To ask what high earners do all day?

CEO of a small company - circa 100 employees. My days include meetings with potential and existing customers and partners to build an ongoing pipeline of work; internal meetings to turn those conversations into opportunity pipeline and drive through to landing work. Continually assessing company value proposition and services against market demand and evolving the offer. Assessing skills needed, ways to improve delivery and where to invest in transformation. Meeting SLT to keep all the weeks turning in the right direction. Meeting as many people in the company as possible on a regular basis - otherwise I wouldn’t understand enough about how things are working, what customers need, whether my employees are happy. I work about 100 hours a week, there’s a lot of travel, a lot of lunches, lot of context switching. I spend a lot of time worrying about whether I’ve got enough in the pipeline, whether cash-flow is sufficient to pay everyone and dealing with priority delivery issues. I don’t sleep
well, and I keep meaning to exercise more, but i couldn’t work for anyone else ever again .

My brother earns that and barely works at all, he’s the first to say so, he gyms, cleans his car, bakes sourdough, walks, socialises, generally lives his best life. He doesn’t have much responsibility, no people management, but he has very specialist knowledge and earns every penny through what he offers his company. I’m very proud of him. And he makes exceptional bread.

I think my sister must earn that sort of money.

It involves a lot of responsibility for decisions that involve huge sums of money, landing deals with clients, fire fighting, problem solving. Lots of meetings, lots of reports, lots of presentations and travel. It seems very very stressful.

I think times have completely changed. Working for directors as a PA in 80s and 90s, I observed a lot of drinking, meeting with buddies, golf and other non- curriculum activities. Fridays off to the country post- lunch. In at 10am Mondays. People at ceo level have to be ever present in one way or another now.

Well, what the meetings are about depends on the job. A CEO will have board meetings once a month, regular meetings with clients and prospective clients, internal meetings with Finance, HR and operational teams, business strategy planning meetings. External speaking appearances and conferences. Lawyers meet with clients, opponents/lawyers on the other side of a deal, have internal meetings on case/transaction progress and strategy, deal with billing, attend court/tribunal hearings, travel nationally/internationally to see clients/attend conferences.

The more senior you are (in any sector) the more your job becomes less about the doing of that job (whether it be sales, professional services, or anything else) and more about the business of selling whatever the “job” or product is.

A lot of the very senior people I know professionally are very switched on. All over a topic that can take someone years to understand but takes them 5 mins! Can see big picture and ask pertinent questions.

They work, like everyone else.

@nietzscheanvibe a typical meeting for me, would be with the CFO/Head of Treasury for clients borrowing billions of pounds. They want to talk about how they can protect their company from debt servicing costs spiralling if interest rate go up. So I give them an update on where interest rates are (market interest rates, not base rate), where they are expected to go under various economic circumstances and how to manage that risk using a variety of interest rate derivatives - basically fixing their interest rates. How much they should fix, how long for and what those rates would be. It’s my job to then go into the market and secure those fixed rates for them.

You really can’t imagine what a headteacher does all day?

DH earns around £300k.

He works at home, in court or chambers (he’s a barrister) writing tens of thousands of words every day in advices, submissions, skeleton arguments, reading thousands of pages of evidence and bundles, talking to solicitors, having conferences with clients, writing and delivering talks and PowerPoints for seminars and conferences with solicitors. Or he’s at court or in tribunal, or travelling across the country to courts or tribunals, or occasionally to visit clients at home if they’re very ill. He works late at night, often away from home and usually both afternoons of the weekend.

He does not play golf, take long lunches or go to the pub in the afternoon.

And no, £300k does not buy the lifestyle you might assume…

I make decisions, mainly. Go to meetings, decide ways forward with things, then figure out what that looks like. I create organisational strategy and then work with other people to break it down into digestible parts, so other people can go off and do said parts.

DH earns multiples of what I do, and he looks at spreadsheets and tables all day, does things with them, has meetings about them, and as a result a multimillion pound building in Nicaragua goes up, or similar.

My dh was talking about this yesterday. Attend meetings and write emails.

I earn about what you’ve quoted. I work, like you do. Long hours, technical work, lots of decisions, managing people (sometimes the hardest bit!). As a PP said, things that find their way to me often tend to be problems I need to find a solution for.

DH earns not quite what was quoted in the OP, but would be classed a high earner. Basically he works his socks off, laptop is on 7.30am and he works pretty much solidly until 6/6.30pm. If he’s lucky he’ll have a sandwich away from his desk

Definitely no golf or leisurely lunches for him!

The glimpses I see into a day in the life of the CEO of my company (a FTSE100) include this kind of stuff…

They have days where they’ll be giving trading updates to the markets and investors (quarterly) - early morning (7am) giving a press conference about the company’s performance where they have to have robust answers prepped and memorised, difficult questions anticipated. Then they give a news interview on Bloomberg about performance and future strategy, taking messages from investors about whether they’re happy or not, then later in the day giving an interview which is broadcast out to the whole company to answer questions about the results, give everyone a pat on the back for contributing and reassurance about the future strategy etc.

Other days they’ll be visiting the company’s offices up and down the country, seeing how things are performing. Signing off complaints that have been sent to the CEO office. There will be a LOT of meetings - board meetings, senior leadership team meetings, board risk committees, 121s with their direct reports, meetings with the CFO and internal investment teams and external investors all over the world. Meetings with other companies about mergers and acquisitions or about selling off parts of the business.

Then some CEOs also do bits for other companies on the side, e.g. they’ll sit on the board as a NED (non-exec director) to give advice and challenge.

I wouldn’t want to do it!

Is it just me, or is "meetings" vague as fuck? 🤣

I earn over £150k and what I do all day is: have meetings, write letters, have more meetings, discuss case strategy and delegate tasks or draft litigation documents myself. Lawyer.

Most of my CEO clients earn multiples of what I do and they tend to: have meetings, a lot of meetings, speak to their key clients, attend events at which they can promote their company’s services, have extra-marital affairs and worry about money.

I think high earners have to make decisions and the buck stops with them. Having said that, I don’t think wages always reflect responsibility. I have a multi million pound budget and if I make a mistake, 60000 people won’t be able to work. I earn £50k

My salary (if I was full time) would be more than that. I fly long haul passenger jets. TBH it does involve a lot of time sitting down doing nothing, and there does seem to be a lot of golf among the blokes. But if I told you some of the stuff we manage and handle on a regular basis you would be quite happy we earn our keep. Weather, security, sick/disruptive/late passengers, broken aircraft, and the knowledge that if we stuff up that’s it for all of us on board. Doing most of this overnight in a different time zone. Dodging thunderstorms whilst dealing with your GPS being blocked by countries at war and trying to make it feel for the passengers like it’s all a perfectly normal flight - I do roll my eyes though when you get told ‘the autopilot/computer does it all/I play Microsoft Flight Sim and it’s not that hard.’ Yeah right - if it was easy you’d be flying to the Caribbean instead of flying round your spare room! 🙄

No golf or lunches.
A lot of meetings. A lot of my role consists if saying “no” to upper management and defending decisions, making sure we don’t overpromise, make sure we don’t get pressured into promising things we can’t deliver.
Otherwise quickly finding solutions for problems, aligning with all teams, making sure everything gets communicated.

For me, it’s 12 hours a day either building/using complicated spreadsheets to ensure the deals I offer to clients are cheaper than other banks (thus winning us the business), but not bankrupt my bank by using up our precious capital too cheaply. Or I’m meeting clients trying to convince them that my bank’s offering is better than the other bank. I also have to keep a close eye on the financial markets and keep clients informed of any big movements. Plus endless compliance paperwork.

But what does salary have to do with anything?

I have no idea what a “minimum wage worker” does all day, but surely it depends massively on what their role is?

For high earners, a CEO vs a Head of Finance vs a Cybersecurity Consultant vs a well-selling author will all have different things they do all day.

Same as minimum wage workers- a shop worker vs a childcare employee vs a call centre employee who all happen to earn NMW will all have different things to do each day.

I’m guessing this a a good ol’ “I can’t image that high earners work any harder than anyone else” MN thread.

Managing a multi million dollar budget, and a team of hundreds who operate complex equipment which is literally 30 seconds away from exploding all the time. Reporting to senior management. Out of the house for 12 hours a day and either on his phone or laptop, frequently, for the other 12 hours. Often woken from his sleep if there is an emergency.

pp makes a good point - it’s about responsibility resting on your shoulders. That’s a lot of pressure. If you mess up you can end up having to make people redundant, shareholders lose their money etc etc