---
title: "Don't Waste Your Pre-30 Years: On the '35-Year-Old Phenomenon' in the Workplace"
description: "In my recent career planning observations, I've clearly felt the urgent need for career planning among people over 35. From these cases, we can clearly see how crucial timing is for personal growth. Among my clients, there are often two extreme types: those who have reached at least a director level with an annual salary of no less than 200,000 yuan, and those who have worked for many years but remain in a relatively low position..."
author: "海丁"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-03-18"
language: "en"
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---

# Don't Waste Your Pre-30 Years: On the '35-Year-Old Phenomenon' in the Workplace

> In my recent career planning observations, I've clearly felt the urgent need for career planning among people over 35. From these cases, we can clearly see how crucial timing is for personal growth. Among my clients, there are often two extreme types: those who have reached at least a director level with an annual salary of no less than 200,000 yuan, and those who have worked for many years but remain in a relatively low position...

In my recent career planning observations, I've clearly felt the urgent need for career planning among people over 35. From these cases, we can clearly see how crucial timing is for personal growth.
Among my clients, there are often two extreme types: one is those who have reached a certain level, at least director level, with a certain status in the company and an annual salary of no less than 200,000 yuan; the other is those who have worked for many years but remain in a relatively low position, whether in terms of job level, material rewards, or personal sense of worth, they cannot gain high recognition. Although these two types are extreme, they provide us with thought-provoking insights. Through comparison, we find that those who have achieved some success in career development all share a common characteristic: they have deeply cultivated their familiar and skilled field for at least 10 years. Those who cannot find their place in the workplace often change directions every one or two years, never deeply accumulating in one direction. Of course, besides frequent job-hopping, there is another factor: they have accumulated deeply in one direction, but this accumulation is repetitive labor without progress, causing their career development to stagnate.
Whether you admit it or not, you must pay attention to the "35-year-old phenomenon." Many companies explicitly require candidates to be under 35 when recruiting. If you are 35 and still submitting resumes on job websites and constantly changing jobs, you should reflect on what you've done wrong. Of course, based on our practical consulting experience, if you only start thinking about this at 35 or even older, it's likely that you can no longer solve this problem; many practical difficulties will leave you helpless and at a loss. At this point, many people regret their choices but can't cry. So, whether to avoid more detours or to achieve greater success, you must think ahead about your future livelihood. There are already many cases proving that preparing in advance is much more useful than cramming at the last minute.
Among my clients, a considerable number are post-80s, which is also a high-incidence area for career planning issues. The oldest post-80s have passed the age of "thirty and standing firm"; but a considerable number are still on the way to thirty. If youth is the capital God gives you to make mistakes, you still have time to make up for them; but if you're at the tail end of your twenties, this capital is no longer your privilege. From graduating from university to the age of standing firm, this time is long enough for you to have ample opportunities to understand society, adapt to it, and reflect on your growth.
From 30 to 35, there are five years. If you are given enough time to make mistakes, then to avoid a mess in your career after 35, you should at least set clear goals at 30 and use five years to catch up. This may be the last best opportunity for your growth. If you miss this opportunity, you are no longer young, and society will not forgive your youthful recklessness with a tolerant attitude. Otherwise, every wrong step you take will have to be compensated tenfold later. From 30 to 35, you should learn to accumulate more depth for your ordinary life, so that the second half of your career is not spent in regret and remorse of "if only I could start over."
At 30: Three Major Problems You Must Face
The first problem is family and responsibility.
Don't think you're still young. Don't think some problems are far away. Whether you're decadent or busy, your time is flying by, and you feel yourself aging faster. Some problems, whether you're willing to face them or not, your stage of growth determines that you must take on responsibilities that match your age.
Most people at this age must consider family issues. If you've already settled down, you must clearly realize: how should your career develop to ensure you can support the burden of your family? This includes not only your spouse but also your children and parents (especially if both are only children, you have to support four elderly parents). At this stage, your pressure multiplies, but if your career growth cannot multiply, or even regresses in some form, then your future career development will face more pressure. This pressure often leaves you with no energy to seek better development.
Many people have a big concern when changing jobs: if I jump, and the income isn't as high as now, would I easily move again? To put it more bluntly: do I dare to move easily? Do I still have the guts and courage? So, if you want to act, do it early, while you haven't yet shouldered the burden of family. Travel light, go all out, and charge forward; this is your only choice. Don't enjoy comfort at this time, or the rest of your life will be "comfortably" idle.
The second problem is the match between ability and age.
Why do many companies explicitly require 5 years, 10 years of experience when recruiting? Because work experience implies a matching level of ability. The same job, with 5 years and 10 years of experience, accumulates different abilities and takes on different responsibilities. The longer your work experience, the stronger your ability; there is a positive multiplier relationship. If you violate this relationship, you won't gain recognition from employers, and thus lose better career opportunities.
Among our many clients, one of the trickiest situations is the mismatch between ability and age. Many people with 3 or 5 years of work experience have no significant difference in ability compared to those with one year, so when they want to break through in their careers, they encounter many obstacles. There are two reasons for this: first, frequent job-hopping without accumulating in one direction, leaving them without a single skill; second, although they've accumulated in one direction for a long time, only the first year was growth, and the remaining years were repetitive labor, standing still.
So, for those who are 30, from now on, you must carefully examine a question: How many years have I worked since graduation? Does my ability match my age? If not, you must establish a sense of crisis early and run forward to make up for the gap with those who are forward-thinking, ensuring you won't be pushed off the horse in competition.
The third problem is the construction and improvement of knowledge structure.
We once served a client who had been in sales for five or six years and accumulated rich practical experience. Once he applied for a regional marketing manager position at a well-known FMCG company. During the interview, he could answer all questions about specific operations fluently, but when it came to system-level and strategic issues, his mind went blank. I believe many people with five or six years of experience feel this: at the specific operational level, whether it's processes, techniques, or methods, they can master them; but when looking at problems from a higher perspective, they often don't know where to start.
In the workplace, people at different levels do different things, and their vision and thinking patterns also differ. A basic salesperson thinks about how to maintain the terminal; this is tactical and their duty. But if a marketing director still thinks like a salesperson about how to deal with terminal owners every day, that's a dereliction of duty. Every company's operation consists of strategy and tactics. Big strategies are broken down into smaller ones, and smaller ones into execution tactics implemented by grassroots staff. Different levels of people are responsible for different heights of work, each doing their part; this is the meaning of teamwork. Similarly, each level has a different knowledge structure. The higher the level, the higher your perspective and thinking must be, and your overall knowledge structure must develop and break through. Otherwise, your ability will forever stay at the specific grassroots operational level, with no major development or promotion.
Additionally, from a communication perspective, the higher your position, the closer you are to the boss, and the more opportunities you have to interact with top leadership. If your way of thinking cannot align with the bosses' level, your ability won't be recognized. In such a case, your chances of promotion are minimal, and your career will stop there.
Before 30: How to Build a Foundation
30 is a transitional age and a very important time point. If you have almost no accumulation before 30, it's very difficult to break through in your career after 30, and many practical problems cannot be solved. This is a hard injury. So, to avoid regret after 30 and smoothly cross this threshold, you need to be responsible for yourself before 30 and prepare in advance.
The first thing you need to do is find a goal you can strive for for 5, 10, or even more years.
This is the ideal state. Because a clear goal allows your career growth to accumulate experience around one point, and this accumulated experience is also your bargaining chip for future promotions and raises. Although experience is not necessarily related to ability, without experience accumulation, your ability basically has no chance to improve.
Regarding goals and core competitiveness, so-called core competitiveness must have a core. Around this core, you can build your competitiveness. This core is your career goal direction: What kind of person do I want to become? Once this is solved and the direction is clear, even if you walk slowly, you can be faster than those who take detours, because you know your goal, you're always moving toward it, and you're walking in a straight line. What is a shortcut? A shortcut is not taking detours, always walking straight.
Last year, we interviewed a client who changed 6 companies in 7 years. According to common understanding, people would think this person's career development is terrible. Actually, it's not. This person's current after-tax monthly salary is 10,000 yuan, which is a decent level. People might wonder: why does someone who frequently changes jobs have such career development? Some might think he's lucky. Actually, it's not. Observing his growth, we found only one reason: each job change didn't deviate from his set direction. As long as the direction is right, every step he takes is approaching that direction, accumulating more chips for future career development. The thickness you accumulate will ultimately determine your future development height. Now housing prices and living costs are high, and many people's survival pressure has suddenly increased, causing many to become impetuous and drift with the tide.
A job often can't be held for more than a few months; feeling no hope and no salary increase, they often choose to change jobs. But in reality, changing jobs doesn't fundamentally solve the problem. Employers nowadays are very pragmatic: you do more, you get more; it's natural. If you can't contribute greater value to the company but still want more returns, no one is willing to do such a profit-only business. How much value you contribute depends on how strong your ability is. And ability accumulation comes from long-term persistence in one direction. Even those enviable successful people have had daily accumulation and growth. The quick-success mentality of trying to make up for losses in a very short time after taking detours will only make you lose more.
You may have heard of the 10,000-hour rule: to succeed in any field, you must put in at least 10,000 hours of practice. Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book "Outliers," says that whether it's the best athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians, or scientists, after investigation, you'll find they all worked at least ten years, no less than three hours a day, before emerging. The book has an example: 34-year-old world-class violinist Maxim Vengerov was born in Siberia and got his first violin at age 4, showing extraordinary talent. However, his talent was proportional to his dedication. He practiced 7 hours a day, held a recital at 5, and won international awards at 15. Vengerov said, "My mother came home at 8 p.m., after dinner she taught me violin until 4 a.m. For a 4-year-old, it was torture, but two years later I became a violinist."
Many people complain about lack of opportunity. Actually, it's not. Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent, believes that people who effectively invest a lot of time in practice naturally have their own luck: "They work almost harshly, and when luck comes, they're already prepared." This echoes the Chinese saying: "Opportunity only favors the prepared mind." If you haven't encountered opportunities, don't complain; first reflect on yourself: what aspects are you unprepared for? According to our experience, only if you persist in one direction for at least 5 years can you possibly get returns, and these returns will have a relatively long-term impact on your future career. At the same time, it's this long accumulation that makes your foundation solid and firm, and your steps more stable.
In the workplace, you need to do two things: do things and be a person.
If finding a goal is to accumulate more core skills and do things better, then learning to be a person is the second big thing you need to consider for career development. We even think that being a person is a hundred times more important than doing things. Finding a suitable career goal may not be easy for many confused people; but learning to be a person is a professional quality you can cultivate at any company, at any time. Even if your professional skills haven't made much breakthrough or growth, good professional quality will add chips to your career development from another level. We've also met many clients with insufficient ability but good attitudes and positivity; they successfully conquered interviewers with their excellent professional quality and got good development opportunities. There's a saying: to do things, first be a person. If ability is insufficient, it can be slowly cultivated; but if you can't be a person, you'll be a rat in any organization.
In the cultivation of being a person, there are four elements that can have a fatal impact on your future career development.
The first is your interpersonal relationship handling ability.
This includes relationships with your superiors and colleagues. A bad relationship with your superior directly determines your promotion. So I often say: "If you have a bad relationship with your superior, it basically means your career at this company is over." And if you have bad relationships with colleagues, even if you get promoted and become their leader, you'll find your power is hollowed out due to lack of "mass base"; your subordinates will either be outwardly compliant but inwardly opposed, or deliberately provoke you. You'll find the leader position is not easy to sit on.
The second element is to establish the ability to keep learning.
We should emphasize the importance of learning. Last year, I met a client who was nearly 40, had been an accountant for 14 years, but was still only a grassroots supervisor, with no promotion prospects and no salary increase for years. We asked him, "In these 14 years, have you had any training, further education, or any other form of self-improvement?" He said, "No." "Never?" "Never." This is an extreme example, but this phenomenon is very common in the workplace.
Regarding your own learning and growth, you might ask yourself a few questions: Compared to a year ago, has my professional ability improved significantly? Do I have unique insights, both in theory and practice? If something within my responsibilities comes up, can I handle it independently, with the ability to take charge? Thickness determines height. The reason you have thickness accumulation is your continuously strengthened learning ability. Without learning, your career development will stagnate. You think you haven't regressed, but others are progressing, and the gap between you and others widens imperceptibly, so you've actually regressed.
The third element is to establish a professional spirit.
Whether you have goals or not, whether this job is what you want to do, as long as you're in this position, you should do it well. Do your duty in your position; this is the minimum professional quality and an indispensable professional spirit in any position. Since you're in this position, your job responsibilities require you to do the work well; if you don't want to do it well, then leave, don't waste everyone's time. Good professional quality is sometimes more important than ability itself.
Good professional spirit is a necessary quality for many excellent people. Even if you don't like this job, don't treat it negatively, because you're not only wasting the company's time but also your own. In the workplace, you can gain only two things: returns and growth. Before having clear goals, do the present things to the extreme, and strive with all your might to get everything you can from this position. Treating work negatively will leave you empty-handed, gaining nothing.
The fourth element is to have a strong heart.
Many people I've met are actually fragile inside and cannot withstand the various hardships that come along the long road of life. You know, everyone's growth is not smooth sailing. Even Jesus suffered trials. A strong heart can let a person see hope in despair, while negativity and pessimism will only make you miss opportunities in front of hope. In "The Shawshank Redemption," there's a line: "Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free. A strong man can save himself. A great man can save another." You may not be a great man, but you must become a strong man. "Survival of the fittest." Natural selection is the eternal law of progress. Only by adapting to this law can you survive in such a competitive society.
After 30: How to Achieve Qualitative Breakthroughs
Career development after 30 should no longer be stagnant. To achieve a relatively big development in your career after 35, you should start at 30, use the 5 years well, and prepare for the following three crucial things:
The first thing is to complete your professional brand building.
How to build your personal brand. After 30, frequent job-hopping is definitely not good; the biggest disadvantage is that your professional knowledge growth will forever stay at a relatively low level, which affects your promotion and salary growth. What should I do, what am I suitable for? At this point, you should have a clear and definite positioning and use the remaining 5 years to accumulate. Otherwise, the "35-year-old phenomenon" will definitely happen to you.
Kenichi Ohmae, the "father of Japanese strategy," also proposed this view in his book "The Professional": "What makes you win? In the future, it's competition between individuals that will drive world trends. Can you dominate the world stage and forge core competitiveness that others cannot surpass? Your only reliance is professionalism." Are you a first-class business person or an ordinary office worker? The difference is here! Give yourself a professional positioning and establish your brand image; this will add more valuable chips to your future career development. We once met someone who changed jobs 13 times in 5 years and touched more than 10 industries. If you're like that, there's no professionalism at all.
Of course, to support your "professional" brand image, you also need to make efforts in the following two aspects:
The first aspect is the knowledge structure issue we mentioned earlier. You need to detach from specific operational issues, raise your perspective higher and farther, and become a person with "foresight" rather than "short-sightedness." You should look up to the best in the industry, take them as your goals, and use them as role models for your cultivation and growth, gradually closing the gap with excellence. At this time, on-the-job learning, further education, etc., need to be put on the agenda, and learn to enrich your mind with new knowledge.
The second aspect is to establish your influence within the industry. Every industry's outstanding talents have their own circles. Why can some people charge tens of thousands for a lecture? Why can some people use their own strength to promote the development of an industry? The reason is their influence is too great. If you want to become an excellent workplace professional, you must also look up to those most excellent people, establish influence in the industry, and use your thoughts to influence others.
Last year, we met a very excellent young man who left a deep impression. He was a junior college student majoring in printing, and after graduation, he went to a printing factory to do sales. Perhaps in some people's eyes, this major and position are nothing special. But it was such a seemingly low-value position that he used his unique way to build his influence. He set a requirement for himself: write an article every month and publish it in the most influential magazine in the industry. Of course, not every article could reach publication quality, but he had to ensure quality and write one every month.
The benefits of doing this: first, it establishes your influence in the industry; second, it helps you form your own knowledge structure. We mentioned the knowledge structure issue earlier; here we need to emphasize it again. Knowledge gained through learning, training, etc., is ultimately others', not yours. To form your own knowledge structure, you need to apply this externally absorbed knowledge to work practice. In practice, the same knowledge theory, under different circumstances, each person's feelings and insights are different. The process of writing articles is also a process of summarizing and reflecting on your own insights and experiences in practice. The knowledge structure formed in this process can truly be called "your own" knowledge.
The second thing is to cultivate yourself into an excellent manager (here referring to middle management, which is also your first management goal).
Except for those who are very passionate about technology, if you want more space in the workplace, promotion is essential. Stepping into a management position is a key step in your career growth. Future development space is closely related to this promotion. But not everyone can sit firmly in this position. Gallup once conducted a survey and found that the reason grassroots employees frequently leave is often not the company but their superiors: the middle managers. Because of poor middle management, the development and growth of subordinates are adversely affected, causing their career development to fail to grow effectively in both professional ability and professional cultivation.
Here, we won't discuss the macro topic of how important the "middle management crisis" is to company development. From a small perspective, you must realize: your management may change the lifelong destiny of your subordinates; it's your wrong management style that unknowingly hurts your subordinates and forces them to leave the company.
When managers recruit employees, they hate frequent job-hoppers. But as an observer, I have to say: when you complain about job seekers' disloyalty and low quality, have you considered establishing a benign talent growth mechanism so that everyone can grow? While complaining about talent shortages, have you considered how to seriously cultivate talent? Many companies say we cultivate but can't retain them; in the end, it's all for others, which is a loss-making business, so they're not enthusiastic about talent cultivation. But the problem is exactly here: why can't you retain people? If every company doesn't cultivate talent and wants to "eat ready-made," then the final result will be: all companies will face a situation where no one is available!
When your growth is hindered by your superior, it's your misfortune; you can choose to "vote with your feet"; when you become a manager one day, we hope you don't continue to pass on this misfortune. Only then can talent cultivation enter a positive cycle, allowing everyone to find their place in the workplace. There are many difficulties, but I hope those with ideals can continue to work hard and gradually change all this.
The third thing is to find a growing company and grow with it over a relatively long period.
In the process of growth, finding a company with growth potential and development space, and growing with it, is very important. First, you can witness a company's growth from small to large, from weak to strong, and gain a deeper understanding of its operations; you can also appreciate your role and position in the company's growth. Second, during the company's growth, your value has more room to be displayed and is easier to show. Many people tend to prefer large companies when job hunting, which is understandable, but for rapid growth, choosing a smaller growing company is actually a better choice. Because during growth, there's a more urgent need for talent, and your promotion will be faster. Third, your loyalty will bring more returns to your development. One of the most important criteria for enterprises in employing people is loyalty. No company likes employees who are fickle. Especially now that the job-hopping rate and turnover rate are high in many companies, loyalty becomes a very valuable professional spirit.
Whether you're already "approaching 30" or still on the way, always remind yourself: don't waste your prime years; seize all the time you can, and accumulate more depth for your ordinary life. When you grow old and look back on your life, do you want it to be a life of comfort or a life of regret and remorse?
Finally, I'll end this article with my favorite Steve Jobs quote.
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
When you feel your income is lower than others, don't compare casually, because you can never know what others have paid behind their income. Similarly, when our life is not as good as others', there's no need to envy, because our quality of life is created through our own efforts. If you feel your life isn't good enough, it means your efforts aren't enough. Actually, we just need to persist. Persisting for 3 days is easy; the hard part is persisting always! A good quality of life is created through your own efforts. If you feel your life isn't good enough, it means your efforts aren't enough. Actually, we just need to persist. Persisting for 3 days is easy; the hard part is persisting always!
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