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After weeks (or months) of applying and interviewing for jobs, you finally land the role made for you. Its a moment of celebration and reliefthis feels like the finish line. But what happens if, mere days after starting, you think: Did I just make a huge mistake? Maybe the job description was misleading, maybe the culture feels off, or maybe you just cant shake the sense that you simply made the wrong move. Should you immediately look for the exit? Or is it possible to turn things around and make the role work? Early job regret can be a common experience, but its also one that needs to be handled carefully, both for your career growth and your professional reputation. Identify your feelingsthen take action Before making any big decisions, its important to take a step back and reflect on whats driving your regret. Is it the actual tasks of the role? Is it the company? Is it the people you work with? says Madeline Mann, author and career coach who runs Self Made Millennial, a YouTube channel about career development with over 400,000 subscribers. Pinpointing the source of regret will help you figure out whether the situation is temporary, something that could improve with time, or a much bigger mismatch between you and the job itself. If your new role seems unclear, overwhelming, or if youre unsure how to execute your tasks, it might be time to seek clarity from your manager. Still, even if your manager thinks theyre telling you everything, there are times theyve been in their role for so long they dont necessarily remember what it feels like to be a new employee, Mann explains. Taking initiative to fill those gaps is far more effective than throwing in the towel and thinking, No one told me, Im lost. I give up. If you know what youre struggling with and youre comfortable doing so, make sure you share it with your manager and be as transparent as possible. Tell them what you need; that way, You’re bringing solutions to your manager, versus kind of putting it on them, Mann says. Shifting your perspective to look for the positiveseven small onescan also help you regain a sense of control when you feel regret. Sometimes we get into this victim mindset. But what is good? What is positive? What can you accomplish? explains Mann. Celebrating even minor wins can remind you why you took the job in the first place. That may help you build momentum while you decide whether the role is truly the right fit for you. Patrice Williams-Lindo, CEO of Career Nomad and a career pivot coach, echoes Manns sentiments. If youre regretting your new job, ask yourself, Is it a blip or a collapse? If its just an adjustment, stay and recalibrate, Williams-Lindo says. Now, she adds, If its true misalignment, its time to leave. Staying in misalignment is how you compound career debt. In other words, lingering in the wrong role can make it harder to leave later. When to bail If youve done all the above and still regret it, maybe it’s time to look elsewhere. But if the company itself isnt whats giving you reservations, that doesnt always mean you need to leave the place entirely. I always encourage someone to do their best to try to find a better fit within the organization they’re already at, Mann says. The best way to do that is to send out emails or instant messages when you’re a new hire and say, Hey, I’m new. I just joined. Here’s my job title, and I’m making sure to connect with people in different departments so I can really understand the business and how I can be of service, possibly somewhere down the line, or collaborate with you in some way. Would you be open to talking for 15 minutes? Mann explains. If youve tried to make the role and company work, and it still doesnt feel rightit may truly be time to move on. Mann refers to these situations as oopsie” jobsroles that last less than three months but were intended to be longer. Those oops jobs you can just very easily leave off of your résumé if you’d like, Mann says. Update your LinkedIn and digital footprint so this role looks like part of your evolution, not a mistake, Williams-Lindo says. This might include refreshing your profile, highlighting key accomplishments, and aligning your experience with your broader career narrative. If you choose this route, its best to have a simple and understandable reason for why you left when bringing it up in interviews. If you start complaining about the company, that’s actually actively hurting your candidacy for other jobs, so make your reason for leaving that company as concise and positive as humanly possible, Mann says. A good example would be: When I joined the company, there was a certain role I joined for. Once I joined, the priorities shifted quite a bit to something that was very much outside of my skill set, and so it was a mutual split. It made the most sense that I wouldn’t continue in that role. I even explored other roles in the company, and nothing seemed to fit with my exact skill set at that moment. So that’s why I’m open to new opportunities right now, Mann explains. The key here is not blaming. Instead, you’re just saying things happened and that youre looking elsewhere. To reinforce that forward momentum, Williams-Lindo adds another phrase you could try: I realized where I can create more impact . . .’ and its at the new company youre interviewing with. That frames you as future-focused and resilient, qualities every employer is scanning for, she says. Whether you stay or go, its crucial to be clear on what you truly want moving forward so you can avoid this happening again down the line. Maybe it’s because you didn’t know what you were searching for in the first place, Mann says. She emphasized that clarity is key before making any career move. Dont burn bridges on the way out Leaving a job early always carries the risk of damaging professional relationships. Many people overlook the importance of their final impression at a company. But by working hard until the end, documenting your tasks, and supporting colleagues, you can create goodwill even in a challenging situation, Mann says. If your manager sees that in good faith, you gave it a good try, but it just wasn’t the right fit, I think it can make a huge difference, she says. Of course, not every manager will take the news gracefully. Some may feel blindsided or frustrated, but even when emotions run high, the best thing you can do is stay calm, be transparent about your decision, and focus on leaving solutions, not problems, behind. Whether theyre mad or not, the best thing you can do is document your wins, create clean handoffs, and position your departure as a values-driven choice, Williams-Lindo says. You dont burn bridges by leaving; you burn them by leaving sloppily, she adds.
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E-Commerce
At the beginning of this year, a climate tech startup called CarbonCapture was ready to break ground on its first commercial pilot at a site in Arizona. But the project is now about to open 2,700 miles away, in Alberta, Canada. The company started considering new locations shortly after the inauguration, as the political climate around climate projects quickly changed. We were looking for regions where we felt we could get support for deployment, says CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless. Canada was an obvious choice given the existence of good government programs and incentives that are there. [Photo: CarbonCapture] CarbonCapture makes modular direct air capture technology (DAC), units that remove CO2 from the air. In late March, reports came out that the Department of Energy (DOE) was considering cancelling grants for two other large DAC projects, including one in Louisiana that involved the company. By the end of May, by the time the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations announced that it was cancelling $3.7 billion in other grants, the startup had already signed an agreement with Deep Sky Alpha, a facility in Canada that is simultaneously deploying and testing multiple direct air capture projects to help the industry grow. The startup had already self-funded its planned project in Arizona and built the modules for the site. Because it didnt rely on government funding for the project, it could have moved forward in the U.S. But it saw that it would be harder to move from the pilot to later commercial projects in Arizona. Now, it’s planning to build its first full commercial project in Canada as well. (The company wouldn’t disclose the cost for either project.) [Photo: CarbonCapture] We just didnt see a pathway in the U.S. to be able to show that linkage between doing a commercial pilot, starting to generate [carbon dioxide removal] credits and selling them, and then being able to raise the capital for something thats much larger, Corless says. Canada offers an investment tax credit of 60% for direct air capture equipment, plus an additional 12% for projects in Alberta, the heart of Canadas oil and gas industry. The country also has strong support for R&D and first-of-a-kind deployments for early-stage companies, and multiple programs supporting climate tech specifically. The Canada Growth Fund, for example, is a $15 billion fund designed to advance decarbonization. And while Mark Carney, Canadas prime minister, has taken steps backward on climate policy, hes also said that he wants the country to be the worlds leading energy superpower both for conventional energy and clean energy. The situation in the U.S. is very different. Trump recently called climate change a con job in a speech to the United Nations. When Chris Wright, the energy secretary, recently canceled another $13 billion for renewable energy projects, he said, if you cant rock on your own after 33 years, maybe thats not a business thats going places, despite the fact that fossil fuels have gotten subsidies from the U.S. for three times as long. Fossil fuel subsidies are now nearly $35 billion a year, or as much as $760 billion if you include health and environmental costs. Direct air capture tech arguably hasnt been hit quite as hard as other forms of climate tech, like offshore wind power. When the One Big Beautiful Bill gutted other funding, from tax credits for EVs to solar panels, it left in place some credits that facilities can earn for capturing carbon as they operate. But the Department of Energy recently cut multiple grants that would have helped new DAC projects get built. One of the large projects CarbonCapture was supportingthe Louisiana facility previously under review, called Project Cypresslost funding, and the company just received official notice of its cancellation. Corless says that the startup is still carefully watching what happens in D.C.and the company still hasn’t made any announcements about whether it might move its whole company, not just particular projects. Right now, it’s headquartered in L.A. with around 50 employees. It also has a small factory for its equipment in Arizona, next to the site where it had planned to build its first carbon capture facility. [Photo: CarbonCapture] Moving the first project to Canada happened quickly. Five weeks ago, the site in Alberta was an empty field. Four weeks ago, the company shipped the modules it had built in Arizna to Canada. Construction crews have been finishing the final touches, and the company plans to begin commissioning the system next week. Deep Sky Alpha already had some key infrastructure in place, including access to solar power to run the equipment. The pilot will ultimately be able to capture 2,000 tons of CO2 a year, which will be buried underground. It’s possible that other companies might follow CarbonCapture’s move. “I think that there definitely are going to be several companies that are looking at the same data that we’re looking at,” Corless says. “And I think that it’s not lost on the Canadian government that they have an opportunity as well to step up and potentially take a leadership role in this space, which the U.S. has really owned for the last five years.” “The U.S. does have a real advantage, even without DOE support,” says Erin Burns, director at the nonprofit Carbon180. “But its very likely that uncertainty around DOE programs will weaken that edge. Some projects will move abroad. Some that might have thrived here will not. Others will achieve only a fraction of their potential. Each outcome is a setback on its own. Together they add up to millions, possibly billions, in lost investment and slower American innovation.”
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E-Commerce
Were more than half a decade removed from pandemic lockdownswhen remote work profoundly upended the 9-to-5yet the preference for workday flexibility endures, a new report shows. According to the recently released ninth annual State of Hybrid Work report from Owl Labs, a video conference tech company, 65% of workers are interested in a concept the report refers to as microshifting: structured flexibility with short, nonlinear work blocks matched to your energy, duties, or productivity. In other words: breaking up your work shift into a bunch of tiny ones. Perhaps you log on at 6 a.m. to get a head start, then take a break for a midmorning Pilates class before clocking back on to finish the days tasks. Or maybe you pause in the afternoon to do the school run or take the dog out, shifting your final work block into the evening, when the madness has settled down. Like similar methods, such as timeboxing or the Pomodoro technique, microshifting rethinks the flow of a traditional workday, zeroing in on when the individual feels most productive. Rather than being chained to a desk for eight hours each day, microshifting breaks up the slog into short concentrated bursts of productivity. Blast through your inbox, or go head-down on a project, and around that balance personal responsibilities and life events that crop up without notice. The new report shows that microshifting has proven particularly popular among Gen Zers and millennials, with nearly 7 in 10 reporting that they would prefer such an approach at work. Its widely accepted that productivity cannot be measured simply by hours clocked. Research on attention spans and productivity has shown that using shorter, intentional work intervals helps sustain energy, prevents cognitive fatigue, and sharpens focus. Workplaces arent as rigid and structured as they once were, Kickresume cofounder and CEO Peter Duris told Fast Company. Flexibility is one of the most common and sought-after perks in a job, whether thats having the option to work from home or working flexible hours. In fact, Owl Labs found that employees were prepared to give up 9% of their annual salary for flexible working hours (and 8% for a four-day workweek). Microshifting is a great way for employees to balance their personal responsibilities alongside work, Duris said. If you have the option to work microshifts, it could be worth discussing with your manager. This may be especially game-changing for parents or carers. Rather than an opportunity to slack off, look at microshifts like mini work sprints. If you give it a try, digital scheduling tools and productivity apps like Focus Friend can stop you from feeling scatterbrained and keep you focused and on track while divvying up the day. Start by figuring out when you are most productive and tackle your high-priority tasks then. If youre a morning person, get to work right away and schedule your low-priority tasks for when your productivity levels wane in the afternoon. If youre a night owl, get your workout classes or errands out of the way first, then lock in for the evening grind. Its always a good idea to get as acquainted as possible with your productivity styleat least until the next business buzzword gets coined and makes you rethink everything again.
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E-Commerce
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