Field notes from the team in Chennai.

Posts on Indian HR, payroll engineering, hiring craft, and what it takes to build software for the way India actually works.

Most-read this quarter.

The five posts our readers spent the most time on over the last 90 days. Engineering deep-dives and India-specific compliance pieces tend to do best.

Compliance · 7 min read

The DPDP Act for HR teams, in plain language

Twelve practical things HR teams need to know about India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act. Co-written with our DPO. What changes for offer letters, exits, and applicant data.

··12.4k views
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HR craft · 12 min read

Performance reviews that don't waste everybody's time

The sixteen anti-patterns we watch managers fall into, and the lightweight cycle our own team uses internally. Why mid-year reviews matter more than annual ones.

··9.8k views
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Payroll · 11 min read

Why first payroll fails (and how to make sure yours doesn't)

The eight failure modes we've watched companies trip on during their first run on a new HRMS, and the dry-run checklist we now ship with every implementation. PF code mismatch is the boring but most common one.

··8.2k views
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HR craft · 10 min

Five shifts that decide if HR stays operational or becomes strategic

Most HR teams spend ninety per cent of their time on operations. Five concrete shifts move the needle, and four of them are about saying no to work that should not have come to HR in the first place.

··6.9k views
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Hiring craft · 9 min read

Structured interviews beat panels for fast-growth teams

Why we recommend role-specific structured interview kits for any team scaling beyond 50 hires a year. Includes the scorecard format and calibration cadence we ship as a default.

··5.4k views
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Everything we've written.

Engineering deep dives, HR craft, hiring, payroll, compliance, product behind-the-scenes, and the occasional company essay. Use the filter strip to narrow down.

Engineering · 18 min

Building a payroll engine that handles 14 entities at once

How we model multi-entity tenants while keeping PF, ESIC, PT, and TAN codes scoped per entity. The data model, the migration story, and the gotchas we hit at 5,000 employees.

··2.7k views
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HR craft · 8 min

The first 100 days, told by 12 HR leaders

Patterns from interviews with HR leaders who joined fast-growing Indian companies. What worked, what they wish they'd done sooner, and the underrated importance of a buddy programme.

··2.5k views
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Hiring craft · 10 min

How to write a take-home that candidates actually finish

Eighteen rules of thumb on take-home assignment design, drawn from tracking completion rates across 4,200 assignments on our platform. Two-hour cap is doing a lot of work.

··2.9k views
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Payroll · 9 min

Full-and-final settlement, end to end

Notice pay, leave encashment, gratuity, recoveries, and statutory letters. The order in which to compute them, and the rounding gotchas that cause the most disputes at exit.

··3.6k views
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Compliance · 6 min

POSH Act amendments, and what they mean for ICCs

Recent changes to ICC composition, training cadence, and reporting under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act. Plain language summary with the action checklist HR teams can run today.

··4.1k views
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Product · 7 min

Behind the scenes: shipping the AI screening engine

The nine-month journey from prototype to GA, the design partner programme that shaped the six default scoring parameters, and the bug that almost cost us the launch.

··950 views
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Engineering · 13 min

Why we left Postgres for ClickHouse on the analytics tier

The query latency wall we hit at 800 customers, the migration plan, and what we'd do differently. Spoiler: we kept Postgres for transactional, and the joint architecture is working.

··1.5k views
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Hiring craft · 11 min

Sourcing on Naukri vs LinkedIn vs Indeed in 2026

Channel-by-channel breakdown of cost-per-applicant, time-to-shortlist, and offer-accept rates across 8,400 hires on our platform. The picture differs sharply by role family.

··2.1k views
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Payroll · 8 min

Reading the EPFO ECR challan, line by line

The Electronic Challan-cum-Return is the single most common source of payroll disputes. Field by field, with the validations our system runs and the most frequent failure modes.

··2.4k views
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HR craft · 9 min

Calibration sessions that don't end in a fight

Why your nine-box always lands too top-heavy, and the agenda we use to keep calibrations honest. Includes the disagreement-resolution rule that saves the most relationships.

··3.3k views
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Compliance · 5 min

State PT slabs we updated this quarter

Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal all moved Professional Tax slabs in Q1 2026. Effective dates, what changed, and the impact on payroll cycles already in flight.

··1.4k views
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Product · 8 min

What we learned from 90 design partners

The ATS launch involved 90 design partners over nine months. The five biggest product changes the partners drove, and the one feature we shipped, then walked back.

··880 views
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Company · 6 min

Why we built pPULSE in Chennai

India's HR-tech needs to be built by people who have actually run payroll in India. The case for staying close to customers, the trade-off on talent depth, and what life is like on the ground in T. Nagar.

··720 views
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Engineering · 12 min

Webhooks at scale: what we learned at 80 million events

How we deliver, retry, and dead-letter webhooks across 2,400 customers without losing events. Idempotency keys, exponential back-off, and the quietly-impactful 12 hour replay window.

··1.1k views
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HR craft · 7 min

Writing offer letters people actually accept

The eight things to include, the four things to leave out, and the framing that improves accept rates by ~9 points. Drawn from offer-acceptance data across our customer base.

··1.8k views
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Company · 5 min

Hiring philosophy at pPULSE

Why we keep teams small, what we look for in early hires, and the four-step interview loop we run for engineering. Calibrated structured interviews, every time, no exceptions.

··320 views
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HR craft · 10 min

Five shifts that decide if HR stays operational or becomes strategic

Most HR teams spend ninety per cent of their time on operations. Five concrete shifts move the needle, and four of them are about saying no to work that should not have come to HR in the first place.

··6.9k views
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Compliance · 9 min

PF and ESIC across 28 states: a 2026 playbook

Multi-state employers carry compliance complexity that single-state companies underestimate. The playbook covers PF code structure, ESIC sub-codes, and the cross-state edge cases that produce most of our support tickets.

··1.9k views
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HR craft · 8 min

Building an OKR rhythm that survives a quarter

OKRs fail more often from cadence problems than from quality problems. The rituals that keep them alive are simple, but they have to be non-negotiable.

··540 views
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HR craft · 11 min

Manager training: what every Indian first-time manager needs

First-time managers in Indian companies often inherit a team of peers and very little context on how to lead them. The training that actually moves the needle is short, scenario-based, and stretched over months, not days.

··410 views
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