"No way he has written this!" Felt this way reading a LinkedIn post from a long-lost friend? He cannot write that well, you think. But that's below the belt. Maybe he improved. A steep learning curve, but not impossible. Yet something's amiss. Then it dawns. The language, the idioms, the metaphors. All highly polished. All... Continue Reading →
The Machine That Listens Too Well
It's a piece about how AI is affecting human ability to build and nurture relations with fellow-humans.
AI Made Us 3x Faster. Our Output Didn’t Change.
Robert Solow said something in 1987 that feels written for 2026: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." We are living the AI version of it right now.
Writing is Now 20% of a Writer’s Job
The Writing Is the Easy Part Now A writer friend of mine, who once tasted critical acclaim before slipping off the literary map, called me recently to ask whether AI had killed his career. His sales had flatlined. He gestured at the Amazon charts, thick with clean, readable, aggressively optimistic titles. "Is it the algorithm?... Continue Reading →
The Gig Workers Strike Isn’t Market Failure—It’s Market Pressure Working
The gig workers strike raises a question we're not asking: Can workers exit? If yes, let market pressure work. If no, then regulate. But before we rush to "do something," we need to understand the difference between empathy and good policy.
2025, or What Happened When the Reservoir Ran Dry
When I started this newsletter (back in 2024), I had the confidence of someone who'd never run out of ideas. By this year, the reservoir had run dry. But I kept writing anyway. Here's what I learned from writing 51 newsletters in 2025: → AI dominated my output (31%) when I planned to write about policy → Being right about content marketing's comeback didn't prevent months of struggle → The newsletter became less about expertise, more about documenting uncertainty → Writing became thinking in public The biggest lesson? Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. And that applies to career too.
The Waiting Room We Never Left
"What if a demon were to creep after you one night... and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more...' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'?" - Friedrich... Continue Reading →
Wondering If You Should Follow Up After Interviews? Here’s The Answer.
Radio silence after an interview? Should you follow up? Or will it make you look desperate? I wrestled with this myself this year, sending dozens of follow-ups and tracking the results. My finding: while silence usually means rejection, there's a crucial 20% upside you're leaving on the table if you don't act strategically.
The Great Resume Paradox: How AI Broke the Job Market
AI in hiring has accidentally brought back the "sifarish" culture from 1970s & 80s Hindi movies, where referrals open the doors. I call it the Great Resume Paradox: tools designed to help you stand out made everyone identical instead.
India’s Op Sindoor: The End of Strategic Restraint, The Dawn of Deterrence
In response to the Pahalgam terrorist attack in India's Jammu and Kashmir on April 22nd, 2025, India launched a military campaign codenamed Operation Sindoor on May 7th, 2025. As a marketer, I cannot overstate how apt the codename was. This was indeed unprecedented, marking an end to decades of strategic restraint by the Indian state.... Continue Reading →
Musings by Madhav 