Actief promotie en carrière-vooruitgang nastreven vs huidige rol accepteren
Als je handelt
Actief promotie nastreven
27%
Als je niets doet
Huidige rol accepteren / niet actief vooruitgang nastreven
51%
Percentage dat later spijt heeft van elke keuze. De balken en het volledige overzicht staan hieronder.
Carrière
Laatst beoordeeld 2026-05-30
Kwaliteit van bewijs 4.25/5
Beoordelingsscore op acht dimensies volgens de
kwaliteitsrubriek
. Elke dimensie krijgt een score van 1 tot 5.
D1 Bronverificatie
5/5
D2 Autoriteit en onafhankelijkheid van bronnen
4/5
D3 Nauwkeurigheid van spijtcijfer
3/5
D4 Vergelijkbaarheid van bronnen
4/5
D5 Gilovich-patroon
5/5
D6 Prozakwaliteit
4/5
D7 Volledigheid van voorbehouden
4/5
D8 Steekproefkwaliteit
5/5
Gemiddelde4.25/5
Spijt van handelen
Actief promotie nastreven
27%
~27% van werknemers die promotie nastreefden ervaren downstream-spijt (proxy: middel-management belastingsliteratuur + aandeel dat in hetzelfde Resume Now-panel spijt heeft van spreken of nastreven van salarisverhoging)
Amerikaanse, Britse, Franse en Duitse werknemers — Resume Now International Career Regrets Survey-panel + middel-management onderzoeksliteratuur
retrospectief, geen vast tijdsbestek
Spijt van nalaten
Huidige rol accepteren / niet actief vooruitgang nastreven
51%
51% van werknemers heeft spijt dat ze niet om promotie hebben gevraagd
Amerikaanse, Britse, Franse en Duitse werknemers, online panel
retrospectief, geen vast tijdsbestek
% betreurt deze keuze
Actief promotie nastrevenHuidige rol accepteren / niet actief vooruitgang nastreven
27%51%
inaction dominates — Niets doen domineert — de meesten hebben spijt dat ze niet handelden.
Gerelateerde keuzes
Semantisch vergelijkbare keuzes — zelfde terrein, andere afwegingen.
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.
Bronnen: handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
[1]Resume Now (International Career Regrets Survey) — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed↗ 7 other entries
Gerenommeerde referentie
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
Fragment
“"38% have regretted speaking up in a meeting. 59% regret not prioritising work-life balance in their career."
”
Brongegevens van
2024-03-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-30
Berekening
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
Vakgenoten-beoordeeld
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
Fragment
“"[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."
”
Brongegevens van
2017-10-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-30
Berekening
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.
Bronnen: niet handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
[1]Resume Now (International Career Regrets Survey) — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed↗ 7 other entries
Gerenommeerde referentie
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
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2024-03-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-30
Berekening
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
Vakgenoten-beoordeeld
Career ranks second of six domains in lifetime regret (22.3% of biggest regrets); inaction regrets persist longer than action regrets
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2005-09-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-30
Berekening
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.
Kanttekeningen
Dit paar gaat over chronische opwaartse-mobiliteits-oriëntatie als houding over jaren, niet over een enkele gebeurtenis. Het begeleidende paar `ask-for-raise-vs-wait` dekt een enkele onderhandeling; deze entry dekt de aanhoudende houding. De 27% actiezijde is een proxy-constructie: geen enkele enquête vraagt direct: "Hebt u spijt van het nastreven van promotie?" De schatting combineert het 38% "spijt van spreken in een vergadering" signaal (een enkele instantie van opwaartse-assertie die ongeveer 4 op 10 keer averechts uitpakt) met het 59% "spijt dat werk-privé-balans niet werd geprioriteerd" datapunt, wat impliceert dat een betekenisvol aandeel van nastrevers balans ruilde voor vooruitgang en die ruil reconstrueert als spijt. De Anicich-Hirsh middel-management onderzoek (Academy of Management Review 42(4), 659-682, 2017) biedt peer-reviewed mechanisme voor waarom de actiezijde-spijtfrequentie substantieel niet-nul is: elke sport beweegt de werknemer door middelmacht-posities met chronische verticale code-switching, rolconflict en gedragsremming. De 51% inactiezijde-cijfer wordt direct gemeten (Resume Now International Career Regrets Survey, N=1.000, januari 2024) maar verwart spijt van niet één keer hebben gevraagd met spijt van het niet behouden van een opwaartse-mobiliteits-houding; deze kunnen verschillen. De cross-vraag consistentie in het Resume Now-panel (51% promotie, 60% salarisverhoging, 58% te lang in een baan gebleven) suggereert dat ongeveer de helft van de werknemers duurzame spijt heeft van onderinvestering in vooruitgang, met de modale spijt aan de inactiezijde. Selectiebias is reëel: werknemers die promotie nastreefden en slaagden rationaliseren de kosten; werknemers die nastreefden en faalden kunnen hogere actiezijde-spijt vertonen dan het panel vastlegt. De 24-puntenkloof is richtingsmatig consistent met Roese-Summerville's carrièredomein-inactiedominantie maar de precieze groottes dragen enquête-ontwerp-voorbehouden. Het dilemma verschilt in verschillende contexten: de berekening voor een vroeg-carrière werknemer met lage zorgvereisten verschilt van die van een mid-carrière ouder die afhankelijken in balans houdt. Resume Now is een industrie-gefinancierd panel, geen academische enquête, en is de enige directe meting beschikbaar — bevestigend peer-reviewed werk bestaat voor de inactiedominantie-richting maar niet voor het headlinecijfer.
