. From first love (& first breakups) to writing his first rap near Tagore Garden Metro Station, this journey has been rooted in West Delhi and shaped by our shared experience. I...

Two friends reconnect after a decade that changed everything. We both studied at Delhi College of Engineering, a tier-1 college where the future still felt completely open and uncertain. Neither of us could have predicted even 1 percent of what life had in store. The opportunities we stumbled into, the risks that worked out, and the kind of money we ended up making by the time we turned 30. In thi...

If you've had a setback at work/life and think that defines or limits you - watch this episode. Ethan went from being fired twice, divorced to getting promoted to VP at Amazon. What happens when you “make it” as an Amazon VP and realise the bigger house, second house, private jets and status ladder are just another treadmill? In this episode, I sit down with Ethan Evans, former Amazon Vice Preside...

Deepak Chopra, a visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist, has set a bold goal: to lift 5million Indians from poverty to the middle class. In this episode, we explore how Deepak is using education, not charity, to solve one of India’sdeepest-rooted problems — the lack of quality early education for millions of youth. Through his organization, Freedom Employability Academy (FEA):● Over 1,300 cente...

Meet Tom Veatch — linguist, philosopher, plumber, humor theorist, and literacy evangelist. In this powerful episode of The Inner Scorecard Podcast, host Nikhil sits down with what he calls “a walking library” — a man who never stopped learning and never limited himself to one identity. From his early academic work in linguistics and the N+V Theory of Humor, to living in Indian ashrams and creating...

Dr. Pankaj Kapahi is a world-renowned aging researcher and professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, where his lab explores the molecular and nutritional drivers of aging and age-related diseases. 🧬 In this episode of The Inner Scorecard, Dr. Kapahi dives deep into cutting-edge longevity science — including how diet, sugar, intermittent fasting, and even exercise timing impact your b...

Meet Leslie Pierson, the Seattle-based serial entrepreneur behind the hit family card game Taco vs Burrito and the innovative magnetic hanger GoodHangups (featured on Shark Tank). Leslie shares her fascinating journey—from teaching English abroad and working at Intel to creating award-winning startups. Leslie’s entrepreneurial adventures began with GoodHangups , an invention inspired by her son's...