‘Worst financial decision’: Techie regrets rejecting Perplexity AI job offer. CEO Aravind Srinivas reacts

Posted on Author AIJobNexus

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Perplexity AI co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas has reached out to Aditya Baradwaj with a job offer in 2022.

A software engineer who had turned down the opportunity to be the founding engineer at Perplexity AI recently took to X to share how much he regretted the decision especially with the AI boom and the meteoric rise of the company led by its Indian-origin co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas.

Responding to a similar incident shared by another techie, Aditya Baradwaj revealed his “worst financial decision”. He shared a screenshot of a message Srinivas had sent him over Facebook in 2022, offering him a chance to be a founding engineer (the first engineer hired or first employee) at what has since become Perplexity AI.

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Baradwaj said that he did not take up the offer because things at the organisation he was working with, Alameda Research, was going pretty well.

Srinivas responded to the post with: “e/acc vs effective altruism”. He compared effective accelerationism, a philosophy movement that advocates for rapid technological progress with effective altruism, which uses evidence and reason to find the most effective ways to help.

Baradwaj agreed with him. “Yup, this is why e/acc will win,” he said.

After the interaction went viral, Baradwaj shared that he had recently discovered that he had missed another possible job opportunity with a second AI startup. Cursor AI’s founder had sent him five emails. “Looks like I ghosted Cursor as well,” Baradwaj said.

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Social media users responded to Baradwaj’s updates with disbelief and amusement. Several users called him a “fumbler” — a tag that Baradwaj accepted.

“Biggest fumble of the century,” wrote an X user while another commented, “I am going to cry reading this.”