To ask what high earners do all day?

yes this if hearing DH drone on all day is anything to go by. He spends his time managing multi billions of £ to be fair. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes!

My husband is a high earner and all he does all day is sit in meetings discussing everything that's going wrong and who needs to do what.

Dealing with problems. Making decisions, constantly. Dealing with difficult people. Meetings. Budgets. Stress. Politics. After a while, you disassociate, having seen and dealt with it all, But each day, something new creeps in.

If self-employed one AVOIDS unnecessary, time-wasting meetings (which is most of them.)
With success comes the ability to say no. It is hugely empowering.
It gets respect and, interestingly, does not reduce the amount of fee-earning work put one’s way.
The most non-renewable resource is time. I refuse to waste it.
But there is stress - the more you have, the more you worry about losing it. A lifetime of 16 hour days gone. One can never switch off. Always thinking about the next deal. Despite already owning at least two of everything you’ve ever wanted. It’s a mad personality defect I see time and again in successful, entrepreneurial people. I’m not entirely convinced it correlates with happiness. Do not envy us.

Honestly I think your post is a bit goady

I haven’t read all the responses but I’m also curious about this to an extent. I know quite a few high earning lawyers and very senior doctors who work privately as well as in the nhs. In their cases I understand the pressure, absolutely.

But when people talk about the extreme pressure of being a c-suite exec, I don’t really understand it that well! Don’t most of us have roles that involve a degree of responsibility, management, budgets etc? Yes it’s on a higher level and you are being paid for your expertise, but is the work so much harder than it is a salary bracket or two down the ladder, if that makes sense?

This 100%

@WearyCat quite honestly the fact you started your “question” with the assumption that high earners do golf and lunch tells me that you have zero intention of understanding the responsibilities that people in these roles have.

Quite honestly it’s downright patronising and smacks of violins that no one could possibly work harder than [fill space with job] so it’s terribly unfair that they’re paid so much.

The reason they’re paid so much is that there is so much resting on the decisions they make. Not just money, but jobs. You forget many of these people are running firms that employ hundreds and thousands of people. Each of whom is trusting the boss and higher earners to ensure the business remains profitable so that they can keep their pay and jobs.

Very simple minded of you to think golf and lunches. Do you think a CEO swans around? Firstly there are CEO’s in different industries so your question about what do they do will be very different in each. I can’t believe you’re a teacher asking these types of questions op.

Responsibility. The buck stops with them
if things go wrong by which I mean serious financial loss, data breaches, accidents, even loss of life.

people on those salaries are not paid based on how many hours tjey are standing up, or how many steps they do a dsy. They are paid based on what would happen if things go wrong.

Yes, it's easy until it goes wrong! That's where your skills are. I think the way you are trained is amazing...... dealing with the emergencies like it's second nature. Planes thrill me. My brother is a performance engineer so keeps my interest up.

Most office based employees who earn a lot spend a high proportion of their time in meetings. I can see the diaries of everyone in my organisation, and once you get to head of department level there is barely a spare slot in their diary.

Of course, people like entertainers and sports stars earn rather more, and spend more time doing their role, or preparing for it.

See, this, I think is absolutely worth the high salary potential. Other jobs also risk life and limb but not so immediately and catastrophically - if you’re a bus driver there is a fair chance that most passengers would survive. Plane, not so much. Plus as you say you also have to deal with time zones, geopolitics and very difficult people.

I’d also say many other jobs that have huge consequences are worth it: medicine, investing millions in people’s future security, etc.

The 3 people I know on a lot of money…:

-one has a safety critical role and spends most of their day ensuring work is legal, safe and done well. If it went wrong it would be lethal.
-one does not make day to day decisions affecting safety but is responsible for a large research programme whereby oversights or sloppy work could put people at risk. And they also need to periodically fire people or make them redundant. International travel about 3 times a year, really hard work
-the last one is my boss’s boss and they have it properly cushy. No-one will die if something goes wrong, some minor embarrassment maybe but it isn’t going to be catastrophic. Their money is justified organisationally by them supposedly making big, largely unpopular, but basically fairly banal, decisions.

My direct boss (not a mega earner but slightly
more than me), I have more understanding of the salary- there is a huge amount of work managing people and having really difficult interpersonal conversations. While maintaining a tight ship and also coming up with whizzy innovations.

Meetings including scheduled calls 8am to 6pm. Lunch on the fly.
Emails from 6am to 8am and 6pm to 8pm
Some evenings not emails because you have a VIP dinner with some politician or visiting dignitary/ambassador
Bed around 12am. Up from 3-4am for phone calls and emails with other side of globe. Nap or exercise and then day starts again at 6am.

from what I have seen working in city law firms the really high earners work round the clock and sacrifice their whole life to work until they retire at about 50 never having seen their wife or children

My boss is a very, very high earner. He owns the business & his day is giving advice to clients, creating complex strategies & solving problems, which he then passes to us to implement. It's his knowledge & experience they pay for. He works ridiculously long hours, has a lot of pressure, and is legally responsible for anything we do. Even when on holidays we know when he has internet access as everyone has 100 emails with tasks to do. It's huge.

His DW, who gets the same high income through smart tax strategies, works there but comes & goes as she pleases, picks & chooses her work, refuses to manage anyone or speak to clients. Won't work a minute overtime & takes about 12 weeks holiday a year.

It just depends on your situation.

a public company CEO in the UK who earns millions a year will have to assimilate a lot of complex information coming from multiple geo political, social, consumer and economic sources and make time-limited decisions where there is a huge amount at stake including their own reputation and that of others (their stakeholders,) intense public scrutiny, the financial welfare and profit of diverse groups of people and whole systems of trade and finance and goods. On top of that, especially if they are involved in any resource security business (for eg oil and gas) they will have to face off against despotic world leaders and nominated representatives of jurisdictions - eg Putin, the DRC about deeply sensitive and complex subjects for which it’s hard to find a win-win. Usually this is all on a timeline that is dictated by something external to them.

days are full of work, managing energy, risk calculation, employing coping strategies for stress and dealing with 10,000 or so employees.

They WORK

The OP asked a very specific question and what has followed is pages and pages of corporate bingo. It’s like an episode of The Apprentice.

“I work 12 hour days and go to lots of meetings” or “I make difficult decisions!”. “Sometimes I phone Australia.”

The actually useful contributions are few and far between. So yes, I was being dismissive.

Threads about careers on Mumsnet always bring out the fantasists who think it’s still 1986.

Husband earns £100k+ depending on bonus. I am a professional and earn 1/2 or sometimes 1/3 what he does and I definitely work longer hours than him. I am at my desk all day doing technical work and dealing with people and working on projects but I’m in the public sector. He is private. He spends 80% of his time either on the phone to customers / suppliers or his boss. He is really really good at thinking on his feet, at making very high pressure decisions at short notice on the basis that he is informed and experienced. He’s good at managing relationships and people and smoothing over difficult situations. Crucially he is confident - his last 2 jobs have been created on the basis of him identifying a risk / gap or opportunity and suggesting his company tailors his role to fit it. Then he asks for a salary he wants. The people who pay him like the fact that he takes problems away from them, or stops the problems occurring.

This is such an interesting thread! Thank you everyone who has provided insights about their day. I've never been (and wouldn't want to be) in one of these roles so it's fascinating to read about it.

I'm a self employed gardener. People usually look incredulous that I'm happy outside in all weathers. I wouldn't trade it for anything!

This is basically my job too.

Golf and lunches? Your are confusing them with GP partners and NHS consultants who work privately.

I know quite a few people earning that amount that rarely work over 40 hours a week and veey littke travel also.

Yes, there's a lot of responsibility and every hour of it is busy, very few are stressed because they have the experience and skill set required.

Wow, 300k?