Ex-Google employee chooses startup life over returning to tech giant: ‘I want to keep building’
A Bengaluru founder who spent 3.5 years at Google before resigning to build a startup claims he has turned down an offer to return to the tech giant
A Bengaluru-based entrepreneur who spent three-and-a-half years at Google before resigning to build a startup claims he has turned down an offer to return to the tech giant. Raj Vikramaditya, the founder of takeUforward, revealed in an X post that he was recently approached by a Google recruiter to check if he was interested in a job.

Vikramaditya said he turned down the opportunity as he wants to focus on building and growing his startup takeUforward, which is an e‑learning platform that offers resources, problem sets and coding interview preparation for aspiring software engineers.
‘I want to keep building’
Raj Vikramaditya worked for Google between February 2022 to June 2025. In August 2025, he launched takeUforward with the aim of building a one-stop platform for aspiring software developers. The company combines free tutorials, practice problems and paid subscription content to help students and job seekers improve technical skills and crack placements.
(Also read: Ex-Google techie receives rejection email for internship she applied to 4 years ago)
In an X post shared yesterday, Vikramaditya said that a Google recruiter approached him with vacancies.
“Got a call from a recruiter at Google to check if I wanted to return to one of the teams hiring,” he wrote.
When he had resigned from Google, the Bengaluru-based founder had promised himself that he would give his all to his startup. He said that today, things are going well enough that he can turn down the offer to return.
“One thing I always loved about Google was that within a year of resignation, you could rejoin at the same level without going through interviews. When I left, I had told myself one thing very clearly - I will go all in for takeUforward, and if it does not work out, I can always go back,” he said.
“Thankfully, things have aligned well. And today, all I want is to keep building and scaling takeUforward towards 100K paid users very soon,” Vikramaditya concluded.
(Also read: ‘I’m worried, anxious, scared, shocked’: Google techie opens up about uncertainty after layoff)
ABOUT THE AUTHORSanya JainSanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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