To ask what high earners do all day?

All the OP had to do was read a few CEO or senior management job ads online ... But no, e teacher admits to gross ignorance and a fair degree of prejudice. If a high earner asked the same of teachers, do they just play with paper and glue all day?, they would be roasted. I work in the investment industry and make decisions that can impact people's pensions. I feel that responsibility. My renumeration is part compensation for taking that responsibility, but it also relates to my accrued knowledge and skills etc but also to the fact that when required I will work through the night, cancel weekend plans and even holidays. It does make me wonder about the intellectual ability and integrity of this teacher.

Into work for 9, emails, meetings, leave the office at 4.20, home for the kids. No evening kr weekend work, WFH 3 days a week. Love it.

I used to say I'm not paid for what I do, I'm paid for what I'm able to do!

This is a good point - I know 2 very high earners (£200k + occasional obscene bonuses) who both plan to retire early. Not because they fancy it, but because they can’t sustain their work-life balance beyond 50

It's just part of the ongoing narrrative that high earners do fuck all for their money and deserve to be slated.

We need to encourage women especially to earn more. Not witter on about golf and lunches.🙄Earning money is not a crime.

I hope it is a goady made up thread otherwise the person posting is responsible for shaping young minds on a daily basis and the fact she can't imagine what someone in a high paid job does and is asking the question is, quite frankly, terrifying.

DH is on around £100,000pa in the charity sector. I don't 100% know what he does all day - lots of meetings, managing people and firefighting problems. He's had to travel abroad for extended periods.

Mostly, I know that each time he's moved upwards in various charities, he's become more stressed. Sleeps less, bit more snappy with the kids, more forgetful. He rarely seems to work 9-5. Often he'll come down for dinner and then go straight back to work or work straight through without lunch. Recently someone at his work, at a similar level to him, had a heart attack and passed away in his 50s. I worry about him a lot.

The higher up you go and the more you earn the more it’s about making decisions rather than doing the day to day work. So everyone’s getting on with whatever jobs they’re doing (dependent on the kind of business, obviously!) and when they come to a point they need input / can’t continue alone, they refer up to their manager for a decision. The more complex and high risk the decision, the further those managers have to go up as the more cover you need. Eventually only the person in charge of the whole thing can make the hardest decisions as ultimately the buck stops with them. That’s why they’re paid the big bucks - to make the big decisions and shoulder the biggest risks. If they get it wrong there are major consequences so they can’t make mistakes, hence the salary that reflects that pressure and expertise. If the lower workers make mistakes they should be small ones that are easily weathered. That’s the principle.

Which means in reality, yes, often a lot of meetings! But those meetings could be pretty bloody intense and high pressure! Also the higher up you are the more autonomy you tend to have with your work as no one is telling you what to do - you don’t need the supervision. So your day might be quite changable and unpredictable and even sometimes not always busy - but then flat out and battle stations with little notice.

I’ve done training in setting salaries by evaluating jobs and autonomy, risk, expertise are all factors in salary. Work to strictly defined parameters using skills most people have that are easily trained or picked up (e.g. stacking shelves) - long experience or education not required - and with little operational risk due to close management = low salary. Setting goals for the whole company and making decisions based on long experience / extensive knowledge or training and education (e.g. law or medicine or electrics or IT perhaps) and with no one to refer to when things go wrong = high salary.

CEOs (and other senior leadership for their area of responsibility) are constantly deciding: do we do THIS or THAT. All wrapped in the constant question of what can I ignore and what do have to spend my time on? Because they can’t do everything but getting it wrong is catastrophic.

Which actions are going to make us the most money in the short term, which is going to add to our longer term success?

Where can we make major cuts in costs in the coming years? What will need to do to make that happen? What partnerships will strategically increase our brand? How do we turn that into profit?

What threatens us? Is our manufacturing in China at risk from the trade war between the US has instigated? Or other political machinations? Are our trade secrets being leaked? How do we protect our selves? Is out R&D coming up with stuff that will see us into the next decade? If not how the fuck do we ensure they do? Do we need to fete experts from our competitors? Or build more talent in-house? Have we hedged against major increases in prices in our essential commodities? Is political unrest likely to lead to difficulties in delivering our product? Or disrupt the markets we sell to? Can we hedge against that? Do we lower investment because of the risk? What new markets are we best placed to exploit? What are the risks of doing so and is it worth it? How do we convince the banks we are still a good risk and they shouldn’t pull our loans? How do I convince the board my vision is the right one for the company? Are my senior teams doing their jobs well or do I need to shore up/replace any of them?

They are rarely doing the research themselves, more likely reading a lot of information provided by others, assimilating it and using their experience to decide whose plan to go with, likely with some modifications they suggest (or ask for chances). The most “original” work they do will be in relationships with the board, strategic partnerships, media and politicians. And being able to articulate the problems their industry and their company faces to regulators. They are basically sales people.

I think it’s pretty shocking you have no idea what your head of school does. To be a professional and have no professional interest in what support is required to create the environment you work in is pretty poor.

I really don't understand your question. It reeks of "i don't know what they're doing so they must be doing nothing". Im not a CEO but am a high earner. Various different roles. I work all the time. I've just logged off after working for the last 5/6 hours. Not sure i can explain what exactly I was doing or frankly why its any of your business. I am paid well for what I do but am very highly trained (basic medical training, additional post grad training and qualifications, decades of experience and ongoing training and courses). Your OP is a little insulting tbh.

This is the £500,000 question! Every day is different, I really can’t predict what each day looks like. If I’m doing my job well, no one notices. If I make a mistake, it costs the company millions as well as reputational damage. Some days I might be able to take a long lunch, other days I might not be finished before midnight.
With jobs like these you can’t walk into them
immediately after graduating, it’s only after years and years of working in lower level
jobs that you have the experience to be able to make decisions at this level.

edit to add: I am never off duty, I always have my phone on me and take my laptop on ‘holiday’. I even took calls in hospital after delivering my child by caesarean. Totally my choice, but the point I’m making is that jobs at this level are 24/7.

Just going to add… it involves meetings, meetings and more meetings. Travel all over the world to have MORE meetings. Often with security guards because many places they operate in are not exactly holiday destinations and employees have been killed. There are conference calls and zoom meetings. Like PP above his working day generally starts by 7am (after a 40-60min commute depending on which office) and he is rarely home before 730. He continues to field emails and texts all evening and at weekends and may have to take meetings in the middle of the night to accommodate teams in other time zones and high ranking ministers in other countries that he’d rather not piss off.

Planning, making efficiency changes, analysing data to identify what changes will save on costs, determining when/how to switch systems without disrupting the business, working within margins to ensure the business is able to pay its staff, bills, rent and energy costs Etc.
There’s more, but it’s a bit different than teaching to a curriculum - it’s more (financially) rewarding, but not necessarily more fulfilling - depending on who you work for!

My dh had to retire because a combination of the pressure and the hours needed would have driven him insane if he stayed on. Spreadsheets, accounts , planning , dealing with difficult clients, negotiating suppliers and transport, personnel issues all added up, couldn’t take a holiday completely as needed to do the banking. He did seem to have incredibly high sudoku averages though 😁

So, mine uses a specialised expertise garnered over a 35 year career to advise his company and governments that they contract with. This involves writing and commissioning reports, verifying those reports, presenting the knowledge contained therein. He meets with the senior ministers and heads of state from all over the world, including our own. He is a director of more that 30 international subsidiaries of his company so reviews operations, legal and financial issues and the documentation concerned therein. His company employs 80-100,000 people around the world and he is jointly responsible for their safety (complex and dangerous industry), their careers and in keeping the company operational and profitable so that those employees remain in work and the families who depend on them are supported. He works a 10-11 hour day as standard, but is on call 24/7 as it’s a global company and has not had a holiday in years that did not involve him taking time out from family to attend to business matters. He does sometimes go to the rugby or Wimbledon on corporate entertainment, usually on a Saturday though which pees him off as he’d rather be at home with his nearly adult kids and the dogs.

He feels lucky to do the work he does, though, because he is bloody well paid and it enables him to nurture the talent and careers of those new to his company or industry, to see the innovations they can make that may change the world one day. However, he knows what he does is not as valuable as a surgeon, nurse or research scientist, for example.

I’m a lawyer and earn around £400k.

The big picture is that I am required to advise clients on highly complex matters at lightning speed, in the knowledge that it will cost them millions (sometimes tens or hundreds or millions) if I or my team are wrong. The advice and solutions we put in place require huge amounts of technical knowledge, detailed research, analysis of large volumes of data, extremely high quality drafting and near perfect error control. Clients can often treat us like shit because they think that is only fair given our hourly rate.

I start my day answering emails at 6.30am and that runs through until I sleep. I work most weekends. New things come in all the time and the learning curve is very steep.

I have multiple calls and meetings per day and am called into urgent unscheduled meetings at the drop of the hat - eg can you join a board meeting in 1 hour on a matter you haven’t dealt with before to advise the client on a decision which is business critical.

I manage a team of 30 who interrupt me through the day and require my sign off for their decisions and advice (also on complex issues). The buck stops with me. I deal with the team’s unreasonable and unhappy clients when issues are escalated to me. I have other additional management and risk-related roles within the firm on top.

I am required to market the firm and bring in millions of pounds worth of business. I am constantly in (subtle) sales mode. Most encounters with professionals or work contacts are tainted by the thought about whether I can persuade this person to give me work.

I have never played golf. I often miss lunch and other meals. Client lunches are tricky affairs: lengthy sales pitches which eat into the time I have available to do the actual work. I’d rather have an al desko.

There is no off switch. The money comes with a huge amount of responsibility and stress.

Wanna swap?

As I see it it’s similar to the law…
people who are guilty of large scale financial crime get relatively bigger sentences than people who have committed crime against an individual, even violent crime.

workers responsible for the long term viability and profitability of a business or organisation get paid more than those delivering the service (whether that’s keeping a person alive in a hospital or driving a bus safely).

lots of workers have a lot of responsibility but it’s those who’s responsibilities lie with financial outcomes who are remunerated more than those with real world responsibilities like the emergency services.

i say this as a someone with a medical background but for a pay rise I need to move into management.. Doing a skilled job and doing it well is the minimum my company require, I’m failing if I can’t also grow profits.

They work !

My brother is a CFO he doesn’t even have time for his wife and children let alone golf and lunches

I don't have a typical day, but will try to give you a gist. I work in government in finance. Annual budget close to 1B, and will exceed that if we have successful funding requests in the near future.

The rest of the organisation sees my teams as the keepers of all financial knowledge. We have to remember every nuance of every funding allocation, every funding extension, ensure all required reporting to government on that funding is done in the required timeframe. We're expected to answer those questions with minimal turnaround and I'm expected to answer them if my team member is away - so I need to know everything not just one twentieth of what my team do. Sometimes that's just knowing who to ask, others it's physically locating information eg funding decisions as it can't wait until the person responsible for that work is back from leave.

Yes I have a team to do the day to day work. My role is to help them be as effective as possible. Whether that means being unpopular and telling our head honcho that xyz is not possible to be done tomorrow, asking team to put in additional hours when I know they're already exhausted or pushing back on unreasonable treasury requests and getting extensions before even giving work to the team. My #1 job is to protect them and keep them well.

Anything my team produces is on me if it is wrong. I need to make sure it is all correct before going out to senior executives, ministers, parliament, newspapers etc The opposition always want to catch ministers out, so we have to be perfect and precise and never have a mistake in our information.

I make the decisions. Even if I am not the subject matter expert, I listen to what is proposed and then have to work out the best way forward. That decision is on me if it's wrong. I need to challenge the subject matter expert if I'm not convinced their recommended course of action is the best.

Typical day I'll have my emails cleared before I've gone home the day before but will come into 30+ new emails, all of which need action, some by me directly, some by the team. Overall I get around 120-150 emails a day which need me to do something, then there's the requests via teams and phone calls, plus meeting action items.

I have work planned for the day - eg reviewing a suite of online training modules to ensure content is correct, doing detailed costings for a potential realignment of functions, reviewing funding submissions and costings and making changes to improve the likelihood of those requests being successful, working with the authors to see what happens if not successful or to get them to reduce the request as it's unreasonable, or to ask them to redraft as it's not consistent with what our minister or department head wants.

That usually has to be done after hours as my day is spent going to meetings. Content includes working with areas to adjust their budgets to their funding - that takes a lot if preparation as you need to consider the past expenditure and adjust that for funding that has ceased, funding that's started and know how much and how long that funding is available plus how it has been approved to be spent, what the submitted budget was and what, if anything, was not approved; working with treasury and legal to draft program funding agreements with sound financial protection for the department (typically we are brought in at the last minute and have to think on our feet to find a quality solution in less than 24hrs); meetings with treasury regarding funding requests - what the program is, why the money is needed, what will happen if we don’t get it, what can I do to increase chances of a positive outcome for the department; working with business units on contract extensions to be approved by the department head - again come to us at the last minute; presentations to various executive groups on our financial performance, key financial messages, upcoming finance related bodies of work; resolving conflicts between what my team require areas to do and what the areas want to do. Anything out of the ordinary comes to me. Some is delegated to the team but a lot falls on me to complete.

This is on top of my regular deliverables of large programs of work, regular internal and external reporting, regular minister and treasury briefings and preparation of the multitude of documents that build the governments annual budget.

I'm a lawyer. Lunches etc don't happen often for me. I spend my day dealing with many client emails, supervising multiple junior lawyers, and managing competing priorities/demands on my attention. It is mostly very stressful, and the work never ends. Imagine constantly answering tricky exam questions, all of which require research time (but I am constantly interrupted when trying to do it). If I'm particularly unlucky something also happens from an external source (e.g. new guidance issued or enforcement action launched) and my day is entirely derailed by that.

The ceo of the company I work for earns around 200k, he wfh, and does longer hours then the rest of us, we all work flexi hours but he is online roughly 8-6:30 but then available pretty much anytime if someone contacts him, no golf or boozy lunches, just a very normal job set up with meetings, external and internal, but he’s responsible for basically keeping us all employed and the business afloat. Really incredibly nice guy but I would not want the pressure or stress or always feeling on call.

its going to massively vary from industry to industry there’s no one size fits all for that wage, I was treated by a doctor who partially owned the private practice who I would guess makes more than that, as his bank account was coutts and his job will be different to my ceos.

My husband isn’t a super high earner but does ok £200k plus. What he does is extremely technical and difficult and very pressured. People don’t realise that in order for planes to fly or buildings to be built, there are loads of people behind the scenes making it all happen. He hasn’t golfed for over ten years as he doesn’t have the time. He earns every penny and has nearly sacrificed his mental health trying to achieve more in his profession. Pls don’t diminish people’s contribution because you haven’t worked hard enough to achieve a top level career. I know I didn’t have what it took to do it.