Following text presents a hard fact of life, with a solution towards its end. Readers are encouraged to respond.
Employability, or the potential in your profile to be rewarded with responsibilities and remunerations that you expect from the industry, has an interesting trend. It follows an inverted U curve. The law of increasing and diminishing returns seems to be working here as well!
Fresh out of college, you are full of enthusiasm - like the dried sponge, waiting to get soaked into the industry. You are always on top of the latest happenings around the world, take up new technologies and processes on the fly, and with each passing day, become more proficient at your work. In other words, your demand in the job market maintains a steady rise.
Your experience largely catalyzes your employability. As you gain experience(number of years could vary from half a dozen to two based on your industry) you start commanding a position in the industry. This is when the slope of the curve starts to reduce. Newer folks are in the ascending stage while you arrive at a "risky" position. Risky, because, with age, your rate of knowledge enhancement has reduced, your ability to work hard has reduced, and you want a higher salary than those younger people who can perform as good!
At the third stage, you are at your vulnerable best, and the peak has happened by. Your heavy salary packages start biting you, and you are left with two possible options. One, fight it out. Push your mind and body to their limits and try to re-establish yourself. Two, dump your self-esteem and let things continue till your employability is non-zero. Commonality in both cases states it is perhaps too late!
Law of diminishing returns is inevitable. However, the good news is that a solution exists for all of us! Economics teaches, "development and technology can postpone diminishing returns in the long run". THE ONLY WAY OUT of this trap is continuous development and use of latest technological tools throughout the career. If one is able to do just these two things, there is no way that one gets overtaken.
Impact of experience on employability experiences an exponential rise when it gets coupled with continuous skill development and technology upgrades. This is THE solution to make sure you plan your succession at work, instead of getting succeeded because of obsoleteness.
Wishing you an exciting latter half of your career!
