I am not able to understand where I am going wrong, but I guess it’s my personality

During academics, I didn’t achieve what I desired or what I was supposedly capable of due to my ignorance and fear of failure, and yeah, obviously, I was not putting in enough effort as per my goals. I realized it in hindsight, but by grace got a good enough college, so not much complaining about it.

Post this experience, I made a pact not to let that happen in my professional career. Upskilled work on my defects, and worked on actual jobs in parallel to my semesters, and quietly maintained both my profile and academics.

Fortunate enough to work with all the companies I desired to work with, during my college days, including getting self-hired at one of the top OTTs of the country, being the only intern in the whole vertical.

But lately, all of that seems to be fading. I joined an early-stage startup post-college in a full-time capacity, at a much lower CTC than my colleagues, let alone the market standards. I have made actual growth and product launches, but still feel like my profile is not good enough for recruiters for further opportunities.

Folks with whom I was in college, who weren’t grinding as much as I on profile, and had kinda similar academic profiles, have gotten equivalent CTC and, actually, a few of them have higher than me, with better work-life balance and, most importantly, the brand tag associated with them.

Not being extremely jealous, but yeah, it hurts. It’s not like I sacrificed my social life in college, but yeah, I had more exhaustion, but the intermediate results are the same. Kinda forces you to pause and think where I went wrong.

Doing what I actually wanted to do, connecting with top folks of the industry at a personal level, even god dammit, going till the last round of Google APM program, but still the ctc and self-doubt.

Yeah, I agree, I'm young, and i shouldn’t focus on money much but rather the learning graph, and I am doing better than most of the PM folks on the same journey.

And also fully aware I am not interested in the quality of Flipkart/meesho/swiggy amp hires, and yeah am working on it to be better, but yeah am damn undervalued based on what I bring to the table and can contribute to growth.

Maybe this, or am I in my “main character phase,” distant from reality, and being self-centered?