Career Crisis in their 30s

Career Crisis in 30s: Fancy First Job, Changed Market Condition, Pretentious Titles, Inflated Salaries and Unclear Career Path

“You know we are a highly rated corporate only because of the value of the commodity we deal with!”, I remember this conversation with an oil company senior executive in my corporate days. While fossil fuel remains one of the primary commodities, today, seasonally hyped commodities and services create very large value corporates for few years that disappear in the quicksand of market trends. Along with them disappear the dreams and aspirations of careers as well.

Today many younger careers are in jeopardy if they start their careers with a silver spoon in ‘one-off’ corporates, government projects or short-term ventures.  Fancy start-ups that are going nowhere, hyped up tech corporates that are selling pretentious solutions, over invested ventures that crash land, enterprise initiatives that didn’t take off and piled up debt meanwhile, multi-lateral funded government projects that provide hyped titles and inflated salaries for short duration, etc., have made the human resource market a big pile of bruised egos and battered self-images. 

Careers in early 30s discarded by the hyped market cannot find jobs with same fancy titles, salary levels as they are used to. The linear career growth ideas ingrained into their brains does not provide them with out-of-box solutions. They need to keep jumping from one hyped venture to another to another until they become the big pretentious asses everyone despises. 

Worse is the case if the young executive has got into the EMI slavery, now the person must earn a minimal quantity to pay for the bike / flat / car / whatever monthly instalment. Our daily news is filled with unfortunate news about people pushed to the brink due to this financial stress.  From dual / multi jobs juggling to petty crimes, it manifests in various ways. Yesterday I read about a doctor couple committed suicide after their high investment business went bust and they were unable to pay the monthly instalment. Majority of the bike / car drivers in the city in the non-office hours are primarily earning through bike ride to pay EMI. 

The relative anonymity of the platform workers, and low entry barrier ensures an easy opportunity for the EMI slaves. Dvara research (2022) on platform workers mentioning that 40%+ of the workers were of better earning households.  There are those with less ego challenges who are willing to make a leap of faith into a new form of career. However, that is not the case with the majority.  

Government employment data that is responsibility and target centric does not measure age-wise breakdown of employed persons – we have entry into market, skill levels data and then who remains employed until retirement age – the wide gap in between does not seem to be relevant for whatever reason for the babus. So, we do not have any data on the platform workers that is qualitative and gives a break-down of their age, primary employment, etc., at a national level.

While unemployment on the one end and projected growth of senior citizen’s challenge within the next decade are both often discussed in media, the career crisis confronting us today, of people who have not built enough experience to be called experts nor can be accepted as entry level enthusiastic workers is a serious issue that needs to be studied and addressed. Human resource is a “commodity” with most potential that is least valued in the market economy, 

15/03/2025