Working at The Ken means working alongside some of the most talented, experienced and driven writers, editors, programmers, product managers and marketers in India and South-East Asia. All of whom are connected to each other via a strong and unique culture born of the marriage between journalism and software startups. A culture where programmers understand the value of first-hand reportage of facts while journalists appreciate the minimum viable product design approach.
There are four pillars on which we stand:
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Our Journalism
Independent, original, analytical and well-narrated
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Our People
Talented, ambitious, ethical and empathetic
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Our Culture
Open, transparent, feedback-driven and collaborative
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Our Products
High-quality, distinct, data-driven and fun
Our Values
High bar on success
We’re driven, period. We constantly benchmark ourselves against not just the best examples we can find globally, we also measure ourselves against our own previous benchmarks.
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Zeal for excellence: Call it that, or the drive for perfection, but we don’t settle for “good enough”. (Unless it’s part of an iterative feature launch - explained better below.)
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We never accept the status quo: Which means we’re often questioning assumptions or realities, and trying to disprove them. Even if they’re our own.
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We’re (slightly) paranoid We prefer not to dismiss events or competitors offhand.
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Ambition: We are an ambitious lot who set ourselves high benchmarks for success.
Open
We’re open by default, perhaps because openness is a virtue on both sides of our lineage – journalism and software products. Openness manifests itself in various ways at The Ken.
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Open doors: You can walk up to anyone, regardless of designation or role, with suggestions, questions or requests.
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Transparency: We are extremely transparent amongst ourselves on everything that we affect or that affects us. Our philosophy is employees should not have to learn about something that affects them from the outside. Our weekly All-Hands calls feature lively discussions on organisational goals, growth metrics, story impacts, hiring policies, product launches and editorial strategies.
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Communicate: We prefer over-communicating to under communicating. We trust each other to safeguard privileged and confidential information.
Collectively Vested
As a team, we are deeply engaged with each other and collectively vested in self-improvement. And we genuinely celebrate each other’s success.
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Team over individual: We don’t believe in or encourage silos or turfs. Wherever possible, we encourage people to work together. Because in our experience, the best stories, products or solutions often emerge from multiple minds collaborating closely.
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Peer-to-peer: The best form of learning or self-improvement often happens at a peer-to-peer level. There are numerous fora where we do this, ranging from “writers calls” to brainstorming sessions.
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Camaraderie: We forge deep and trusting friendships with each other. We take care to sustain and nourish these through even seemingly trivial things like birthday cakes, monthly team events and communal lunches.
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Default-to-trust:We assume good intentions and trust in each other by default.
