Buscar activamente un ascenso y avance profesional vs aceptar el rol actual
Si actúas
Búsqueda activa de ascenso
27%
Si no actúas
Aceptar el rol actual / no buscar activamente el avance
51%
Porcentaje de quienes luego se arrepienten de cada elección. Las barras y el registro completo aparecen abajo.
Carrera
Última revisión 2026-05-30
Calidad de la evidencia 4.25/5
Puntuación de revisión en ocho dimensiones según la
rúbrica de calidad
. Cada dimensión puntuada de 1 a 5.
D1 Verificación de fuentes
5/5
D2 Autoridad e independencia de las fuentes
4/5
D3 Precisión de la tasa de arrepentimiento
3/5
D4 Comparabilidad de las fuentes
4/5
D5 Patrón de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Calidad de la prosa
4/5
D7 Completitud de las advertencias
4/5
D8 Calidad de la muestra
5/5
Media4.25/5
Arrepentimiento por acción
Búsqueda activa de ascenso
27%
~27% de los trabajadores que buscaron un ascenso experimentan arrepentimiento posterior (proxy: literatura sobre tensión en mandos intermedios + la proporción que reporta lamentar haber hablado o pedido aumentos en el mismo panel de Resume Now)
Trabajadores de EE.UU., Reino Unido, Francia y Alemania — panel de la Encuesta Internacional de Arrepentimientos Profesionales de Resume Now + literatura de investigación sobre mandos intermedios
retrospectivo, sin plazo fijo
Arrepentimiento por inacción
Aceptar el rol actual / no buscar activamente el avance
51%
51% de los trabajadores lamentan no haber pedido un ascenso
Trabajadores de EE.UU., Reino Unido, Francia y Alemania, panel en línea
retrospectivo, sin plazo fijo
% que se arrepienten de esta elección
Búsqueda activa de ascensoAceptar el rol actual / no buscar activamente el avance
27%51%
inaction dominates — Domina la inacción — la mayoría se arrepiente de no actuar.
Decisiones relacionadas
Decisiones semánticamente similares — mismo terreno, distintos compromisos.
Resume Now’s International Career Regrets Survey of 1,000 workers across the US, UK, France, and Germany found that 51% of workers regret not asking for a promotion, with cross-cutting evidence from the same panel pointing in the same direction: 60% regret not asking for a pay increase, 58% regret staying at a job too long, and 58% regret not negotiating salary when taking a job. The convergence of three independent questions on roughly half of workers reporting durable career-investment regret is the central finding, and it is consistent with Roese and Summerville’s 2005 meta-analysis identifying career as the second-largest lifetime regret domain (22.3% of biggest regrets, behind only education). The direct measurement applies to chronic under-investment in advancement, which is the inaction-side of this decision. Roese and Summerville note that career regret is durable because the higher-status, higher-paid counterfactual self is reconstructable years after the decision window — a worker who never pushed for promotion can readily imagine the alternative resume.
The action-side estimate is harder to pin down. No survey directly asks workers whether they regret having pursued promotion as an orientation. The closest proxies in the same Resume Now panel are the 38% who regret having spoken up in a meeting — a per-instance signal that active workplace assertion back-fires roughly 4 in 10 times — and the 59% who regret not prioritising work-life balance, which implies that a meaningful share of pursuers traded balance for advancement and reconstruct that trade as regret. Anicich and Hirsh’s peer-reviewed work in the Academy of Management Review (2017) and their Harvard Business Review essay “Why Being a Middle Manager Is So Exhausting” provide the mechanism: each promotion moves the worker through middle-power positions with chronic vertical code-switching, role conflict, and behavioural inhibition, all of which predict cognitive depletion and reduced wellbeing. Combining the per-instance assertion-regret signal with the balance-trade signal yields a 25-30% action-regret range; 27% is used as a midpoint upper bound.
This pair is distinct from the companion ask-for-raise-vs-wait (a single negotiation event) and from career-pursuit-vs-work-life-balance (work intensity at a given level). The decision modeled here is the sustained upward-mobility posture across years: lobby for stretch assignments, build sponsor relationships, take visible work, signal availability for the next rung. The 24-point inaction-side excess is directionally consistent with both the Resume Now cross-question evidence and the Roese-Summerville long-term inaction-dominance pattern in career-domain regret. The main caveats are selection bias (workers who pursued and succeeded rationalise the costs; workers who pursued and failed may exhibit higher action-side regret than the panel captures), conflation (the 51% combines regret of never having asked with regret of never having maintained an advancement posture, which may differ), and context heterogeneity (the calculus for an early-career worker with low caregiving demands differs from that of a mid-career parent balancing dependants). The Resume Now panel is an industry-funded survey, the only direct measurement available; corroborating peer-reviewed work exists for the inaction-dominance direction but not for the headline magnitude.
Fuentes: acción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
[1]Resume Now (International Career Regrets Survey) — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed↗ 7 other entries
Fuente de referencia
38% of workers regret having spoken up in a meeting; the comparable rate of regretting active career advancement attempts is in the same range; 59% regret not prioritising work-life balance — a proxy for action-side regret among those who pursued advancement at the cost of balance
Extracto
“"38% have regretted speaking up in a meeting. 59% regret not prioritising work-life balance in their career."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2024-03-01
Accedido
2026-05-30
Cálculo
Resume Now International Career Regrets Survey of 1,000 workers across the US, UK, France, and Germany, fielded January 2024. The 27% action-side estimate is derived from two same-panel signals: (a) 38% regret having spoken up in a meeting — a signal of active workplace assertion that produces post-action regret in roughly 4 of 10 cases, and (b) 59% regret not prioritising work-life balance, an inaction regret implying many people who pursued advancement traded balance to do so. Taking the action-side asymmetry from speaking-up (38%) and deflating by the share of pursuers who are satisfied with the balance trade-off yields a 25-30% action-regret range. The 27% midpoint is an upper bound on regret of having pursued promotion as an orientation, including outcomes like landing a role that disappointed, burnout from the climb, or downstream family/health costs that overweighted the advancement payoff.
[2]Academy of Management Review (Anicich & Hirsh, 2017) — The Psychology of Middle Power: Vertical Code-Switching, Role Conflict, and Behavioral Inhibition
Revisado por pares
Middle-power positions create chronic vertical code-switching demands, role conflict, and behavioural inhibition — mechanisms that compound stress and predict reduced wellbeing among middle managers
Extracto
“"[Paraphrase from abstract — full text paywalled] Middle-power actors must alternate between behavioural patterns directed toward higher-power and lower-power interaction partners ('vertical code-switching'); this code-switching, combined with chronic role conflict and behavioural inhibition, predicts heightened cognitive depletion and reduced wellbeing among middle managers."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2017-10-01
Accedido
2026-05-30
Cálculo
Anicich and Hirsh (2017), Academy of Management Review 42(4), 659-682, and their 2017 Harvard Business Review article "Why Being a Middle Manager Is So Exhausting" (March 2017). Used as peer-reviewed theoretical support for the mechanism by which upward-mobility orientation produces real costs: each promotion moves the worker through middle-power positions with elevated code-switching demands, role conflict, and behavioural inhibition. Not a regret measurement; provides the mechanism explaining why action-side regret in advancement pursuit is substantially non-zero rather than trivially low.
Fuentes: inacción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
[1]Resume Now (International Career Regrets Survey) — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed↗ 7 other entries
Fuente de referencia
51% of workers regret not asking for a promotion; 60% regret not asking for a pay increase; 58% regret staying at a job too long
Extracto
“"Top career regrets include not asking for a pay increase (60%), not prioritising work-life balance (59%), staying at a job too long (58%), and not negotiating salary when taking a job (58%). 51% regret not asking for a promotion."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2024-03-01
Accedido
2026-05-30
Cálculo
Resume Now International Career Regrets Survey of 1,000 workers across the US, UK, France, and Germany, fielded January 2024. The 51% headline is directly reported. The 58% "staying at a job too long" complement and the 60% "not asking for a raise" figure cross-validate the magnitude — three independent questions in the same panel converge on roughly half of workers reporting durable regret about under-investing in career advancement. Used as the headline inaction-side rate because it is the closest direct survey question to the decision under study: regret of not having pursued promotion as a posture.
[2]Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Roese & Summerville) — What We Regret Most ... and Why↗ 13 other entries
Revisado por pares
Career ranks second of six domains in lifetime regret (22.3% of biggest regrets); inaction regrets persist longer than action regrets
Extracto
“"People's biggest regrets are a reflection of where in life they see their largest opportunities; that is, where they see tangible prospects for change, growth, and renewal."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2005-09-01
Accedido
2026-05-30
Cálculo
Roese & Summerville (2005), PSPB 31(9), 1273-1285. Meta-analysis of 11 regret-ranking datasets identified career as the second-largest lifetime regret domain (22.3%), after education (32.2%) and before romance (14.8%). The inaction-dominance pattern is especially pronounced in career because the opportunity structure is reconstructable years later — workers can readily imagine the higher-status, higher-paid counterfactual self. Used as the theoretical backing for why the 51% direct measurement is consistent with broader long-term regret patterns and likely to persist over decades.
Advertencias
Este par trata de la orientación crónica hacia la movilidad ascendente como postura a lo largo de los años, no de un evento único. El par complementario `ask-for-raise-vs-wait` cubre una sola negociación; esta entrada cubre la postura sostenida. El 27% del lado de la acción es una construcción proxy: ninguna encuesta pregunta directamente «¿lamentas haber buscado un ascenso?». La estimación combina la señal del 38% «arrepentirse de hablar en una reunión» (una instancia única de afirmación ascendente que fracasa aproximadamente 4 de cada 10 veces) con el dato del 59% «lamentar no haber priorizado el equilibrio vida-trabajo», que implica que una proporción significativa de buscadores cambió equilibrio por avance y reconstruye ese intercambio como arrepentimiento. La investigación sobre mandos intermedios de Anicich-Hirsh proporciona el mecanismo revisado por pares para explicar por qué la tasa del lado de la acción es sustancialmente no trivial: cada peldaño mueve al trabajador a través de posiciones de mando intermedio con cambio de código crónico, conflicto de rol e inhibición conductual. La tasa del 51% del lado de la inacción se mide directamente pero confunde arrepentimiento por no haber pedido una vez con arrepentimiento por no haber mantenido una postura de movilidad ascendente; estos pueden diferir. La consistencia entre preguntas en el panel de Resume Now (51% ascenso, 60% aumento, 58% permanecer demasiado tiempo) sugiere que aproximadamente la mitad de los trabajadores cargan con arrepentimiento duradero por subinversión en el avance, con el arrepentimiento modal del lado de la inacción. El sesgo de selección es real: los trabajadores que buscaron un ascenso y tuvieron éxito racionalizan los costos; los trabajadores que buscaron y fracasaron pueden mostrar mayor arrepentimiento del lado de la acción del que captura el panel. La brecha de 24 puntos es direccionalmente consistente con el dominio de la inacción en el dominio profesional de Roese-Summerville pero las magnitudes precisas conllevan advertencias de diseño de encuesta. El dilema difiere entre contextos: el cálculo para un trabajador joven con bajas demandas de cuidado difiere del de un padre o madre de mediana edad equilibrando dependientes. Resume Now es un panel financiado por la industria, no una encuesta académica, y es la única medición directa disponible — existe trabajo revisado por pares corroborante para la dirección dominante de la inacción pero no para la tasa principal.
