Shantanu loved his first job. He had great admiration for the senior leadership. The work was fulfilling and meaningful. And his peers were great. It was the perfect job for him, except for one thing – his manager. He was "caught in the chaos" of unrealistic deadlines, shifting goalposts, and vague feedback. Is there anything he could have done to make the situation better besides quitting? How do you deal with a difficult boss?

On this episode of TFTY, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran brings two people who are known for their abilities to coach people and transform workplace cultures - Shiv Shivakumar, one of India’s longest-serving CEOs, and Nitin Sharma, Partner, Antler India, a VC firm.

Do you have a career question we can help you to solve? Share a note with the host at akshaya@the-ken.com or take this form and let us know. We might have you on the show! The First Two Years is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive business stories, deeply-reported newsletters, and a whole lot of stuff.

You just started your first job at a new company. You’re ready. You’re eager. You’re smart and capable. It’s all the makings of the take-the-world-by-storm career. But to your dismay, you end up with “grunt” work. It feels like all your achievements from college have been wiped out clean, and you’ve to prove that you can be a high achiever in the office as well.

This continues to happen week after week. You feel like you're stuffed with tasks that nobody wants to do. You feel like you're meant for bigger and more high-impact projects. What do you do? How do you get into those right teams and right projects and make an impact?

Should you just bide your time till you get to the good stuff? Or should you quit and find a different job with less of this "boring" work?

On this episode of TFTY, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran brings two people who have been there and done that – Sairam Krishnan, head of marketing at Atomicwork, and Shresth Tandon, director of operations at Media.net. Both went through this same ordeal and came out with a unique understanding of how to make the grunt work “matter.”

Do you have a career question we can help you to solve? Share a note with the host at akshaya@the-ken.com or take this form and let us know. We might have you on the show! The First Two Years is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive business stories, deeply-reported newsletters, and a whole lot of stuff.

You’re new and young and people just don’t trust you. Have you ever struggled to be taken seriously at work? How do you get the results you want if people don’t trust you or cooperate with you, especially when you have no title or authority?

On this episode of TFTY, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran brings on Dr Nashater Deu Solheim who is a pro at making connections, building trust with difficult co-workers, and connecting in a more meaningful way. She’s a psychologist who’s worked with certified psychopaths in maximum security settings and she brings those lessons into solving this complex disconnect issue.

Do you have a career question we can help you to solve? Share a note with the host at akshaya@the-ken.com or take this form and let us know. We might have you on the show! The First Two Years is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive business stories, deeply-reported newsletters, and a whole lot of stuff.