When Experience Gets Expensive: The Mid-Career Equation No One Wants to Talk About
Over 40 and not in leadership? See why cost vs. benefit matters more than ever and what steps you can take now.
At some point in your career, which for many, circles around that ominous 40-year mark, you pause and realize something feels... different. Not dramatically so. No one has told you you’re obsolete. Your Teams still works. Your inbox still pings. But the air has changed. The calendar, once dotted with interviews and inbound messages from recruiters, now sits suspiciously empty. When the calls do come, they’re about roles that offer a “competitive” salary, which somehow means a third less than what you were earning three years ago.
You didn’t suddenly get worse at your job. You’re sharper, faster, and more emotionally intelligent than you’ve ever been. You know how to navigate ambiguity, manage chaos, and avoid the kind of fires that younger employees gleefully run toward. Unfortunately:
At some point, the cost of hiring you quietly eclipses the perceived benefit.
It’s arithmetic; not personal. And in a climate of shrinking budgets and margin-obsessed orgs, that math is being run more often. What we’re witnessing now is a systemic recalibration; a sober reshaping of what the modern workplace actually rewards once the music stops.
The Hidden Economics of Experience
For much of the last 15 years, the labor market was inflated by what you could call a growth illusion economy.
Capital was cheap and plentiful.
Venture funding flooded startups, encouraging them to hire ahead of actual need.
Established tech giants spent aggressively to hoard talent, paying inflated salaries to keep good people away from the competition.
For jobseekers, the bar often felt lower than the pay. If you had a respectable CV, could handle a panel interview without sweating through your shirt, and spoke in neat bullet points, you probably landed the role.
That era is over.
Interest rates have climbed.
Budgets have tightened.
Efficiency has replaced expansion as the primary corporate virtue.
Hiring managers now open spreadsheets and run a different calculation. The question has shifted from “How impressive is this person?” to “How much value will they create compared to what they cost?”
And that’s where the discomfort sets in. Because here are the choices in this 'new normal':
A 42-year-old individual contributor at the top of their pay band, pulling in $120,000 to $150,000
A 28-year-old who delivers 75 percent of the output, costs 50 percent less, and never asks about long-term pension planning.
The older hire is not less skilled. In fact, they often bring sharper judgment, deeper resilience, and fewer mistakes. But the economic equation has changed. Capitalism no longer rewards potential or loyalty. It rewards margin. And your margin, in this light, has thinned.
This is a recognition that the price of experience is harder to justify unless it is tied directly to leadership, strategic decision-making, or some form of ownership that makes the cost-benefit ratio undeniable.
When Pay Inertia Meets Organizational Reality
One of the more subtle traps that mid-career professionals fall into is what could be called career gravity. It is the belief, often reinforced over years, that compensation should rise simply because time has passed and you have remained in the profession. For a long stretch, this logic seems sound. You start at $40k, move to $80k, then $150k. Each new role or performance cycle adds another bump. Eventually, you look at your pay history and see $200k as the next natural step, because it fits the pattern.
The trouble is that markets do not price roles based on personal trajectories. They price them on supply, demand, and perceived output. This is where the misalignment appears. You expect to be paid for the track record you have built. The market wants proof that you can generate equivalent value today, in this specific environment, with these current constraints.
In leaner, efficiency-focused organizations, especially since 2022, hiring managers are encouraged to ask harder questions.
Can we get 80 percent of the same results for half the cost?
Can we find someone who learns quickly and is not yet anchored to a high pay band?
Increasingly, the answer is yes.
For mid-career individual contributors who have not stepped into leadership, strategic roles, or positions with direct revenue impact, this is where the slope becomes slippery. There is rarely a dramatic announcement or a single turning point. Instead, opportunities narrow and offers come in lower than expected. It happens quietly enough that you may not notice at first. But over time, the shift is undeniable. The market is no longer rewarding tenure for its own sake. It is rewarding visible, present-day value, and pricing accordingly.
The Rise of the Young, Hungry, and Comparatively Affordable
On the other side of the hiring equation is a growing pool of younger professionals who check a very appealing set of boxes for employers.
They are ambitious, still early in their careers, and open to almost any challenge.
Their salary expectations are modest by comparison.
They have not yet taken on the heavier financial obligations that make flexibility difficult.
There are no looming mortgage payments, no daycare fees, and few worries about long-term retirement savings.
They do not match the depth of experience that mid-career professionals bring. In many cases, they cannot yet anticipate problems before they appear or navigate complex politics with the same ease. But in today’s market, they do not have to. What they offer instead is momentum. They are eager to prove themselves, willing to work long hours, and quick to learn. Their presence is felt online as much as in the office, with a steady stream of updates, dashboards, and ideas that may look more substantial than they are, but create the perception of high activity.
The key point is they do not yet expect to be expensive. This changes the hiring calculation. When leaders compare one seasoned professional with a high salary to two capable juniors at a combined lower cost, the economic case is hard to ignore.
This is not about dismissing experience, it is about recognizing what organizations optimize for in the short term. At present, the incentives lean toward speed, adaptability, and keeping costs low. If you are competing in a game that now rewards different attributes than the ones you have spent years honing, it becomes possible to lose ground without any decline in your actual ability. The rules have shifted, and momentum currently wins.
So What Do You Do When the Career Ladder Stops Climbing?
The reality for many mid-career professionals is that they have not failed, but the ladder they were climbing simply stops at their current rung. For some, the next step is clear. They move into leadership, take on teams, own strategy, and continue their ascent. Others change industries entirely, discovering that a fresh ladder exists elsewhere. But for many, neither path materializes. Not because they lack the talent or drive, but because the structure was never built to keep promoting everyone.
If you cannot go higher, the question becomes how to move forward.
Reinvention is one answer. This means narrowing your focus, going deep into a specialty, and turning your accumulated knowledge into something marketable that no younger professional can convincingly imitate.
Another route is leverage. This might mean shifting into fractional work, advisory roles, productized services, or investment. In these setups, you work on problems from a position of choice rather than being embedded in a single role.
You can also trade prestige for autonomy. Choosing roles that give you more control, even at lower pay, can open space to build parallel opportunities.
Lastly, there is mentorship. You may not be the one drafting every proposal, but you can help others accelerate their growth, which still carries value for companies.
What no longer works is relying on past achievements and assuming the next raise will arrive out of habit. The market rewards visible, current value. When the ladder stops, your options shift from climbing to building a platform of your own making. That is where the next phase of career growth begins.
This is not a message of doom. It is a call to see the situation for what it is and to respond accordingly. If you are over 40 and have not moved into leadership, it does not mean you have failed. It means you are operating within a system that was never built to keep promoting every capable contributor indefinitely.
That is the reality. The sooner it is acknowledged, the sooner you can work out how to adapt. You are not out of the game, but you cannot keep playing by the same rules and expect the same results. The market has shifted. You now need to create your own opportunities rather than wait for them to be handed down.
The advantage you have is significant. You possess a depth of judgment, an understanding of nuance, and a level of self-awareness that younger professionals often lack. You can see patterns, anticipate challenges, and choose where to focus your energy with precision.
Life at 40 is far from over. But the comforting assumption that careers automatically progress may be. What comes next depends less on the ladder in front of you and more on the one you build yourself.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we can help you identify the skills and strategies employers value most today. Contact us to shape a narrative that resonates with hiring managers.