Employee Experience

IndiGo (InterGlobe Aviation Ltd) CRISIS WASN’T IN THE SKIES. IT WAS IN THE LEADERSHIP CABIN. Three things stood out. One: Employees were left alone to face furious customers. No leader should ever let that happen. If you don’t stand by your people in a storm, don’t expect them to stand by your customers in the sun. Customer experience collapses the moment employees feel abandoned. Two: In any crisis, honesty is the only strategy that works. This time, the communication wasn’t transparent. When leaders hide the full picture, years of goodwill can disappear overnight. A crisis can earn trust, but only if you tell the truth. Three: The belief that “we are too big to be ignored” has ended more companies than competition ever has. Customers always have a choice. And if they don’t, they will create one. We shouldn’t watch the Indigo crisis like spectators. This is a reminder for every leader to build their own crisis blueprint. Because crises will come, when they do, your response becomes your reputation. There is more to business than profits. There are people, trust, and how you show up when it matters most.

Change my mind: #Architecture is becoming decentralised, and the role of architects is quietly evolving. Over the past few years, I witnessed many more teams owning their architectural decisions. Not because architects are less valuable, but because speed, autonomy, and local context matter more than ever. That doesn’t mean we no longer need architects. It means the role is shifting: From design authority to coach. From gatekeeper to enabler. From owner of decisions to facilitator of good ones. Probably not in every company or industry, but I’ve started to see architecture teams more like security teams: small, agile, scaling through others by enabling teams to make decisions within guardrails that are clearly defined and regularly revisited. Some might see this as a loss of control. I see it as a sign of trust and a powerful opportunity to have broader impact. Curious to hear from others: Are you seeing this shift too? How are architecture practices evolving in your company? #architects #distributedsystems #teamtopologies #future #tech

ESOPs don’t always work, but when they do its magical 5000 Swiggy employees made around 9000 crores in the IPO Some would have made 100 cr plus Many many more would have made 10 cr plus Life changing money for most people and will enable risk taking and another 100 plus startups from this set If you are evaluating offers from startups with significant ESOP component, this is how you should evaluate it For an employee to make meaningful money through ESOPs, 2 things must happen: - Growth in company value - Employee friendly ESOP policies that ensures employees make money when company grows a) Growth in Company Value This is where employees need to think like investors Just like investors are particularly wary of what valuation they are coming in, entry valuations should matter for employees too ESOPs are allotted basis the current valuation The likelihood of a 10x growth in your ESOPs if you are joining a startup valued at 100 million $ is much higher compared to joining a startup already valued at 5 billion $ A 75 lakh ESOP allotment in a 1000 cr valued org with chances of a 10x growth could be a better offer than 2 cr ESOP allotment at a 20000 cr valued org with lower chances of future growth The second thing to judge is the business model and the likelihood of the business to grow( very important for Seed/Series A/B startups) b) ESOP Policies The startup ecosystem is full of stories where employees didn’t make money despite the company growing and having multiple liquidity events. Swiggy, Zomato are examples of great ESOP policy. Many companies have extremely shitty ones Here are the things that should matter most while evaluating policies: 1. Vesting Schedule: The standard is 25% vesting after every year. Any schedule which has higher vesting towards the later years is a red flag Vesting should never be performance linked If performance is bad, it is management’s responsibility to fire 2. Vesting on Leaving/Startups Exit: If you exit, you should retain all options that has vested If a startup gets acquired before all your options vest, there should be accelerated vesting 3. ESOP Communication: There should always be written communication( preferably through ESOP portal) Verbal communication for ESOPs is a huge red flag 4. Strike Price: Strike Price should be as low as possible( Re 1 ideally). This maximizes the value creation for the employee 5. Holding/Exercise Period: Converting options to shares is a major tax liability exercise. With limited exercise period, it becomes impossible for employees to exercise as it means paying up to 40% real taxes on notional capital gains in an asset class that is not liquid Ideally, holding period should be infinite for vested options, even after exit This enables employees to wait for liquidity events without incurring upfront taxation to be paid out of own pocket

The ability to create clarity when there’s no shortage of chaos, opinions, and competing priorities is a rare skill. In any reasonably competent company, this skill alone will help take you quite far, fairly quickly. Concretely, this means creating clarity on the main problems, clarity on the right solutions, and clarity on the action plan & priorities. Very few people can do this well even though most people possess the intelligence necessary to do it. This is because most people in the workplace have been conditioned to add more information, sound more clever, satisfy more stakeholders, and feign more precision & certainty than is possible. Few understand that clarity in a chaotic situation can only emerge from subtraction, never from addition. Clarity comes from communicating what stands out as most important, why it is most important, how it will be achieved, and last but not the least, giving people a way of thinking about why it is okay, even great, that we aren’t doing All The Other Things.

Just out in Harvard Business Review, summary of the Hybrid Experiment results and lessons on how to make hybrid succeed. Experiment: randomize 1600 graduate employees in marketing, finance, accounting and engineering at Trip.com into 5-days a week in office, or 3-days a week in office and 2-days a week WFH. Analyzed 2 years of data. Two key results A) Hybrid and fully-in-office showed no differences in productivity, performance review grade, promotion, learning or innovation. B) Hybrid had a higher satisfaction rate, and 35% lower attrition. Quit-rate reductions were largest for female employees. Four managerial lessons 1) Hybrid needs a strong performance management system so managers don’t need to hover over employees at their desks to check their progress. Trip.com had an extensive performance review process every six months. 2) Coordinate in-office days at the team or company level. Schedule clarity prevents the frustration of coming to an empty office only to participate in Zoom calls. Trip.com coordinated WFH on Wednesday and Friday. 3) Having leadership buy-in is critical (as with most management practices). Trip.com’s CEO and C-suite all support the hybrid policy. 4) A/B test new policies (as well as products) if possible. Often new policies turn out to be unexpectedly profitable. Trip.com made millions of dollars more profits from hybrid by cutting expensive turnover.

Why are young professionals so unhappy? Historically, happiness followed a predictable curve: high in early adulthood, a dip in midlife, then an upward slope beginning around age 50. But recent research shows that the pattern is breaking down, and the younger generations aren’t hitting those early highs anymore. Younger adults are not starting out happy anymore and are entering the workforce already burdened by anxiety, loneliness, and a persistent sense of meaninglessness. The data is clear. Emotional distress is rising, especially among those under 30. And while we can point to economic headwinds, social media, or post-pandemic disruption, the deeper issue is existential. Many young professionals are struggling to answer a fundamental question: What is all of this for? This isn’t a rhetorical concern. Meaning, defined as coherence, purpose, and significance, is one of the three macronutrients of happiness, alongside enjoyment and satisfaction. And meaning is in short supply. Why? Because it typically comes from five sources: love, faith or another guiding philosophy, friendship, meaningful work, and contact with beauty, especially in nature. When these are missing or substituted with curated digital approximations, people suffer. Many early-career professionals are exhausted and disoriented. Organizations can help, but not through perks, ping pong tables, or yet another Slack channel. What’s needed is an environment where people can build coherent lives, marked by meaningful relationships, a clear purpose, and the ability to contribute something meaningful. All of that starts with helping them answer the question: Why does this work matter, really?

Should you try Google’s famous “20% time” experiment to encourage innovation? We tried this at Duolingo years ago. It didn’t work. It wasn’t enough time for people to start meaningful projects, and very few people took advantage of it because the framework was pretty vague. I knew there had to be other ways to drive innovation at the company. So, here are 3 other initiatives we’ve tried, what we’ve learned from each, and what we're going to try next. 💡 Innovation Awards: Annual recognition for those who move the needle with boundary-pushing projects. The upside: These awards make our commitment to innovation clear, and offer a well-deserved incentive to those who have done remarkable work. The downside: It’s given to individuals, but we want to incentivize team work. What’s more, it’s not necessarily a framework for coming up with the next big thing. 💻 Hackathon: This is a good framework, and lots of companies do it. Everyone (not just engineers) can take two days to collaborate on and present anything that excites them, as long as it advances our mission or addresses a key business need. The upside: Some of our biggest features grew out of hackathon projects, from the Duolingo English Test (born at our first hackathon in 2013) to our avatar builder. The downside: Other than the time/resource constraint, projects rarely align with our current priorities. The ones that take off hit the elusive combo of right time + a problem that no other team could tackle. 💥 Special Projects: Knowing that ideal equation, we started a new program for fostering innovation, playfully dubbed DARPA (Duolingo Advanced Research Project Agency). The idea: anyone can pitch an idea at any time. If they get consensus on it and if it’s not in the purview of another team, a cross-functional group is formed to bring the project to fruition. The most creative work tends to happen when a problem is not in the clear purview of a particular team; this program creates a path for bringing these kinds of interdisciplinary ideas to life. Our Duo and Lily mascot suits (featured often on our social accounts) came from this, as did our Duo plushie and the merch store. (And if this photo doesn't show why we needed to innovate for new suits, I don't know what will!) The biggest challenge: figuring out how to transition ownership of a successful project after the strike team’s work is done. 👀 What’s next? We’re working on a program that proactively identifies big picture, unassigned problems that we haven’t figured out yet and then incentivizes people to create proposals for solving them. How that will work is still to be determined, but we know there is a lot of fertile ground for it to take root. How does your company create an environment of creativity that encourages true innovation? I'm interested to hear what's worked for you, so please feel free to share in the comments! #duolingo #innovation #hackathon #creativity #bigideas

LinkedIn asks you to post today to celebrate "a woman who's made an impact on your career." But these kinds of posts, even earnestly written, tend to leave us feeling hollow. If we're looking for real progress towards fairness and equality at work, here's what to do instead: 🪴 Did you know that if there's only one woman on a shortlist of qualified candidates, she has a whopping 0% chance of being hired? Simply expanding shortlists to include more than one woman (and for that matter, people from historically marginalized communities) helps counter biased decision-making. 📋 Standardized process can be a surprisingly easy way to mitigate bias. Structured interviewing, standardized skill-based assessments directly related to job tasks, and standardized scoring rubrics can make comparisons across candidates more fair and substantially reduce subtle gender discrimination. 🌻 Incentivize flexibility for ALL workers, not just women. In a vacuum, harmful norms may arise that imply these arrangements are only utilized by those who "don't value their careers as much," penalizing workers of all genders. Celebrate senior leaders, especially men, who model greater flexibility and wellbeing so that all workers are licensed to do the same. 🔍 Conduct a pay equity audit, seeking to examine not only outcomes like total compensation, but also distribution of candidates across roles. If men and women in the same role are getting paid similarly, but women are dramatically overclustered in low-paying roles, you've still got a problem. ❤️🩹 Create an anonymous and/or informal process to report and addressing discrimination and harassment. A lower-stakes way to address harm, in addition to training bystander intervention and modelling respectful communication, accountability, and timely feedback from the top, can mitigate daily harms for all workers. Some folks hesitate to push for these practices because they feel more committing than just posting on social media. They're right — because with more effort comes more impact. So reach out to a few of your colleagues and advocates within your workplace to work together on pushing for these changes. Ten posts in isolation pale in comparison to the impact ten peoples' collective organizing might have on your workplace and everyone in it! Remember: International Women's Day is a chance for us not just to celebrate women, but to sharpen our advocacy alongside women, to build a future that's better, brighter, and more fair for all of us.

"Back then, my boss told me to charm the president of the client, that's what it'll take to finally close the deal." I shared this during one of our recent private circle coaching sessions, and no one was surprised... Instead: 👉"Mine told me to wear something softer to the board meeting. Less intimidating." 👉"I was advised to laugh more around the CEO. He likes women who don't take themselves too seriously." 👉"HR suggested I 'build rapport' with the CFO outside of work. Maybe golf, polo, drinks." Charm him. Soften yourself. Laugh more. Build rapport. 4 different companies. 4 different industries. The same playbook. 💔 Here's what tolerance actually costs: Every "that's just what it takes" you absorb doesn't just disappear. It relocates. Into your silence in the next meeting. Into the promotion you don't ask for. Into the boundary you stop enforcing because you've learned it won't be respected anyway. Tolerance isn't patience. It's training yourself to shrink. And the opposite of tolerance isn't confrontation, It's recognition! When Jen realized 4 other women had been told to "charm" their way to promotion, she stopped questioning her own judgment. When Rachel discovered 3 other executives had been told the same man was "old school, just work around him" she stopped wondering if she was being difficult. When Amy learned every woman in the room had been told to "document but not escalate", she stopped believing HR was neutral. 👁️The system only works if you think you're the only one. It needs you to think your experience is unique. That you're the problem. That if you were just more strategic, more patient, more charming, it would be different. But when 5 senior women sit in a room & compare notes, something shifts. "Is this normal?" becomes "This is the pattern." 🔥 The women who hold power in these systems share three things: 1️⃣ They stopped believing their experience was isolated. The moment you realize your "difficult" boss has been "difficult" to every woman before you, you stop personalizing & start strategizing. 2️⃣ They found other women at their level. Not mentors. Not sponsors. Peers. Women navigating the same rooms, the same politics, the same unwritten rules. Women who don't need context because they're living it. 3️⃣ They turned shared experience into collective leverage. One woman saying "this happened" is an accusation. Five women with documented patterns is a business risk. The math changes. This is why we built ㊙️ The Private Circle ㊙️. A room where 5 senior executive women turn individual experiences into collective intelligence. Where we don't just share what happened, we build what happens next! $4,998. 3 months. 5 senior executive women who are done being isolated by design. Next cohort starts Feb 2026. 💬 DM me if you're ready to stop being the only one who knows. 👊 Because the system isn't afraid of one woman speaking up. It's afraid of 5 women realizing they have the same story.

Startup equity is not cash. Obvious! But we see early-stage founders and HR get ahead of themselves on this all the time. The AI bubble has only made it worse. With valuations getting wild, employees can be dazzled by equity offers expressed as massive dollar figures...but ask a few startup folks who joined rocket ships in 2021 how often those numbers actually hit the bank account. Okay: you're a Series A founder (company valued at $60M) and you're trying to close an amazing engineer. In her offer, you list the base salary, any potential bonuses, and the equity options package (Incentive Stock Options or ISOs). 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘀: • Annual base salary: $153,000 • Potential bonus: Up to $8,000    • Equity: Annual value of $26,000 ❌ 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱: • Annual base salary: $153,000 • Potential bonus: Up to $8,000    • 4-Year Equity Grant: 15,000 options which represent 0.054% of fully-diluted shares + a link to a scenario model the employee can utilize to project the future Is that as easily understandable as the dollar amount? No! But it's far more honest. Expressing equity in dollar terms should be reserved for startups that are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars - because the modal outcome for Series A equity is $0. It's why the discussion of "what % of my compensation is equity vs cash" can be quite misleading at young companies. Besides share count and % ownership, candidates should also ask: • 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: What is the post-money valuation of the company? When did that round take place? Has the company had to raise any convertible bridge financing since then? Are there plans to raise more capital?    • 𝗘𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘀: What is the current strike price? What is the vesting period? What is the post-termination equity period for these options (typically they'll say 90 days after you leave, which is..not a lot! Could be a negotiation point for you to push on).    • 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: When this company goes public or gets acquired, what's the minimum valuation it needs to achieve for common stock to make a profit?    Venture-backed dollars can come with strings attached. Those strings (liquidity preferences, participating preferred, etc) can make it harder for employees to get any real value out of their equity EVEN WHEN the company exits. This question may not be something a recruiter can answer. Remember: equity is not cash. It's upside only. The more you know. #startups #salary #equity #founders #compensation