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The software engineer had shared a screenshot of a message from Aravind Srinivas, inviting him to join the company in 2022.
Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI. (Photo Credit: X)
A software engineer took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his biggest career regret. Aditya Baradwaj, who had been offered the role of a founding engineer at Perplexity AI, shared his regret of turning down the opportunity especially after witnessing the company’s rapid rise in the AI boom.
In a post responding to a user who shared their “worst financial decision,” Baradwaj shared a screenshot of a message from Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, inviting him to join the company in 2022.
Srinivas had written, “Hey Aditya – been a long time – would you like to catch up some time? I am starting a company building LMs for businesses and would like to talk about it for a founding engineer.” Despite this offer, Baradwaj declined the opportunity as things were going well at his then-current job with Alameda Research.
“I said no because of how well things were going at Alameda Research/FTX,” Baradwaj shared in his post.
Srinivas responded to the post, commenting: “e/acc vs effective altruism.” He drew a comparison between two philosophies: effective accelerationism (e/acc), a philosophy movement that supports rapid technological progress, and effective altruism (EA), a movement focused on helping others through evidence-based reasoning.
Baradwaj agreed, stating, “this is why e/acc will win.”
But that wasn’t the only missed opportunity Baradwaj revealed. He also shared that he had recently realised that he had also turned down another potential job offer from a different AI startup. The founder of Cursor AI had sent him five emails but it seemed that Baradwaj had overlooked them. “Looks like I ghosted Cursor as well,” he wrote.
it gets worse!
looks like i ghosted Cursor as well
The interaction caught the attention of social media user who posted their varied reactions in the comment section.
One user commented, “I’d argue that’s not necessarily a bad decision. The outcome was poor. But the decision sounds logical (good current role, startup is more risk, etc).”
Several users labelled Baradwaj’s choice a major fumble. One comment read, “Biggest fumble of the century.”
Another user shared his similar experience, saying, “I declined to interview at perplexity Oct. 2022 because I was ‘too focused’ on my promo packet at Airbnb lol now i use perplexity almost every day! big fumble.” To which, Baradwaj replied jokingly, “join the club!”
Meanwhile, one person simply wrote, “Wow, that’s rough. Double shock,” while another humorously remarked, “The cake is gone. You must have taken it.”
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