Hard Work Is a Lie | The ₹3.6 Crore Career Trap No One Warned You About ft. Ashwin Damera

**Ganesh** (0:03)
Why are 35-year-old folks today feeling stuck when they have an amazing salary?

**Ashwin Damera** (0:08)
Somebody whose starting salary is 15 lakhs a year, and somebody whose starting salary is 20 lakhs a year. Both of them for the next 20 years get the same hike, 12%.
Do you know what the difference in the cumulative salary in that 20 years will be? 3.6 crores.

**Ganesh** (0:23)
People, if you feel like you are stuck in your career at the age of 28 to 30, then this episode is for you. In just the first 4 months of 2026, more than 95,000 tech workers have lost their jobs. That's 882 people every single day.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:38)
12,000, 30,000, 90,000 people have already been impacted so far this year.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:47)
So the truth is that I got laid off from Amazon. We have our loans, we have our family, we have children, wife, everyone. I was shivering and I was crying. I got an anxiety attack.

**Ganesh** (1:01)
Here's the scary part. Gartner is projecting 20% of organizations will eliminate more than half of their middle management positions through AI driven flattening. Oracle and Amazon just laid off 30,000 people. So the question is, if you are 30 right now, what should you do to stay relevant in this hypercompetitive world? And if you are 25, what should you do to accelerate your growth? This is the reason why I sat down with the Harvard graduate and an entrepreneur, the founder of Ereditus, Ashwin Damera.
In this episode, he decodes the framework and a step by step method that is so powerful that it will help you accelerate your career in the next 3 to 4 years. Ashwin, how do I know that I am getting stuck in an organization?

**Ashwin Damera** (1:44)
Are you part of big decisions that are being made in the organization? Do the big people in the organization know you by your first name? If the answer to that is no, you are stagnating.

**Ganesh** (1:52)
How do I build my brand capital?

**Ashwin Damera** (1:54)
Have you built networks beyond just your function? Have you taken on cross-functional projects? Have you volunteered to do work beyond your JD? My company may fire me because they are now using AI a lot. I will go work in the next company. That is suicide.

**Ganesh** (2:07)
What should I do? What's my step by step process to progress in my career and accelerate my growth?

**Ashwin Damera** (2:12)
Let me give you a very powerful framework that if it's put to practice, it can help you in 10x anybody's career. And that framework is...

**Ganesh** (2:34)
Ashwin, I did some scary research in the past one week, and we discovered a few interesting things. In fact, yesterday, Mahesh had a detailed conversation with our Communication Master's community, specifically the executives, to understand what are their apprehensions about their career. And we found some shocking observations. The first thing we found was that these executives assumed in their 20s that when they turn 35, everything will be great.
Turns out, they are more anxious at 35 than they were at 20 In fact, today, 20-year-old kids are making money, they're going out, a lot of them have become creators, so they're traveling the world, and everything is going great for them on screen, even though they're also a tad bit anxious. The 35-year-old is looking at these 25-26-year-old kids, and he's thinking, Baba, I was working so hard, and now, he's seeing a 25-year-old do the exact same job as him. Not because he or she is more talented, but simply because of the exposure and the kind of tools that they have access to, because of which this 35-year-old is again anxious. Plus, AI is also coming up. And you know, the CEO of Anthropic has made some disastrous predictions about the future of jobs, and every other consultancy company is coming out with reports, which seems fear-mongering at the same time. It's a prediction of the future that a 35-year-old is scared to look at.
Which is why today I wanted to have this conversation to break down, why does a 35-year-old feel stuck?
What are legit reasons? What are not so legit reasons? And how can a 35-year-old escape out of this stagnancy and accelerate their career in the next 10 years? And if a 25-year-old is watching this, listen to this podcast very carefully, because today you might be this 25-year-old roaming around the world, having a lot of fun, but this time will come and you just have to be ready for it. And as always, if you invest today, 10 years down the line, you will have a good ride. So Ashwin, what is happening in this industry right now?