Career regrets: 10 tech workers share what they wish they'd done differently

Aimen Moten (left) Nikhil Singh (center), and Abhinav Bohra (right) shared their biggest career regrets with Business Insider.Aimen Moten (left) Nikhil Singh (center), and Abhinav Bohra (right)Tech workers shared their biggest career regrets with Business Insider.Some wished they'd embraced AI sooner or explored different career paths.Others regretted missed job opportunities or staying too long at one company.Ask a tech worker about their biggest career regret, and they might have a hard time picking just one.In a fast-changing, highly competitive industry, it's easy to second-guess career decisions — and wonder whether another path might have been the better one.In interviews with Business Insider, tech professionals from companies including Amazon, Google, and Meta reflected on the career decisions they wish they'd handled differently. Some regretted not leaning into AI sooner, while others mentioned turning down a job offer, staying too long at one company, or waiting too long to build a professional reputation in the broader tech industry.Here's what 10 tech workers said they regret most. (Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.)I learned the hard way that loyalty wasn't a two-way streetMike Kostersitz says he wishes he'd left his longtime employer before he was laid off.Mike KostersitzMike Kostersitz is a senior director, product management at Nike. He worked at Microsoft for 31 years before being laid off last year. He's in his early 60s and lives in Oregon.My biggest career regret is not moving on more decisively before I got laid off.I stayed loyal to a company that had been great to me since I started back in the '90s, even as the job market and the industry itself changed dramatically around me. I kept believing loyalty was a two-way street, that sticking it out would be reciprocated.In the end I learned the hard way that it wasn't; the market shift hit me anyway, loyalty or not. If I could do it over, I'd have started testing the market well before the business yanked the carpet out under me.I walked away from machine learning before it took offThis tech worker is a software engineer at Meta.My biggest regret is not sticking with machine learning when I had the chance.In 2019 and 2020 I was building machine learning models at an edtech startup; things like dropout prediction and engagement scoring. Even back then, the direction the field was heading felt pretty clear, even though the models were limited.But when I went to graduate school I made a deliberate choice to focus on systems and infrastructure instead. It felt like the safer, more rigorous path at the time. Looking back, if I had stayed on the machine learning side, I would have been years into it by the time the field took off. I don't regret the systems background, since that's what makes me valuable now, but it's hard not to wonder what that other path would have looked like. Business Insider is speaking with tech workers who've found themselves at a corporate crossroads — whether due to a layoff, resignation, job search, or shifting workplace expectations.Share your story by filling out this form. I waited too long to build a reputation outside my companyNikhil Singh says he wishes he'd started building a professional reputation beyond his employer sooner.Nikhil SinghNikhil Singh is a data scientist at Amazon. He's in his 30s and lives in Seattle.If I had to pick one thing, my biggest regret is probably waiting too long to share what I had learned publicly.I spent over a decade building products, solving problems, and watching the field of data science evolve from early analytics to today's AI-driven landscape, but very little time writing, speaking, or contributing to the broader conversation around technology and decision-making.What I didn't appreciate early enough was that professional growth also happens outside the walls of your company. Within an organization, people may know the ideas you developed and the problems you helped solve. But outside it, you can easily be seen as simply another person with a title on LinkedIn rather than someone with meaningful expertise or a distinct point of view.Had I started writing, speaking, and exchanging ideas with others sooner, I would have built not only a stronger body of public work, but also a broader professional identity beyond the companies where I worked.I wish I'd handled some moments differentlyThis tech worker is a software engineer at a startup. She's in her 20s and lives in the Northeast.I honestly don't have any major career regrets. Even the experiences that weren't pleasant taught me something valuable about myself or about how organizations work.There are smaller moments I wish I'd handled differently. Early in my career, there were a few difficult meetings where I became emotional, and with more experience I know I would handle those situations differently today.I also worked in an environment where I felt concerns about a

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