To ask what high earners do all day?

DH was a partner in city law firm earning a package over 150k. He dealt with fewer cases than more junior staff, but they were exceptionally complex. He worked really, really hard and his stress levels were hard to cope with.

He lane-switched a few years into a job that pays around a sixth of his previous salary, but I'm relieved and happy for him that he did.

I've got one 'em Ball and Cups things, like in the photo here.

It's bigly difficult and focuses my brain and keeps me on my toes. Everybody here in the WH (White House) says I am reel good.

Agree. My dad was a sales director for a major global corporation during that time. He will tell you himself he was very busy playing golf, wining and dining and travelling around the world. He was paid handsomely for this 'work' too.

You get two types of people though - those who work to live and those who live to work

dh is the latter - he thrives off his job tbh and would probably do it for free!

whereas I don’t mind my job and enjoy the fact it’s mentally challenging but I only do it for the salary really!!

VP in our company work far too much. Even on their holidays they reply to emails and attend meetings. They work crazy hours and have a lot of pressure.

They attend meetings, look at company acquisitions, resources and how to best run projects etc.

I don’t envy them at all, for the amount of hours they work it’s not worth it imo

I wish it was, trust me. It’s a very niche role with next to no oversight.

Many, many meetings plus constant phone calls. Responding to questions via email (requests for technical or process advice). I do all actual 'work' - writing Board papers etc. in the evening after my kids are in bed. Delegating tasks to team, dealing with personnel matters. Planning months ahead so no deadlines get missed. Most weeks there will be some epic shit show which details everything anyway. Generally carrying the weight of knowing the buck stops with you and therefore considering if there's anything you've missed/should be looking at next. And of course frantically searching for another job with better work/life balance!

My brother probably earns similar but in New Zealand.

he was a journalist and is now in PR.

he described his job as trying to stop the minister saying anything too stupid and clearing up the shit when the minister inevitably opened his mouth and did say something stupid.

i suspect this involved a lot of lunches with various journalists and it definitely involved a certain amount of persuasion on his part. The boy was born with charm.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22egh3ok4cP0T7UZRmP6TMLErZYWMN-l&si=K5W8Ka9Essoj9gcp there is a podcast called Diary of a CEO which would help you gain the insight you’re looking for.

I usually tell my kids I do two things at work: problem solving and decision making.

I have on average 10-15 meetings per day, and my work involves staying close to the markets and customers so I can make decisions on strategy, product strategy, pricing, regulation, HR issues etc etc. The list really is endless

I travel to different offices, I meet clients in their offices (and never for golf) and I get on stage and speak at events or to journalists. Long days, always 10hrs minimum

Mine earnt about £250k 8 years ago. He wrote code, discussed code, presented code, taught code and fixed code. He’s worked 15 hours a day and came home and wrote more code. In the end he died from a heart attack brought on by stress.

That's a good earning for a Prof. Mine is prof and head of research centre and not quite as much. I have heard that those coming in as profs from institutions can negotiate higher salaries than those being internally recruited even to named chairs.

Typical day may include many meetings, reading reports and strategies.
Dealing with regulators, shareholders etc.
Corporate level PR- journalist meetings.
Presenting at Town Halls/staff conferences etc.
After work maybe networking dinners, awards ceremonies etc but it’s still work.

Rubbish

I don't earn that much but for my area of the country I'm well north of the 90th centile earnings wise.

I spend my time finding and fixing errors, or preventing errors happening or preventing problems arising. That involves talking to people, finding out what they are doing/have been doing, assessing it against the framework and then adjusting processes so it follows the framework. The frameworks are thousands of pages long and have lots of complexity and the things we do are very unusual so often don't fit into them neatly. Failures can end up with fines in some circumstances or our CEO getting sacked as a worst case scenario.

On the preventing side it involves seeing what they are planning to do, and then working out how that fits with the regulations and how we can facilitate it/adapt it/minimise risk from it/minimise ongoing manual work arising from it. It also involves giving them enough of a lay person's understanding of what the risky/complex things/red flags are that mean they should call me in the future.

I also then have to explain this stuff in a way that is understandable to people who aren't experts in the field, either for them to make a decision, or to be suitably briefed, or to explain why they can't do what they want to do. I have to provide training to other qualified professionals. I sit on national steering groups to make sure potential issues with framework changes are dealt with up front rather than having to try and fix them retrospectively.

Edit post: plus the usual staff management stuff, plus responsibility for the people reporting in to me and the areas they manage and therefore understanding the work they do enough to be content they are doing it right.

Plus dealing with external stakeholders to convince them we are doing our jobs appropriately and that they don't need to intervene.

I can’t tell you exactly as I’m not the one doing it. Meetings. Managing. Decisions - about clients, about staff, about budgets, the direction of the firm, motivating young lawyers, working with outreach programs (he was associated with a Social Mobility charity). My DH earned £500k. Lawyer and managing partner of a firm with 750 lawyers (a number earned more than him), associates and support staff. He left home about 7.30 and got home about 8pm (45 min commute). Travelled a lot - one year he was away 120 nights. This was usually visiting other offices around the world representing his office. One five day trip could include Tokyo, Sydney, back via Chicago. Once went to NY for lunch with a client - out in the morning, had lunch, overnight flight back, straight to the office from the airport. Lunches were working lunches or else he ate nothing. We never took a holiday that he didn’t have to spend several hours on conference calls. No golf, but he was at the gym doors at 6am six days a week to swim. Very stressful, though he loved it. It killed him in the end - massive heart attack at 51.

I unusual tell my kids I do two things at work: problem solving and decision making.

I have on average 10-15 meetings per day, and my work involves staying close to the markets and customers so I can make decisions on strategy, product strategy, pricing, regulation, HR issues etc etc. The list really is endless

I travel to different offices, I meet clients in their offices (and never for golf) and I get on stage and speak at events or to journalists. Long days, always 10hrs minimum

It depends on the job, obviously. I'm around about there in a role in sport. There's lots of meetings, negotiations, strategizing, forward planning, budgeting, partnership work, relationship building, reporting, QC... Communication is massive. Emails, calls, messages, constantly.

I'm not a golf woman, but I've got some videogames in my office if I ever get ten minutes for lunch 😅

My ExH earns more than that.

he builds mathematical models of financial products and implements them in various computer programming languages.

he’s got a degree in computer science and has significantly upskilled in maths since leaving university. The combination of being able to understand the maths and actually implement it in code is rare.

there’s a lot of ex-mathematicians and physicists in finance.

My DH worked in IT support when we first met on £40k and he'd usually fix problems really quickly then watch films and game! He's worked up to a higher earner managers role now and has meetings upon meetings, big projects to work on and a ton of travel. When he goes long haul it's knackering and he misses weekends with me and the kids to travel. He also has a Monday night meeting 9-10.30pm every week- it's a busy and stressful sacrifice

Surely you know what a headteacher does? High up roles do similar things - policy, strategic planning, meetings, dealing with employees…

fwiw my husband earns a lot more than £150k and he doesn’t manage anyone! He isn’t ’high Up’ as he works for a very small finance firm.

Write code, go to meetings, get things through regulatory committees. Occasionally stand my ground and prevent even more senior people from violating data protection law because they don’t pay attention during endless training.

im also supposed to find time to mentor junior staff and make sure they are on track to eventually do my job in 20 years.

I’m a lawyer. I don’t earn that but the partners do. In my area they spend a lot of time supervising work. So they might read several reports in a day written by other lawyers and have various conversations with lawyers about particularly difficult issues. They have to spot any errors in a very short time and often make risk based judgments on points of law e.g does the client qualify for tax relief on a particular transaction and is there a better but legal way to do it?

The other main thing they do is communicate with clients and prospective clients. They often deal with the “harder” conversations e.g telling the client they shouldn’t do something because it’s tax avoidance, discussing our fees etc., occasionally telling them that something has gone wrong. Also communicating with lawyers acting for other parties, again often dealing with the more contentious points.

This is alongside constant other requests- to approve branding materials, holiday requests, bills issued to clients, file opening, attending or giving training or networking events etc.

I think what can be stressful about it is the number of decisions you’re making in such a short time. If you make a mistake or miss something it could literally cost the client millions and the firm would be negligent. There is more potential work than could possibly done so you have to be very good at prioritising and striking a balance between winning new work, managing your team and doing the work you’ve got. You never know what your day will be like and are very rarely dealing with anything routine.

Meetings and making the decisions. Reading the room. Making personal connections with important people.

that high up, you don’t do the grunt work, you are the one who stay yes or no.