A woman has revealed that she regrets moving back to India for work, calling it a “mistake”. In a post shared on Reddit, the woman explained that although she is from India, she completed most of her schooling from Singapore and worked in London for some time.
Despite all the time she spent away from home, she loved coming back to India — until she moved back for work and realised how toxic the work culture here is.
‘Seriously regretting it’
In her Reddit post, the 26-year-old woman said she did her schooling from Singapore and moved back to India for her undergraduate programme. After that, she went to London for a master’s and found a job in the UK capital.
Although she liked her job, the woman quit for reasons completely unrelated to work — which she now calls a “pretty stupid” thing to do.
“I loved my job, and for reasons completely unrelated to work (and honestly, pretty stupid in hindsight), I left. That was my first mistake, because London had been my dream since childhood,” she wrote.
Laid off in Singapore
After leaving her job in her dream city of London, the Indian woman moved back to Singapore and joined an investment bank. Unfortunately, her team was dissolved within six months of her joining as the work was being outsourced to India.
“Since they were outsourcing to India—and I had gotten close to the people I was training—they encouraged me to move to India. The pay was obviously lower, but the idea of being home felt comforting, so I said yes,” she explained.
The woman took a pay cut and moved back to India, but said she is now “seriously regretting” her decision.
Toxic work culture in India
According to her, the work culture in India is toxic and the office politics is draining. In the last three months since she moved to India, she has come to regret her decision.
She says that the work environment is poles apart from what she was used to in the UK. Here in India, she has to struggle even to get a day off.
“It’s been three months now… and reality is hitting hard. The boss culture is toxic, the politics drain me, and the work environment feels worlds apart from what I was used to in UK. I miss the openness, the structure, and the respect for boundaries. Here, I’m literally having to justify taking a day off,” she wrote.
“And now I keep wondering: should I have never left London? Or even Singapore? I don’t know if this is just an adjustment phase or if I made a huge mistake,” the woman wondered.