I am a woman earning £500k+ a year

[Alljan]

Divorced, co-parent mum of 2.

in response to other thread, happy to answer any questions

Getting on a flight back from the US if there’s a delay!

Thanks for starting this thread OP. I saw the thread that inspired this one and thought of staring one myself as am in a similar position (not in tech though). You are braver than me because I feared the “read the room!?!?!” backlash.

Have you had to compromise on parenting to build your career?

@ZippyGoose thank you, I appreciate that. Are these roles then mostly sales & development based? Not so long ago I moved into project management (delivery) & am moving up the ladder but interested I'm exploring options.

I’m just popping in to say it warms my heart when I see women making a fuckton of money. Good for you OP.

Well done! Are you a CFO? CRO?

@WhiteTilesWhiteGrout i don’t know the OP but I could take a stab at which firm she works for, as I used to work in the same sector. Many people not at board level will make this kind of money. I work in banking now and it’s the same.

Think of it as commission. When you buy a new car, you’d assume the car salesperson would get a commission from selling the car. Maybe 2% or something. So that would be £400 on a £20k car or whatever the number is in car sales. It’s the same in tech and banking. Except the numbers changing hands are far, far bigger, so a small cut is a whacking great number.

Hello me again different login.

so yeah sales will tend to be better paid than other areas (if you’re successful!). It varies by firm but in yours look at who is impacting the bottom line. Are there people inventing new products to come to market, people looking after relationships with key stakeholders… those are usually jobs that are well compensated.

Otherwise, and this is the kind of thing a MAN would do, ask for a confidential discussion with HR and tell them candidly you want to develop your career to earn as much as possible so you want to understand which areas of your firm are the highest compensated. Face to face so an email can’t be forwarded. They would have no reason not to share this with you, you don’t need to know specifics of who earns what, just the general gist of which departments etc so you can build connections.

If I have one regret about my career it’s that earlier in my career I didn’t push myself forward enough, I just hoped that by doing a good job I’d get noticed and rewarded. Meanwhile all the blokes around me were more tactical and leapfrogged me. Until I had my kids and got a fire in my belly and started playing them at their own game, then leapfrogged all of them right back haha!

Do it!!!

@Bildtyko your advice is very important. Many women, and some men, wrongly believe that if they do a good job it will be noticed and rewarded. The reality in most workplaces is that you have to be your own cheerleader, putting yourself forward for more challenging positions and making sure management recognises the quality of your work. Ambition trumps modesty when you want to move up.

I know - I work in tech ;-)

@Alljan what was your motivation for going into the roles you have? I mean, did you always have an interest in the type of work you do (and it just happened to be well paid, ie an accidental bonus to you already wanting to do it), or were you looking at well paid careers and this just happened to be one of them?

Reason I ask is that I'm honestly interested in what makes people tick. I am, and always have been, drawn to rewarding but ultimately not well paid jobs, and I've never been materialistic, being content with very little. I've never wanted designer clothes/shoes/handbags, or to live in a massive house for example.

Edit to say I'm not implying you're materialistic BTW

@vdbfamily I'd like to have a go at answering your question. I'm also a high earner although not quite at the OP's level - I earn £200k and take home between £9-10k a month after pension etc.

To answer your question, on one level it seems very unfair how much more I'm earning than you. I'm in a completely different sector to the OP, but I love my job a lot of the time, it's interesting, it brings me genuine satisfaction, it's not physically exhausting. So I have absolutely doubt that I am having a nicer time on a daily basis than most people in less pleasant 'tougher' jobs.

However. As a PP said, I am paid not as compensation for how nice/not nice a time I'm having but for my skillset and also the revenue I generate for my company. I run a section of a business that generates turnover of approx £30 million a year. There are probably only a handful of other people in the world who could do my job as well as I do and that isn't boasting, it's just down to the particular niche experience I have. So I'm being paid not as some kind of value judgement on my work, but just on the money I bring in, and the profits that generates for the shareholders of my company. That is just capitalism. And I don't think it's a perfect system, but I don't think anyone's yet come up with anything better. (In reality, I mean, I do think socialism has a lot to be said for it in principle, but all real world attempts are pretty dire...)

I pay a lot of tax and would happily pay a bit more if it meant we could actually have a functioning NHS that worked well, and a good state education system. And despite all the challenges of the state school system, both my kids are state educated, mainly because it's what I know and I feel it worked well for me.

On the point about working hours, I think you would be hard-pushed to find many people earning serious money who only work a 40-hour week. Like the OP, I sometimes manage a 40-hour week but one of the things I am paid so much for is for the buck stopping with me. So if there's a crisis, I could also be working a 50-60 hour week, I never get to switch off on holiday fully. And most importantly, if the bit of the business I'm responsible for has a tough few years, I would likely lose my job. Regardless of whether it is actually my fault or not. That is often the price of a high salary - a much higher level of risk which employees at a more junior level tend to be more insulated from, assuming they work hard and put in a reasonable performance.

Those are my thoughts anyway.

I do actually get all that, although for what it's worth, I also rarely get to switch off and there is no one who does my job when I am not there so my hours are way more than I am paid for.
I am just not sure that it is right to put the creation of money as the apex of society ( although I do understand that the tax system uses that money for good)
There is only so much money that people need to live on, and so many don't have enough to even put food on the table.
I like them idea that no boss should earn more than 10 x lowest paid and I think it is outrageous that people at the top of an organisation can earn Megabucks whilst they have staff on Universal credits and zero hours contracts.
There should be some kind of levelling out but not sure how!

@vdbfamily Yep, I don't disagree with your point about the fairness of it at all. But 'putting the creation of money at the apex of society' is basically what capitalism does. And it's a free market.

I don't believe the Man City striker Erling Haaland works harder than me, and he probably enjoys his job even more than I do. But he's paid the insane amount he presumably is because of his value to Man City and his ability to generate billions for them. If someone is willing to pay him what he earns, then in a capitalist society, that is what he is worth.

This makes it even tougher for people in non-commercial public sector jobs, who are often doing the most important work of all - health, education etc.

But I think the only solution is a fundamental disruption of the free market economy.

And I 100% agree with your point that none of this should be happening while some people can't afford to feed their families. A decent government and welfare state should ensure that is never the case.

The trouble is, why would anyone bother developing the skill set to do these jobs if they had already reached the maximum allowed salary. Also who would take a job where they would be fired during a recession without the compensation of a ridiculously high salary.

I always assume the point in a boss can only earn x% more than their lowest paid employee scenario is that if the boss wants to earn more money they have to increase across the business, so there wouldn’t be a maxim possible salary, but there would be a fairer distribution of wealth.

I do think any business where a certain % of employees are in receipt of tax credits should be made to pay back what is essentially a government subsidy before profit is distributed to the c-suite.

Seriously! Well done to the OP for achieving something really impressive. Oh, and we need more tax payers! Why the hate?!!!

Well done, high earning women should be applauded and you're helping to keep the country going with very high tax payments.
I earn a quarter of what you do and find life with 3 young children quite stressful. Do you miss out on time with your kids?

It’s impressive and good that she is able to earn as much as men. There should be no gender difference. As a general rule I don’t think having a high income is something that needs to be applauded 😳

Good for you! And your point is?! 🙄

Maybe buy a private jet so you won't need to wait for a flight 🤷‍♀️

You sound like an incredible smart woman, OP. How do you take care of your mental well-being? What do you do to unwind and switch off?

Stealth boast

Who cares what you earn

Why are there so many snarky comments in this post?! We should learn to celebrate each others success instead of showing jealousy.

My Q - how much public speaking is involved in your job? Did you practice how to get over the nerves / get better?

I do. My question to OP: Have you ever been paid less than men or treated differently because you are a working mum? And if so, have you done anything about it? I am thinking sexist comments or just plain wage gap.

Oh and boast all you like. I happen to think earning a lot of money is great. Especially if you are a woman.