- Pete Petersen, 58, has struggled to find work after being laid off from a corporate job.
- Petersen said his age and salary expectations may hurt his job search in the white-collar sector.
- Despite savings and severance, Petersen said he can’t retire yet.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Pete Petersen, 58, who has been looking for work since February 2024 after he was laid off from his corporate job. Petersen spent much of his career in the consumer products healthcare division of a pharmaceutical company. He suspects his age and salary expectations have hurt his chances of finding a white-collar job. His words have been edited for length and clarity.
I live in Hingham, Massachusetts. I was raised by two parents who grew up in tougher circumstances. I grew up in what you’d probably consider an upper-middle-class lifestyle in an upper-middle-class town. I wasn’t as frugal as my dad, but when I spent, I felt guilty about it.
I went to the University of Massachusetts and graduated with a bachelor’s in communications because I wanted to go into film and television. I was working with people in the industry for a long time, some 35 years old living in tiny New York City apartments and barely rubbing pennies together. I was seeing all my friends doing pretty well and having a good time, so I ended up moving back to Boston and starting a career in sales.
I connected with what was at the time SmithKline Beecham, a consumer healthcare company. I joined with the idea that it was going to be three years, and then I’d go off and find someplace else to make my millions. Thirty years later, in 2019 when GSK merged with Pfizer, was when my career there ended.
A lengthy career
I started out at GSK doing retail sales, driving from store to store, talking to people in the aisles, talking to store managers about building displays, and making sure our product was in stock. I learned the business at the ground level, showing up on Saturday mornings to reset stores. Then I managed a team that oversaw regional supermarket chains.
In the early 2000s, it was becoming more about data analytics. I had a boss who encouraged me to get into a job that was very analytical. I moved to calling on national accounts, which in my case with CVS. I went there and fell in love with it. I could lock myself in the basement for three days and dig into the data to figure out what our business trends were and look at where we were failing with the customers.
In 2019, we’d have these meetings, and I would always laugh because everyone would say, “Who’s going to get the ax?” I would show them the gray in my beard and be like, “My time has come,” because I was pretty expensive. I was right, and downsizing came in December of 2019. In March 2020, all hell broke loose, so I looked for a job during that time.
I finally landed at a broker distributor that had worked for regional food chains. They ended up folding that up. I switched to working for a company that produced a cannabis sleep aid. The branding was awesome, and it was a dream outcome. I also invested in a brewery with a former colleague, and I helped with my wife’s business.
I thought to myself, I would turn 62 and sell the product while still making six figures, and I would navigate the end of my career like I never could have dreamed of.
Despite having success building the business, the job ended abruptly and unexpectedly with the discovery of financial misconduct by the CEO and his tragic passing shortly after. I was out of work in February.
A year of unemployment
Early in the process, there were opportunities that showed up that I didn’t take. When I was interviewing for jobs and some of the pay packages were much lower than I wanted, I thought, ‘I have a daughter I just finished paying for college for, and I have a son in college.’ There’s a bit of ego too.
I had a conversation with an old colleague who went through a similar thing, ended up with a consultancy and did OK, but he never did as well as he did at GSK. I learned you have to stop looking at jobs like you would have when you were 39. You have to start looking at what are the jobs that I can do that access my skills, motivate me to get out of bed in the morning, get my brain going, and cover my costs. If you’re looking for that unicorn, you’re going to turn down a lot of opportunities trying to find it.
At this stage of my career, it feels like if people are going to hire somebody my age, it’s almost like the puzzle piece has to be exact. If they were hiring me at 40, it’s like doing a puzzle, and you pick up a piece, and it looks like it fits and it’s close enough.
I’m not afraid of technological changes because I grew up at a time when they happened rapidly. But there is a feeling that being out of work for a year has made me lose my step. Am I going to go to work and not even recognize what people are doing? Has it moved this fast?
The best case scenario I’ve seen is maybe 10-15% below my former base pay, but there are jobs 25-40% below my former base pay, even more so if you consider the total package.
Still, I interviewed with a couple of CEOs and companies, but they ended up falling out. If you hire the exact same person at 40 who can help grow the business, they could get at least 6-8 years out of him. But when you look at somebody my age, you wonder if by the time he builds out his solid network in the area which he hasn’t worked in, is he going to leave?
Ageism is real, but it’s not about a bunch of people sitting around saying, ‘We aren’t going to hire the older guy.’ They’d love to bring in experience, but they weigh all the different factors. I think they perceive me as at the end of my career. But if I went to work for a company where I had a boss who would get up every morning and treat me like I was treated when I was being trained in a skill set in my 20s, that would not be as workable for me.
I was great at personal finance and saved a decent amount of money, so I’ve been able to weather this particular storm. GSK gave me a very good severance package, so I don’t worry about things like healthcare. But I know for someone making a third or half of what I was making in a situation like that, this could be devastating.
I could theoretically retire in November, but I would be living on half the budget that I would’ve hoped to, which would significantly change my lifestyle. I set plans my whole life, and I did the right thing saving, and this has set me back significantly from that plan.
Read the full article here
