To ask what high earners do all day?

I would add that “holidays” are not as some people would recognise. I’ve been C Suite since my late 20s. So whilst I have had many nice holidays, I haven’t ever had a decent holiday where I haven’t worked. It’s a bit easier now I’m more senior, but I still watch the email and review the files, at least twice a day, every day. “Off” isn’t a thing and the threads on here where people insist that they leave “work at home”? Not a thing, for me. And actually not for any of the really senior people I know.
I also didn’t “know” anyone to kick start my career or have any kind of “class based” education. Basic shitty comp for me, with absent parents, a part time job cleaning toilets and another as a waitress. I actually enjoyed both those jobs. They taught me a lot.

I run my own company. I employ 6 others. I pay myself a third of that and have a huge appreciation on a far smaller scale of what some of these people can be responsible for and the hours they work and potential legal implications of the work they are undertaking.

My job, even in my tiny little company, is bringing in business (every situation has the potential to turn into a new client), problem solving at all levels, in house and client/customer facing. Budgeting, setting targets, assessing expenditure and implementing cost savings, setting client charges (and rolling out any increases as needed), staff management, time management, problem solving at all levels with highly complex legal situations that require calm expertise and, if I get it wrong can leave my company inoperable, me imprisoned and never able to work in my sector again. Legal paperwork, compliance not only with the work we do but also in house processes and procedures (HR, health and safety, etc.). Staff training and roll out of new legislation and rebuilding processes for staff to meet/implement this. Supporting staff and clients and customers in highly charged situations. Accounting the company and clients money. Oh and washing up, washing out the bins, repairing toilet seats… Not much I don’t get involved in when necessary, despite having a brilliant and highly capable team.

As such, I dread to think what some of these people
in big business have riding on their shoulders, because they have all of the above 10 fold. I find it hard to switch off, they must work 24/7! When I look at it like this I think I must be mental… but I still bloody love what I do, I get to do it on my own terms and we are award winning in our delivery.

I grew up in a high earning household. Both my parents had their own companies - my father a mortgage brokerage firm. My mother was in marketing. I can now live off that money myself as I’m a stay at home mum which no plans of paid employment in the next decade or two. My husband earns well, but not enough to provide a comfortable life in a nice house with extras like travel and private schooling etc. I received an inheritance when my mother died (tragically when I was a young adult and before she had a chance to retire and enjoy that money herself).

I’ve invested it in the stock market and the dividends pay me a regular income and generally the value of the stocks increase over time so will provide for my children too. You need well over a million in stocks to take out a small percentage though, and discipline to not touch the initial investment or to withdraw when the market drops.

Whilst my parents did work hard, it was also a lot about who they know, their education (so a class element of course). Also there was an element of luck involved as well as the fact they both had the confidence to take risks. Plus the markets they were working in when they started out 50 years ago provided opportunities that may be harder to find today.

My ex, though not a CEO, is very high up in his company and he just mainly has meetings and phone calls.

I live in London and my boiler engineer easily earns 150k. He comes and fixes my boiler and obviously other people’s. He works hard, long hours and he’s brilliant.
I go to a really swanky gym and bumped into my electrician in the hot tub he drives a very nice Range Rover.
i guess my point is there are myriad jobs to earn a high salary and £150k doesn’t get you a CEO!!
If you are good at your job and people demand what you do and you work hard you can earn a lot.
The only people I know on high salaries that do anything other than work their nuts off are those that are on a work to rule because they want a pay off. I had a boss once who spent a year learning the ukulele in his office. Eventually he got a year’s pay and asked politely to leave.

Not in 150k atm as had to take a cut to look after my kids with SEN.
But when I was, I was middle management in blue chip corporate.
I did the following mostly,

• team meetings
• one to one and performance meetings
• meeting with vendors
• meetings with clients
• meeting eith other leaders
• strategy meetings
• planning meetings
• strategy presentations
• strategy documents
• budget and forecasts
• HR meetings
• make many slides and spreadsheetz
• Support my team with questions
• make slides about the above and present things to people
• paperwork, forms, fill in stuff into systems
• check invoicing and payments
• planning for various timeframes (1 year/ 3 years/ next month)
• review and create documents and presentations about previous periods of time (what we did last year/month etc)

Now I havr half the salary and pretty much do the same as above but half of it then send it up to the person who would have been me in the more senior role to collate and do the above.

I work 9-6 mostly at home. One day in the office. The wfh days I go to the gym at lunch. I have a lot of calls and meetings mostly solving problems and telling people how to do things. Occasionally I will do some spreadsheet modelling or make some PowerPoint slides. Compared to many other jobs I’ve had I don’t think it’s worth the salary as it’s not very stressful, dangerous or difficult. CEOs in big corporates will be on far more than 150k. I wouldn’t want those jobs for the level of stress.

Back to back meetings, lots of pressure, putting out fires, juggling lots of different plates. All without barely having a chance to have a proper break.

work for a very big tech giant - all day in meetings- some relevant others not sure why I was invited! Then dealing with higher ups… and then dealing with a demand and ambitious team. Client calls/briefings then dinners/travel.all of this is done during the day in the office. I go home and start with once I have seen to the kids and the dog!
I don’t remember what is like to do a days work at the office and go home and not work… evenings/ weekends/annual leave all the sane to me!

Are you joking?

I don't think you can generalise. The salary may be the only thing they all have in common.

As far as I can tell from this thread the actual thing they have in common is being an extroverted people person.

The social element of all these roles is the most difficult aspect of all of them.

My DH is a financial journalist, very well paid. He spends his days writing and researching, interviewing people or in editorial meetings. About a quarter of his income comes from public speaking engagements, so quite a bit of travelling. He works from home and just manages himself, so not a lot of complications there, but in an industry that isn't normally highly paid he has to put out a high volume of work while constantly hussling for the next job. He networks at conferences, eats lunch at his desk and his hobby is the gym! As a freelancer, he never turns down work so frequently works weekends and we have had to cancel plenty of events and appointments because something unexpected came up. Thankfully, he loves his job and working from home reduces a lot of stress.

I don’t know any CEO who plays golf or even has time for lunch. Maybe google ‘what does a CEO do’ and you may start to understand. It’s a lot of pressure and it certainly isn’t a 9-5 job.

I don't think you can generalise. The salary may be the only thing they all have in common.
CEO types- troubleshooting, meeting clients, financial planning, explaining to others why those plans did not come through and taking personal responsibility for them, meeting investors, meeting consultants, lawyers, trying to sell new deals, meeting regulators if needed.

I'm an in house lawyer and a large part of my day is filled with v disparate deadlines - litigation, agreements, law updates, drafting, advising, reviewing. It comes in faster than I can lob it back. Quarter end means budgets, tracking of spend, etc. Also confirmation letters (when I worked in a listed company), analysing new laws, responding to auditors. I don't even have time to step out for a coffee on weekdays. I used to work to some degree almost every weekend- have got better at that. Cannot recall the number of holidays and appointments cancelled because unpredictable work developments got in the way.

CEO. Get to my desk at 5:30am tend to finish at 8pm most nights. You don’t really ever stop or have down time. Mostly strategy meetings or budget and finance with department heads or shareholders. Sometimes HR escalations. I have a lot of contract and legal negotiations atm but that isn’t typical. Barely leave my office, let alone have time to play golf. The pay reflects the pressure from all sides and expectations from shareholders. It’s relentless. I enjoy the variety but the high level of stress is not for everyone and there are many days I wish I did something that allowed me to be more present for my family. It’s not really glamorous and by the time I paid tax it does not feel worth the sacrifices. There are no private jets, fancy dinners or even nice holidays. I have not had a work free holiday in 20 years. I don’t know any high earners in the UK who are living the dream you see on films.

There isn’t going to be a single answer to what someone earning £150k+ does all day more than there is for someone earning £40k.

In over twenty years of working I have only known one very senior person whose work revolved around lunches and other entertainment. He was a senior global account manager working for a multinational and dealing with one major account. From what I could tell, his job seemed to be jetting around the world and passing on complaints from his client for other people to resolve.

That’s one person out of many. Most senior leaders are also attending nice lunches and dinners regularly, but on top of everything else.

I should add that my dh is a people person, good at building relationships, managing people and has an incredibly positive mindset. Failure isn’t a possibility.

Dh is a commercial property developer earning on average 1m gross a year. It’s a sociable life as he meets colleagues at golf, business lunches etc. He does have an office in London but is now based at home. He closed a deal whilst in the bath the other morning!

He has big backers and every deal he does is a risk. He makes it look easy but it’s anything but that. He plans his own day though, and his family always takes priority over business.

this yes and usually quickly too.

It’s hard to be specific without giving out the kind of information you shouldn’t give out on a public forum about your workplace but I’ll try.

If I take tomorrow as an example.
9am - catch up with my UK based team to make sure everyone had their priorities for the week and there are no blockers to any projects, if there are I’ll help with escalations and re-prioritising
10am - Project A steering committee - reviewing progress, Risks, Actions, Issues & Dependencies
10:30am - Asked for some guidance about Data Retention and deletion mechanisms for a specific technical product, so having a call with the product team to discuss the requirements
11:30am - very very very large opportunity that could bring in enough revenue over a 5 year contract term to quadruple the global company revenue. Call to; assess the requirements, make decisions about what products and services we’ll bid, how much we can afford to invest in anticipation that we might win it to put us in a good position, what changes would be needed to company structure etc
1pm - Project B - Security gate - discussion on recently completed and upcoming changes, possible security implication of the change, risk assessment and business justifications, rollback strategies if it goes tits up, agreeing verification checks and reviewing outcomes of those done so far.
2pm - Headcount review with HR. Discuss any open positions, any upcoming recruitment, any new positions that need role descriptions/benchmarking/budget approval
2.45pm - catch up with my US based team to make sure everyone had their priorities for the week and there are no blockers to any projects, if there are I’ll help with escalations and re-prioritising
3.30pm - Leadership team meeting, feed up to the Exec on what my team is doing. Wins, challenges, decisions needed.
5pm - Kick off call for another bid/opportunity. Briefing from the proposals/sales team on what the opportunity is, whether there are any requirements we don’t currently meet, what level of detail is required from the response, where they need support because they don’t have canned responses they can use or the opportunity requires a more bespoke solution. Resource allocation.
5.30pm - Call with CyberEssentials auditor to receive feedback on audit submission, learn if there are any identified non-conformities that we need to address before certification can be issued.
9pm - call with Third Party consultancy we’ve engaged to do an assessment and Technical leads from across the company, update on status of the engagement, interim findings, next steps and ensure they have access to everything they need to proceed.

And somehow in between all of that I need to do the work I pick up in each meeting and prepare for the next lot on Tuesday.

You ve just described mu husband job. Whe he is done with this one it will be his last one and will focus on sitting boards.

he is exhausted now and dont think he could do another one.

I used to be an executive coach working with senior leaders in global firms. People earning over a million a year.

They basically make decisions but those decisions are based on information provided by the people below them. So absolutely endless meetings, presentations, conferences.

During the banking crisis for example decisions had to be made immediately so the huge wealth of historical data had to be understood and interpreted.

Sometimes the work is also the minutiae of managing difficult relationships.

Glad you feel better informed @WearyCat. It matters a lot that teachers understand the range of possibilities and the scope ahead for the young minds they are shaping.

As someone said
youre not paid for what you do, you’re paid for all the knowledge, skills, and experience that means you can make big decisions well.

I work to directors who earn that and more. They do spend a lot of their day to day time in meetings and writing emails (as do I!). The big thing is they have to make calls that may impact multi million pound investment decisons or impact millions of customers. So many of those meetings are about taking advice and evidence from people at my level in order to help them make those decisions.

There is also a lot of reporting and accountability to Boards and politicians.