Daybreak - The career ladder is broken. What’s your next step?

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

In this episode, we dive into a topic that is as daunting as it is exciting — the future of careers. First, we talk about a troubling trend in workplaces today — the rise of the unwilling retiree; Next, we share some of the lessons learnt by students who graduated during economic downturns in the past. Check out the stories and newsletters mentioned in this episode: Why more 40-somethings are becoming unwilling retireesLessons from past students who graduated during economic downturnsThe Ken is hosting a subscriber event! Join Two by Two hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan and three distinguished guests as they discuss broken career ladders, shortening career spans, and collapsing organisational structures. Buy tickets here. 

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Hello and welcome to daybreak. I'm Snigda and I'm Rahil. And in this episode, in two separate segments,

we dive into a topic that is as scary as it is exciting. The future of Kriksdha. As we know them. About a week ago, an interesting new twist in the ruthless world of artificial intelligence suddenly caught a lot of attention. An investigation by business insider uncovered Google's newest tactic to stay ahead of its competition. It's a deceptively simple strategy. Pay the smartest minds in the business to do absolutely nothing.

Yup, I'm not kidding. Basically, deep mind, which is the 10.000. Bayamette subsidiary that focuses on all things AI has been signing these non-compete agreements with employees in its UK team, essentially prohibiting them from working with any of their competitors for an extended period of time. But wait, it doesn't even end there. They're also putting them on something that a lot of industry insiders call garden leave. Basically, they continue to get paid by Google DeepMind, but no longer work for the time period of their non-compete agreements. Now, this whole issue came to light after Microsoft's AI vice president, Nando DeFritas,

shared a rather impassioned post on X last month. In it, he addressed DeepMind's employees, urging them not to sign these non-competes. He wrote that every single week he was being reached out to by disgruntled DeepMind employees looking for ways to escape these notice periods and non-competes. For the average DeepMind employee, it almost felt like they were being shackering. by the paperwork. These are professionals working in what is currently the hottest industry there is. And now they're left with no choice but to twiddle their thumbs at home until their contracts lapse. Now, this whole situation is pretty symbolic of the crazy times we live in and how massive disruptors,

in this case AI, are completely changing the course of our careers. This isn't a Google-specific problem, of course. It's happening everywhere. You can blame a bad job market. You can blame a bad job, AI, economic downturns, changing dynamics. But the bottom line is, this is bigger than that. The very nature of careers are changing. Which means that professionals, all of us across ages and industries, will have to change how we plan our careers. How do we do that?

Particularly in an environment like this. Well, we are hoping to answer just that at the Ken's first live event in Bangalore on the 21st of April. Two-by-two host, Rohin Dharma Kumar and Praveen Gopal-Krishnan, will be joined by three accomplished and unique guests with vastly different career trajectories of their own. Harshal Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Razorpe, Vasuta Agarwal, chief business officer of Inmobi and Professor Saurav Mukharji from IIM Bangal.

If you're looking for clarity on the future of your career, you can join the event by purchasing tickets on the Ken app or website. we will link all the details in the show notes of this episode. But today, in this episode, I want to talk about another very troubling trend in workplaces. Just last year, the Ken conducted a career longevity survey. We asked people from across industries how long they thought their careers would last, and the results were pretty unsettling. About 258 of the 303 respondents, who were all aged between 40 to 60,

said they felt their careers have been sliced in half. They now span just 20 to 25 years instead of the traditional 40 to 45. These are the 40 or 50-something consultants, freelancers, part-time executives or self-employed hustlers. They're what we call the unwilling retirees. People forced to shift from traditional career paths into makeshift roles. The reason for these unexpected pivots is almost always the same. They all found that the growth had stopped, that they were being passed over for promotions or worse still, their roles were becoming entirely redundant. To be fair to companies, in most cases, their hands are tied too.

They all seem to be struggling to accommodate or provide growth avenues for this expanding demographic. One such 40-something who bore the brunt of this shift is Srinivasan. He's a techie who worked at Tech Giant Oracle. Back in 2019, he decided to go on. on a two-year sabbatical. You see, after seven promotions over his two decades stint at the company, he was starting to feel the shadows of stagnation creeping upon him. So he quit, he took his break.

But when he was ready to re-enter the workforce in 2021, he realized he would have to learn a whole new set of technologies. It was daunting. Eventually, he settled for a job as a blockchain developer at a Noida-based startup, which was a huge step down in terms of designation in Anne Pay from his last gig. And this isn't a one-off example. Data shows that nearly half of India's 200 million strong workforce

was over the age of 45 in 2022-22 to 23. And now for a majority of them, involuntary retirement is looming large. But the thing is, retirement today is a much harder proposition than it was 20 years ago. Santosh Meherotra, a developmental economist, attested to that fact. That's largely because inflation puts a massive strain on savings. But like with Shrinevasan's case, it's not like there are a lot of job opportunities to choose

from either, which means that a lot of these 40 and 50-somethings are forced to change career parts. Now, the good thing is that there is a silver lining in this silver tsunami. Some people have figured out the trick to remaining forever employable. They're choosing to ditch the career ladder completely and leave. sideways instead of a straight climb upwards. Take Kushagra Gupta, for instance. He is a 38-year-old with a rather unique professional identity on his LinkedIn profile. Fractional CMO.

The dictionary definition of fractional is inconsiderable. For most former CXOs who use this as a prefix to their titles these days, it is anything but that. Now, Gupta founded the Council of Fractional CXOs, which is a network of seasoned professionals that extends guidance to nascent businesses. He realised after a successful 15-year career that growth is not equivalent

to moving up a single well-defined ladder. That's also a realization that Swati Sain Gupta, a 59-year-old from Bangalajad. She ventured through 15 companies trying her hand at a bunch of different roles along the way. From marketing to profit centre management roles to corporate communication, to now being a freelance consultant. She described her 30-year career trajectory as an expedition that involved changing directions

with stops and multiple restarts along the way. Kushagra and Swati are two among a growing number of people adopting a gig-like approach at a time when workplaces are undergoing massive social, economic and cultural revolutions. Then, professionals also consider upskilling or recent. killing in order to get re-employed. Case in point, 58-year-old Mohindar Guglani. He has been working as an assistant general manager at public sector lender Punjab National Bank for the past five years. To stay put in the workforce, he decided to write the limited insolvency examination conducted by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of India, which is a body that regulates the corporate

distress resolution regime here in India. He cleared the exam in 2023 and applied to the board for registration as an insolvency professional. Now, the thing is, despite all the work they put in, it's rare for these professionals to match the salaries they were drawing as full-time professionals. Both Sain Gupta and Gupta haven't managed to do it. Even Guglani, as an insolvency professional, would earn 30 to 40% less than he does at PNB. So financials are increasingly becoming a pinch for many of these older adults. The natural next question is, what should you?

employers do? Well, there are some examples of companies that have managed to do right by mid-career employees. We spoke to one such professional who worked at a leading global HR consulting firm called Mercer. This company has been hiring some retirees to join its team as advisors. Or there are other examples, like for instance the Department of Ex-Servicemen welfare tied up with the Indian School of Business to offer scholarships for military personnel returning to civilian life post-retirement. There's also platforms like Wisdom Circle, which onboard companies from different sectors

seeking to hire retirees for various roles. But from all of this, one thing is clear. The future of careers lies in adaptability. In the past, climbing the corporate ladder meant setting age-bound goals. Now, it's about seeking roles that challenge and diversify and therefore boosting future employability. Coming up next, we reverse the lens for early career professionals

to see what lessons they can learn from past students who graduated during economic downturns. Stay tuned. You know what is harder than getting a job in a tough economy? Getting your first job in a tough economy. If you're in the early stages of your career, I can only imagine what you must be going through. The pressure, the uncertainty, the endless search, it's a lot.

But here's the thing. This is not the first time that the economy has hit a rough patch. And it certainly won't be the last. Not too long ago, my former colleague Aksha Chandrashakran caught up with some alumni who graduated during similar or actually even worse times. Like the year of the Lehman Brothers collapse and the economic crisis. That was a terrible phase. And yet, not only did these people survive, they are thriving. and they were kind enough to share their advice on things that they wished they had known back then.

Let's start with Harry Shankar Radha Krishnan. He is the business head of Tata Nexark, which is the B2B digital platform. Back in 2009, he was a second year student at IAM Kodi Kod. The Lehman Brothers collapse had sent shockwaves across the financial world, which happened to be the top pick for MBA grads like Harry Shankar. His badge had a rude awakening. No financial services firms showed up for placements to his campus. But here is what he learned from it.

He told us, take the long-term view and ride it out. When the market tanks, it's easy to panic. But he told us about 90% of his badge took whatever they could get and then pivoted to something else when the market bounced back. And his big takeaway? Do not rush into a job just for the sake of it. of it. The key is to hold your ground, learn and then know that things will shift. Next up, we have Sri Priya Jian. She was formerly the head of product at Aether Energy. She graduated in 2009,

right after the Lehman Brothers crash. As a first-year student at IAM Bangal, Sri Priya was then desperately seeking internships. But the financial crash had left the job market in Tatars. Companies had slashed their hiring numbers and the competition was fierce. Despite these challenges, Sri Priya's batchmates went on to achieve great things. During her final placement, Flipkart, which was then relatively unknown, came to the campus for the first time. The founders were personally recruiting and many students who joined Flipkart then are now leading product managers for top companies in the country.

Sri Priya pointed out that these individuals chose Flipkart. after missing out on consulting roles. So her advice? In hindsight, you will actually be surprised by which jobs turn out to be the most attractive. Sometimes, the paths that you did not plan for turns out to be the best one. Also, she told us how you should not become a prisoner to the process. When the placement season puts pressure on you to get a job quickly, it is easy to take the first thing that comes your way.

But that is often inefficient. Instead, she advises to seek opportunities off campus. Companies will not say no to bright young talent. So don't just settle for what's in front of you. Go after the companies that you really want to work for even if they are not actively recruiting on your campus. Now, fast forward to 2017, when Balaji Ramachandran was graduating from IAM Ahmedabad.

The Indian economy was still reeling from the impact of demonetting. and placements were not as smooth as they had been the previous year. But Balaji, who started in consulting at Bain & Company, had a valuable piece of advice. Careers are about the long game. Balaji's batchmates were all chasing consulting jobs and product management was not even on the radar. But when Aksha spoke to him, Balaji was the director of growth at Misho, an e-commerce giant. And now he heads US growth at PocketFM. He told us if he had to do it again, he would have joined an early stage startup,

even if the pay was lower than the consulting offers. His takeaway for students now is focus on building a career, not just landing a job. The first job might not be the most glamorous, but it is the foundation for your long-term growth. And then we have Simran Bakshi, a product manager at FinTech firm Jupiter. Simran was a part of the 2020 COVID-Batch, the cohort that graduated just as the pandemic began to turn the world upside down. Now, while many of her peers had job offers, the pandemic had companies unsure whether they could keep their hiring promises. It was a stressful time with many waiting for their joining dates. But Simran witnessed something incredible, a sense of solidarity.

Classmates came together and shared leads. So, her advice, choose the learning opportunity over the pay. In uncertain times, it might feel tempting to go for the higher salary, but the job that teaches you the most will pay off in the long run. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras.

Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by Rahal Philippos and I, Sinkda Sharma, and it was edited by Rajiv Sien.