Q: I’m based in NYC and 28 years old. I’ve been working for six years. I’m having trouble finding jobs with my level of experience. I’m a vice president at a PR agency — essentially, I’m a communications consultant with different clients — with a salary of $130,000.

My current title and salary level have made it hard to find a job moving in-house, working for just one company, which is what I want to do. I’m stuck in a limbo. I’m too expensive and experienced for jobs that call for similar years of experience, but I don’t have enough years of experience for more senior roles.

Is this an ambition penalty for moving up the ladder so quickly or the COVID salary curse, which used to feel more like a pandemic perk when companies were throwing money at you to stay?

I acknowledge I might have to pay my dues for a few more years to get the right title and find a more senior role, but the salary question still remains. Will I just still become too expensive for those roles when the time comes? And in the meantime, is there a way to stand out?

— Impatient at 28

A: One important thing to remember about advice is that it is always a reflection of the people giving it. It’s refracted through their personal experience — whether they think their path is the best one to follow, or whether they look back with deep regret, or some combination. Hopefully it also represents useful knowledge, empathy and wisdom. But still. There’s no such thing as unfiltered advice.

This week, and for a few more, I am the person giving advice as the Work Friend. My qualifications, such as they are, are having edited this column when I ran The New York Times’ Sunday Business section a few years ago, and also having various jobs in the media industry for 20 years. I have managed teams; I have been managed.

I recognize the impatience of being 28 and being a confident 28. Confident at work, anyway.

You have had early career success and are worried about a plateau. I am imagining you are asking because something feels lacking in your day-to-day, but maybe you are also asking because being 28 can mean you are deep in a season of comparing yourself with other people and the ladders they are on, personally and professionally. I can’t tell from your letter if you have recently had to participate in a particularly onerous bachelorette party weekend, and somewhere in between a passive-aggressive Venmo request and a stalled train you thought: This is intolerable. And also, I want a new job.

It’s also not clear if you are actually chafing at the limitations of your current gig or are worried, looking ahead, that the pace of externally validated growth — compensation increases, title changes — will slow down. And I imagine that what you have achieved in your six years in the workforce may be central to your identity. The idea of it slowing down, even if you actually like what you are doing, is daunting.

But the key to figuring out your next move is to focus inward. Try spending one week — or even one day — breaking your work life into its component parts.

What moments of the day feel most energizing? When do you still feel nervous? Are there roles or tasks or areas of focus — or even ways of working — that seem most appealing? You don’t want to climb just any arbitrary ladder. You want to be ascending to a view you actually want to see. So now is a time to specialize a bit more. Do you like pitching clients? Public speaking? Do you like focusing on how new technology is changing your industry?

Can you, in other words, make use of this time when you feel “stuck in a limbo” to figure out what it is you want to specialize in beyond wanting to move in-house somewhere?

You did use two terms that I didn’t know about when I was 28: the “ambition penalty” and “the COVID salary curse.”

So I called J.T. O’Donnell, a career coach, to ask about those particular trends. The good news, sort of, is that she affirmed that what you are experiencing is real. People are “job hugging” — not leaving secure gigs — so movement is difficult, she said. This job market is very different from the one you entered and in the height of the COVID job market frenzy, companies were handing out titles and compensation on a much faster pace than they are today.

Her advice is also that now is a time to specialize. “Pick a lane,” she advised. “Talk to me about specific industries or skill sets or specific problems that you solve.” In particular, she pitched artificial intelligence. “Everyone is saying: I want to bring in the person who understands AI,” she said.

That may not be the right focus for you, but the point is to focus.

Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited.