I met a brilliant product manager last week who turned down a 40% hike to stay at a struggling startup. His friends thought he’d lost his mind. His family questioned his judgment. But six months later, when that struggling startup got acquired, he became the VP of Product at the new entity.

That 40% hike he rejected? It would have taken him to a comfortable middle management role where his biggest challenge would be managing Excel sheets and attending status meetings.

After 20 years of watching careers unfold, I can tell you this: The professionals who become real leaders don’t optimize for CTC in their 20s and 30s. They optimize for something far more valuable- learning to lead.

The End of Predictable Career Paths

Let me burst your bubble first: There’s no standard career track anymore.

Your father’s career playbook- engineering degree, join a good company, get promoted every 3-4 years, retire as General Manager is as relevant today as a Nokia 3310.

The professionals who are thriving today are the ones who understand how the landscape has changed. They’re ready to explore unconventional paths and make calls based on opportunity, not tradition.

I’ve seen a CA become a startup CEO, a marketing manager pivot to product, and a sales guy build India’s largest recruitment firm. None of these moves made sense on paper. All of them created exponential career growth.

But here’s the catch: In this new world, you need to stay perpetually employable. Organizations don’t offer job security anymore, they offer opportunity security. 

The difference? Your job might disappear tomorrow, but your skills shouldn’t become obsolete.

Look at what’s happening around us. Microsoft just laid off thousands of employees, including senior folks with 15-20 years of service. These weren’t merely due to performance issues, these were strategic pivots toward AI and cloud computing.

Even the supposedly “stable” FMCG giants like HUL are feeling the heat from new-age D2C brands. When a startup like Mamaearth can challenge Unilever’s baby care portfolio, or when Boat can dent premium audio market share, traditional companies will be forced to restructure. And restructuring always means letting people go- usually the expensive, senior folks first.

The regional sales manager who spent 20 years selling soaps in UP might find their role redundant when the company pivots to digital-first, performance marketing driven strategies.

What It Takes to Stay Relevant

• Build transferable skills: Focus on skills that work across industries- team building, problem-solving, stakeholder management. Technical skills get outdated; leadership skills appreciate.

• Maintain your external network: The best insurance against sudden job loss isn’t your performance review, it’s your LinkedIn network. Stay visible, help others, and keep relationships warm even when you don’t need them.

• Keep one foot outside your organization: Take on freelance projects, speak at conferences, write about your domain, mentor others. This keeps you connected to the broader market and builds your personal brand.

• Upskill continuously: Not just courses and certifications, but real hands-on experience with emerging trends in your field. The AI expert today was probably a regular analyst who started experimenting with machine learning three years ago.

The question isn’t “What’s the next logical step?”

It’s “What’s the next learning opportunity that also makes me indispensable?”

The CTC Illusion

Most professionals get seduced by the annual increment dance. They hop jobs for 20-30% bumps, carefully negotiating every rupee, and then wonder why they’re stuck in the same functional box five years later.

Here’s what they don’t realize: Every time you chase a CTC bump without considering the leadership opportunity, you’re essentially buying yourself a more expensive prison cell.

The VP who earns 50 lakhs but has never built a team from scratch is less valuable than the manager earning 25 lakhs who’s launched three products and mentored a dozen junior developers.

What Actually Accelerates Leadership Growth

1. Working With Top Teams Beats a High CTC Any Day

I’ve placed hundreds of professionals over two decades, and here’s a pattern I’ve observed: The best leaders didn’t chase the highest-paying jobs. They chased the best teams.

A mediocre team with great pay will teach you mediocre habits. A world-class team with average pay will teach you world-class thinking.

When Flipkart was paying peanuts compared to consulting firms, the smartest people still joined because they knew they’d be working with the best minds in the Indian internet. Today, those “underpaid” early employees are running unicorns and investment funds.

Your colleagues are your biggest teachers. Choose them wisely.

2. Talk to Experienced Headhunters Before Major Career Moves

This might sound self-serving coming from someone in recruitment, but hear me out.

Good headhunters see career patterns across industries and decades. They know which skills are becoming valuable, which industries are declining, and which career moves actually work in practice versus theory.

I’ve saved countless professionals from expensive mistakes- like the IT manager who wanted to do an MBA when the market was actually rewarding product management experience over degrees.

Before you make a major career decision, spend 30 minutes with 2-3 experienced headhunters. Not to find a job, but to understand the market dynamics you might be missing.

Most professionals make career decisions in isolation, using outdated information. Don’t be one of them.

3. Follow Someone’s Coattails (But Choose Wisely)

Find someone whose achievements you genuinely admire, ideally 3-4 years senior to you. Far enough ahead that they don’t see you as competition, close enough that their path is still relevant to your timeline.

Study their career moves. Understand their decision-making process. When possible, follow their trajectory.

If they join a new company, explore opportunities there. If they recommend a course or mentor, pay attention. If they make a seemingly counterintuitive career move, dig deeper to understand their reasoning.

I’ve seen this strategy work brilliantly. A young marketing manager followed his respected senior’s path from FMCG to fintech to eventually starting their own venture. The senior became his informal mentor, opening doors that would have taken years to access otherwise.

This isn’t about copying someone blindly. It’s about learning from someone who’s already navigated the path you want to walk.

4. Take the Messy Assignments

When your boss offers you the project that everyone else is avoiding, the one with unclear requirements, difficult stakeholders, and tight deadlines- say yes immediately.

These messy assignments are leadership boot camps. You’ll learn to manage ambiguity, build consensus among conflicting parties, and deliver results without perfect information.

The comfortable projects that pay well? They’re career dead ends disguised as promotions.

5. Seek P&L Responsibility Early

The fastest way to understand business is to be responsible for both revenue and costs. Even a small P&L teaches you more about leadership than any MBA course.

When you’re accountable for numbers, you start thinking like a business owner instead of an employee. You understand trade-offs, prioritization, and resource allocation in ways that functional roles never teach.

The Compound Effect

Here’s what most people miss: Leadership skills compound exponentially, while salary increments compound linearly.

The professional who spent their early career optimizing for learning and leadership experiences will out earn the CTC optimizers by massive margins in their 40s and 50s.

More importantly, they’ll have the skills to create opportunities rather than just respond to job postings.

When Compensation Should Guide You

I’m not saying ignore money completely. There are times when CTC considerations are valid:

• When you’re supporting family and need to meet basic financial obligations

• When you’re planning major life events (marriage, home purchase, children’s education)

• When you’re switching from a high-growth, high-learning environment to a similar opportunity with better pay

But even then, ask yourself: “Will this move teach me something new, or am I just getting paid more to do the same thing?”

Your Career is a High-Stakes Experiment

Think of your career as a series of experiments, not a linear progression.

Some experiments will fail spectacularly. Others will exceed your wildest expectations. The key is to keep experimenting with calculated risks while learning from each outcome.

The professionals who become leaders aren’t the ones who played it safe. They’re the ones who took intelligent risks, learned from failures, and adapted quickly.

The Bottom Line

Twenty years from now, nobody will remember what you earned in 2025. But they’ll remember what you built, whom you developed, and how you handled the tough assignments.

CTC is what you earn. Leadership is what you become.

The choice is yours: Do you want to be well-paid or well-equipped for the future?

Choose wisely.