Shikhar Shukla
Full Stack Developer | People Research & Talent Acquisition | Behavioral Writer at Substack
“I become curious whenever reality quietly stops matching the explanation everyone is still using.”
Engineering Work
Booksly
flagUKResearch & Case Studies
Why Divide-and-Conquer Policies Backfire
A Workplace Ethnography
A six-month insider ethnography documenting how control-based workplace policies produced behavioral outcomes opposite to their intended effect. Includes the Control-Trust-Output Loop framework, boundary condition analysis, testable hypotheses, and consulting recommendations.
Research & Writing
My SubstackThese essays and notes are published on my Substack.
"I Thought I Was Interested In Self-Knowledge."
I started observing YouTube to understand myself. I ended up discovering what actually holds my attention.
"The Day YouTube Stopped Choosing For Me."
I thought I was testing YouTube's algorithm. The experiment ended up testing me.
"How YouTube Controls Your Thinking Before You Notice."
A breakdown of 7 design mechanisms YouTube uses to keep you scrolling — observed from the inside.
"YouTube Is Not Your Problem. Tomorrow Is."
First-person account of why I use YouTube to escape thinking about tomorrow — and what happens when I finally noticed.
About Shikhar
I'm a full stack developer based in Vadodara, India, with 1.5 years of experience building production applications for international clients across the UK, Canada, USA, and the Netherlands.
But the part of the work I keep returning to is the conversation before the build — the requirement-gathering call, the moment when what a client says they need and what they actually need start to diverge. Finding that gap, and naming it clearly, is where I do my best work.
On the side, I research and write about behavioral psychology — specifically the moment when accepted explanations stop matching what people actually do. I publish long-form behavioral essays on Substack and conduct qualitative case studies on organizational behavior and product adoption.
I'm currently exploring roles in Technical Recruitment and Behavioral Research, where understanding people's real motivations is the core of the work — not a side effect of it.