Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers in the AI Economy and about the world of work. The sketchnotes are my own.
Types, Fonts, Rifts and Charts
Pro tip: After you make the charts, pause to annotate them. Think of them as a whisper in the ear of the decision maker.
Watermelons, book covers & 4 year olds
Old timers in every organisation resent the big bucks that their employer is willing to pay when they bring in external hires. It is much more effective to invest in growing your own talent.
Earners-learners & rejection
Most people underestimate the value of likability in their career. When you make a mistake, people are likely to give you a second chance if they like you. Else they will pull out a rule book and tell you why you have not done what you must.
Employer brands, benchmarking and writing
If you’re a morning person, you should do your analytical work early when you’re at peak alertness; your routine tasks around lunchtime in your trough; and your creative work in the late afternoon or evening when you’re more likely to do nonlinear thinking. The reverse holds true if you are a night owl.
Can culture be benchmarked?
I was once talking to the founder of a startup who wanted to build the culture of Google in his firm. He wanted to benchmark the ‘best practices’ of Google’s culture of innovation and that is how he implemented this policy in his 50-person startup. Every employee in that tiny startup had to work on a personal project. Two months later a few employees came to the founder and asked for permission to work from home so that they could work together undisturbed on a secret project they had come up with.
Talent, mentors & 'No Rules Rules'
Can you find a virtual mentor even as you are locked up at home? That is what elite universities provide - great teachers and great mentors. Does that justify the premium they are paid? If you are NOT from an elite institute, is there any way you can compete? Yes, and it is something you can do today.
Abhijit's Sketchnotes No 13
I wrote about the experience of spending a day with Gulzar Saab watching him record that translation. It was a fanboy moment for me
Online learning - is it better
What if content creators was left to a team of instructional designers, academics, storytellers, animators, video and audio creators. They could create short form and long form content that is engaging and interactive. If the content has already been created and can be used by the teacher, it is infinitely better than listening to someone standing before a camera and droning on.
Ep 9 In conversation with Pratik Kumar
There is something else besides the role dimensions, I think there is a very high sense of responsibility when you get into a business leadership role and the responsibility is about you realize your decisions are beginning to impact the careers of people, their whole livelihoods, the direction which you wish the organization to take and you bet on could come through, it need not, it could have an impact and you need to do it in a lot more responsible manner. And that sense of responsibility just gets accentuated when you step into this role which I have to admit was not there earlier.
Ep6: Anuj Kacker on New Age Careers
Many parents still go for conventional career choices like Engineering, Medicine, Law etc. These fields are crowded and the supply of talent exceeds the demand. Take Engineering for example. There are 16,00,000 seats in Engineering colleges in India and barely 800,000 of these get filled. Of these 800,000 students who graduate from Engineering colleges, 60% do not get employed and 20% do not get the right jobs. The average fees paid across 4 years of Engineering education is Rs 10,00,000 but the average starting salary is barely Rs260,000 per year. To repay a student loan at that salary level takes 3-4 years. The new age careers lie in fields like animation, cinematics, aviation etc
Ep 5: Joshua Karthik on Succeeding as a Gig Worker
Joshua Karthik and his brother are behind the Virat Kohli-Anoushka wedding photos that got 10 million views. Their photos of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas have been viewed 17 million times. When I invited Joshua Karthik to the studio of Dreamers and Unicorns I asked him how much money should one have in the bank to feel confident in quitting the job? His answer may suprise you.
Ep 3 R Balki on Storytelling, Tech and Creativity
During the podcast I asked Balki what got him interested in movies. He said it was the music used in films that used to generate images in his head. These images were better than the images that he saw on screen. That was the magic of music. Specifically Iylaiyaraja's music. He spoke about his admiration for Ilaiyaraja's music. No surprise that Ilaiyaraja scored the music for Balki when he made Cheeni Kum. And Paa
Ep 2: Anita & Harsha Bhogle talk about lessons from sports
The Olympics motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius. That means faster, higher and stronger. That motto offers a great faith in human potential. Every four years, people gather together to redefine what is humanly possible. Every four years the record books engrave what is the ultimate achievement in every sport. Four years later athletes gather to break what was once defined as the outer limit of the human being. The world of work is getting reinvented. This episode gets the two talking about stories and secrets they have never shared before.
Ep 1: The New Code of Work ft Pankaj Bansal
Technology has made it possible to work 24x7 from anywhere. Companies routinely invest millions in customer facing technology. But the same companies work with clunky systems that are outdated and just simply painful to use. Investing in good HR tech can be a simple way to improve the employee experience.
Dreamers and Unicorns are the new role models
We have seen three phases of working. Phase 1 was all about getting a job. As employers and employment became more fluid, it gave rise to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship was the second phase after employment. In the more recent times, gig work has started to grow especially in India. Millennials and GenZ prefer the flexibility that freelancing allows. That is where Dreamers and Unicorns come in.