Young father torn between Mumbai job offer and newborn baby gets unexpected advice from Ankur Warikoo: 'Take neither'

A high-paying job offer in Mumbai. A newborn baby at home. Better career growth on one side and family responsibilities on the other. For one young father, the decision felt impossible. Hoping for clarity, he reached out to entrepreneur and content creator Ankur Warikoo. But instead of helping him choose between the two jobs, Warikoo gave him an answer he never expected: “Take neither.” What followed was a powerful lesson about career decisions, personal priorities, and choosing a life on your own terms.

Warikoo shared the exchange on social media, where he explained how the man found himself stuck between two difficult options. The young professional wrote that while his current role had given him “strong exposure,” the night-shift schedule was starting to damage his health. He said becoming a father had changed the way he looked at life and priorities.



“With a newborn child and growing family responsibilities, improving my physical and mental well-being has become a priority,” he wrote, adding that he also wanted to maintain “long-term financial stability” for his family. At the same time, he had received an offer from another company that promised growth, but came with a different set of sacrifices.


The new opportunity would move him away from night shifts and push him into what he described as an “uncomfortable zone” where “meaningful growth” could happen. However, accepting the offer meant relocating to Mumbai and living away from his family while his wife worked on her thesis. The move would also reduce his short-term savings because of Mumbai’s higher cost of living. Unsure about what to do, he asked Warikoo for advice on how to approach such a complicated decision.


Instead of immediately comparing salaries, work culture, or career growth, Warikoo focused on one detail that stood out to him. He asked the man whether he had actively applied for the role at Company Y or whether the opportunity had simply arrived unexpectedly.

The man replied that he had been looking for a change, but the offer had “come his way.” According to Warikoo, that response revealed the real issue. “Something came your way, and now you are disturbed whether you should take it or not,” he explained.

Warikoo pointed out that if the man had to design his “ideal role,” this particular job might not have been the answer. But he also believed that if the person was capable of attracting one opportunity, he was capable of finding others, too. “So go and chase the role you want, where this conflict doesn’t exist,” Warikoo advised. He told the young father to treat the offer as a sign that better opportunities were possible, rather than forcing himself to choose between two imperfect situations.


Warikoo then expanded the lesson beyond careers. He said people often end up making decisions based on options placed in front of them instead of creating choices that genuinely align with what they want. “This is true for jobs. Relationships. Cities. Everything,” he wrote.

According to him, the best decisions are made when people choose between options they intentionally created for themselves, not choices that appeared “without your permission or preference.”