On Feb. 8, an Indian American software engineer took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his biggest career regret. Aditya Baradwaj, who was offered a role as a founding engineer at Perplexity AI, said he now regrets turning down the opportunity—especially after witnessing the company’s rapid rise during the AI boom.
In response to a user who shared their “worst financial decision,” Baradwaj posted a screenshot of a message from Perplexity AI co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas, inviting him to join the company in 2022.
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“Hey Aditya—been a long time—would you like to catch up sometime? I am starting a company building LMs for businesses and would like to talk about it for a founding engineer,” Srinivas wrote.
Despite the offer, Baradwaj declined, saying he was content with his role at Alameda Research. Baradwaj earned his degree from University of California at Berkeley where he met Srinivas, and held roles at Google, Alameda and later, embarked on an entrepreneurial journey, founding TradeYourMeme.com and AstraMarkets.
“I said no because of how well things were going at Alameda Research/FTX,” Baradwaj wrote.
Alameda Research and FTX collapsed in November 2022 after revelations of financial mismanagement and fraud. Baradwaj wrote a thread of posts on X, sharing his personal experience with the crypto firm of having his “entire life savings stolen” due to the collapse.
Srinivas responded to Baradwaj’s post with: “e/acc vs effective altruism,” referencing a comparison between effective accelerationism (e/acc)—a movement that supports rapid technological progress—and effective altruism (EA), which focuses on using evidence-based reasoning to help others.
Baradwaj agreed, replying, “This is why e/acc will win.”
He added, “kudos to @AravSrinivas and team though, Perplexity is a great product.”
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However, that wasn’t the only missed opportunity Baradwaj revealed, realizing he had also overlooked potential job offers from another AI startup, Cursor AI. Its founder had sent him five emails, but Baradwaj appeared to have missed them.
“Looks like I ghosted Cursor as well,” he wrote on X. Baradwaj must’ve been riding a wave of bad luck as the post sparked a flurry of reactions online. One user’s comment read, “Biggest fumble of the century,” echoing the sentiment of many other comments.