I work on AI at Amazon. My biggest career regret is waiting years to build a reputation outside the company.

Abhinav Bohra, a senior applied scientist at Amazon, said he wishes he'd started building a professional reputation outside the company earlier.

Abhinav Bohra Abhinav Bohra's biggest career regret: letting his work stay behind Amazon's walls.

He developed a list of rules for himself to follow as he built greater professional visibility.

Going public opened doors — but added an AI "learning tax" to his nights and weekends.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Abhinav Bohra, a senior applied scientist at Amazon.

He's in his 30s and lives in Seattle.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

For most of my career, everything I built lived and died inside Amazon .

I joined Amazon in 2019 as a data scientist and eventually became a senior applied scientist in 2024.

My background is in AI recommendation systems, and I work on models that help determine which products shoppers see on Amazon .

While I was building a reputation inside the company, I wasn't building much of one outside it.

People in the industry outside Amazon were publishing research papers on the same problems I was solving, and I never joined the conversation.

I eventually realized that without a public record of my work, I was missing opportunities to speak at industry events, serve on conference committees, and build a reputation that could help me if I ever needed to find a new job .

When it came to professional opportunities outside Amazon, it felt like I was starting from zero.