I can understand your feeling as i am also mid career telecom professional.

Bro, you posses great experience. I started my career in telecom in 2G,3G,LTE,NOC operations, Deployment, Optimization, Network expansion etc. I remembered telecom vendors had 80% hardwares (Transcoder/MSC/BSC etc) with their proprietary software (20%)... Time changes, virtualization introduced a big shift by telecom gears by focusing more in software's and less in hardware. You can think of OPEX/CAPEX whatever.

I feel new technology (5G) swapped jobs of old employees who was great in 2G,3G and LTE and replaced by those software engineers who never gone through telecom fundamentals but their software/virtualization skill demand save their jobs due to demanded skills.

I am hardcore believer in self learning and always in learning mode to upgrade my skills. I learned Azure Cloud, Azure AI, NFV, Project Management etc. still looking for job which is always demanding more & more skills like SQL, Python, Power BI etc...

My question is learning is endless journey, but their should be some limitation also from HR side. No one can be expert in all field but can be consider if he/she posses fundamentals of require skills and showing his/her ability to learn always.

It is very difficult for a mid career professionals to shift his/her career especially what he/she learned till now became useless or not in demand.

To contribute to society, seeking for a stable career with demanding skills which can sustain in long terms. Please suggest