How to tell if you’re overworked and underpaid

Sometimes, it’s not the late nights or missed birthdays that hit hardest. It’s the quiet humiliation of realizing you’re constantly pushing yourself harder—yet the bank balance never changes. The fear of looking ungrateful. The shame of wondering if you’re just not good enough to “deserve more.”

This is the slow erosion of self-worth in the face of seemingly rational decisions. You take on another project, tell yourself it will "open doors." You accept below-market pay, telling yourself it's "just until we raise." You see others post wins on LinkedIn, and convince yourself they worked harder, had better timing, or are simply more deserving. But privately, you're working nights, losing weekends, and trying to stretch 24 hours into 30. No one sees the spreadsheet of postponed bills. The long shower where you rehearse asking for more. The number of times you talk yourself out of leaving a toxic client or saying no to another unpaid call because "maybe it'll lead to something."

This isn’t just burnout. It’s a pattern I’ve seen in too many founders, freelancers, and mid-career women especially. We rationalize it. “It’s a growth phase.” “It’s good exposure.” We overfunction, undercharge, and call it ambition. We are praised for our grit, but grit without rest turns into erosion. You become the person who always pulls through. But no one asks what it costs you to do that.

Until something breaks. For some, it’s a health scare. For others, it’s a moment of financial reckoning when rent is due and there's nothing left. For a few, it's the day your therapist gently tells you that your anxiety isn't just about "not having a morning routine." It's about the mismatch between your energy output and emotional, financial, or relational return.

Let’s name the signals before that happens.

You sleep, but you wake up already anxious. You take breaks, but they feel hollow. You say yes to one more thing because saying no feels risky. Founders tell me all the time: "I'm just wired like this." But it’s not your wiring. It’s your boundaries. You’ve normalized chronic stress as drive. According to a 2024 Deloitte report, 77% of workers have experienced burnout in their current jobs. Among founders, the risk is even higher: high-performing startup leaders are twice as likely to suffer from long-term fatigue masked as "grit."

Whether you’re quoting a project, asking for a raise, or renegotiating equity, you find yourself rounding down. Justifying. Offering a discount before the client even asks. You’ve confused humility with invisibility. A founder in KL once told me she’d been charging RM2,000 for a full strategy retainer. When asked why, she said, "I didn’t want to scare them off." The agency she supported charged her client RM18,000—and she never saw a cent of that. Here’s the thing: pricing isn’t just about money. It’s about identity. If quoting your rate makes you shrink, it's not confidence you need to build. It's clarity you need to reclaim.

You do the prep. The wrap-up. The in-between. You're the emotional shock absorber for your team, your clients, your boss. But when performance reviews roll around? Nothing. Promotions go to the loudest. Raises go to the most visible. You start wondering if you're imagining things. You're not. Invisible labor is real. Research from Harvard Business Review shows women take on 21% more "non-promotable tasks" than men—work that keeps teams functional but doesn't get rewarded. In startups, it's worse. Founders expect operators to "just figure it out" and reward only what they can measure. If your most consistent feedback is "You're just so reliable," it's a trap. Reliability becomes expectation, not excellence. And expected labor is unpaid labor.

You’ve become brilliant at coping. Stretching invoices. Budgeting down to the last $5. Living with the low hum of anxiety that never quite goes away. A founder I mentored in Manila confessed she hadn’t paid herself in 11 months. She'd fundraised twice—for the business. But never once asked, "How long can I personally sustain this?" This is the curse of the capable. You keep going because you can. But that doesn’t mean you should. According to a 2023 Asia-Pacific founder health survey, over 60% of women founders report financial insecurity as their top stressor—despite running businesses that appear "successful" from the outside. Success isn’t top-line growth. It’s solvency without self-sacrifice.

You close a deal. Launch a product. Get press. But instead of pride, you feel relief—and then dread. You start fantasizing about quitting. Not because you don’t care. But because the cost of caring has become unsustainable. This is the quiet sign most people miss. When even wins feel empty, it’s a signal your internal compensation has collapsed. You’re giving more than you have, and receiving less than you need. One startup COO told me she cried in the toilet after each team offsite. Not because they went badly. But because no one asked how she was holding everything together. This is the emotional cliff of underpayment: you do more to prove your worth, but each effort just deepens the deficit.

Being overworked and underpaid isn’t just about hustle culture. It’s about systems that reward volume over value. It’s about leadership teams that confuse reliability with resilience. And it’s about founders, women especially, who’ve been taught to carry everything first, and ask questions later. We need new models of worth. Not based on output. But on self-regard, boundaries, and clarity.

Raise your rate. Even once. Say no to the next unpaid "opportunity." Stop cushioning bad systems with your emotional labor. You are not lazy. You are not dramatic. You are over-functioning in a system designed to under-value you. What you tolerate becomes your price. And it’s never too late to reset the terms.

And here's what often gets missed: You are not just overworked and underpaid at work. You are likely replicating this same imbalance in your relationships, your routines, and your self-talk. You apologize for asking for help. You explain yourself when you rest. You feel guilty when you succeed—as if joy has to be earned, not claimed. But the data doesn’t lie. Burnout is structural. Recovery is strategic.

If you’re in leadership, look at who’s carrying quiet weight in your team. If you’re freelancing, look at where your invoice cycle is subsidizing someone else’s profit margin. And if you’re building something of your own, ask: Are you designing a business that pays you, or one that drains you? Because overwork is not a badge. It’s a debt—and it always comes due.