Dattatray Dagale

Are You Actually Using AI or Just Playing With It?

Last month, I sat across from a junior analyst at work — sharp guy, good with Excel — and asked him how he was using ChatGPT for his reports. He said, "I tried it once but it wasn't that good." When I dug deeper, it turned out he'd asked it to "write me a financial analysis" and copy-pasted whatever came out. That's not using…

GitHub Is Not Just for Developers—It's How Modern Work Gets Done

I didn't understand GitHub until I stopped thinking of it as a tool for programmers. Six months ago, a colleague at Morningstar sent me a GitHub link to review some analysis code. I opened it expecting to see some intimidating terminal nonsense. Instead, I found myself looking at a neatly organized folder structure, comments explaining what each piece d…

Stop Learning Random Tools. Learn What Companies Actually Need in 2025.

Last month, I was sitting in the Kalyan railway station at 7:15 AM, coffee in one hand, my laptop in the other, scrolling through a LinkedIn post from some guy claiming he learned "15 data analysis tools" and got hired within three weeks. I believed him for exactly forty seconds. Here's why: the week before, I'd interviewed three candidates…

Will ChatGPT Replace Your Skills or Force You to Build Better Ones?

I was wrong about ChatGPT . Six months ago, when the hype first hit, I did what most analysts do—I panicked quietly and told myself I'd figure it out later. I saw the headlines: "AI will replace half the jobs." I watched colleagues in finance start using it to draft reports. And I thought: this is either the biggest threat to my career or the s…

Gold or Stocks — Which Should Actually Be in Your Portfolio Right Now?

Dear younger me (and probably you, reading this from Kalyan or wherever), I'm sitting at my desk in the Morningstar office in Mumbai, staring at two portfolios on my screen. One is loaded with physical gold sitting in a locker somewhere in Kalyan. The other is a diversified stock portfolio across BSE and NSE. And honestly? I used to think this was an e…

Does the 50-30-20 Rule Actually Work for Indian Salaries?

I messed up my first salary badly . Twenty-three, fresh out of college, ₹3.2 lakh per annum as a junior analyst. I thought I'd cracked the code. No more asking my parents for money. Independence felt like a word I could finally own. Within three months, I'd blown through four months of salary on things I couldn't even remember — eating out in Mum…