To think if you earn a huge salary then long hours are expected?

[dignifiedlazyness]

I have a cousin who work 60-70 hours minimum a week. Yes this is a heck of a lot, and I’d hate that. But, he is on £400k a year. All he does is complain how many hours he’s putting in, but seems to forget that with fewer hours there would be no business class 5* weekend breaks to New York etc.
I feel like telling him to shut up, or make do with less!

Yes I was just about to say - one upside of high late earners is their tax! Lots of people are stuck in having to protize one higher wage due to hours/demands of the job - we are in that situation too, it is inefficient.

Some would say that working one person too hard is more efficient for firms due to the non salary costs of hires - pension, sick etc.

What type of jobs work normal hours for 90k please. Just out of interest. Dh is a very high earner but is away a lot. He was heavily encouraged by his parents to be what he is in his career but we never see his parents as he is often away and when he is here we spent every moment we can together. I wouldn’t push my children into that life like they pushed him and his brother (his brother lives abroad I’ve met him once because of his workload) I wonder if they regret the decision to push them so hard. Dh doesn’t even like the job, but we are trapped and can’t really get out of it now without significantly impacting our life

Just remembered that I’ve got two friends under 40 who are GPs, married to each other. They both work four days a week and have a day off together on a Friday without their young kids and have a generally fabulous lifestyle. They deliberately chose to be GPs over specialisms in medical school that would have guaranteed them massive salaries.

Before the children were at school, one worked 3 days a week and the other two days a week so they didn’t need to fork out on childcare or have someone else look after their children.

When I look at them I wish I’d studied Medicine instead!

shook A good friend of mine works 30 hours a week as a company director and earns £120k.

I am about to go into totally freelance practice as a lecturer and my rate is £500 per day. I wouldn't be working for more than 35 hours a week.

Hopefully other people will have examples.

Thank you. My husband is a director (tax law) and he works a lot. I guess it’s what you are a director of?
A lecturer sounds a lovely job.

Most high earners I know work more than 60 hours a week, travel constantly, and seem pretty resigned to it. These roles attract workaholics- it’s more likely to be their partners/children who will complain about the long hours than the high earners themselves

I'm a lawyer at a top 20 City firm and some of the senior equity partners don't take £400k a year, so I would love to know which firm is paying a senior associate £400k! AFAIK, that amount is beyond even what the US firms pay.

I would say £400k if including bonus is just about achievable. If you consider that some of these American firms are starting NQ's on £143k, then 8,9,11,12 year PQ could just about make £400k. Although many US firms don't do bonuses or not great ones?

I think there is quite a stark difference between a top 5 and say a top 25. I would hope though, that those on the lower end of ranking would work less as there is far less pay.

Lecturing can be good but depending on the area and circumstances there can be job insecurity, pressure to publish for promotion etc.

The thing about GPs working part time is that it’s privately optimal but the cost of training a GP is very high. And of course not everyone can be a GP.

Japan has the reputation of workers putting excessive hours just to be the last out the building. Now drones are scanning workplaces to check who hasn't left when they should as all the extra hours are not showing increase in productivity. China too has this, DD visited Chinese operation and in walking through found workers to be asleep at desk. On asking 'why' was informed, oh they work long hours so if tired they have a little sleep'. Try that in UK, though DD didn't say they earned 400K.

Every time there's a thread about salaries we get people who rattle on about how little massive salaries actually are.
So many people who work hard and on long hours are on minimum wage and struggling so it's pathetic when others say 400k is not that much...or even 50k ffs!

I have sons, and obviously they can do what they want, but if I could pick I wish they would both do a trade. Builders, carpenters, plumbers, gas engineers etc that I know seem to live comfortably and have a good work life balance/ generally speaking. With dh’s job I know a lot of people who work in different law firms and levels. They all seem stressed to death a lot of the time with the work load

Yes, after reading this thread I can imagine lots of people wanting to go into lecturing but the reality where I live is that myself and some of my colleagues are only on 10 month or 1 year contracts and lots of universities are having crises with numbers of applications dropping and student retention being a big problem on certain courses and a drop in European applicants due to Brexit uncertainty. I love my job and I’m teaching at a good university but my job doesn’t feel especially stable right now.

I understand your point about GPs Woofing but I was making a personal comment about my own situation rather than a generalised one. I have some regret because I did have the examination results, life/work experience and connections (my entire family are medics) to have got a place to study Medicine at a good university and I’ve invested just as much money in my training and professional development, maybe even more.

Oh but for a time machine!

Totally agree lecturing can be hard and unstable if you are an employee. That's a large part of the reason I started to build up my private clients and have now resigned from the institution.

To be fair I lecture in a very niche field and have spent over 20 years building up to this to be able to command that kind of fee. And of course it will come with it's own issues in terms of managing tax, not having sick pay/holiday pay, having to get out there and market yourself etc. I decided to give it a go and if it doesn't work out I will go back into the industry itself rather than being an employed lecturer.

Cutesbabasmummy

YANBU! You make the money, you have to earn it.My BILs both earn around £200k. They atent around for their kids. We earn under £50k between us. DH is always here for bedtime.

Doesn't always work out like that. We're on under 35k between us, DH misses quite a few bedtimes and often works weekends.

Oh yes shadylady I wouldn’t for one second begrudge any gp doing this, it’s a systemic problem and perhaps the solution is to train more gps rather than berating existing ones for not working enough. Design the training so that some cost is incurred if you end up not working enough to meet some definied criteria.

My dh could sympathise, he also is one of the few that could’ve been a gp but went into something with far longer hours. Yay him!

Time machines would be dangerous, several work related things I’d do differently

I'm not surprised by the number of sarky "aw didums" type remarks about high earners moaning about lack of time or work/life balance. But what always amazes me is the number of people that suck up celeb stories or Royal stories (also people with six figure salaries) and pour sympathy on them?!! TBH to me I can't see why the OP has set up this post other than to sit back and enjoy her high earning relative get a good old MN pillorying. Nice person you are OP...glad I'm not related. Who needs enemies with friends like that.

They deliberately chose to be GPs over specialisms in medical school that would have guaranteed them massive salaries.

GPs aren't exactly on the breadline . . .

My husband is a partner in a US law firm (top 10). You can quite easily search the PPP for the big firms and see that the average partner in this situation is earning $3m and up. The US firms pay way more than the City firms, and it’s conceivable that your relative is a 9th- or 10th-year associate and earning that amount.

To scoff and complain is tasteless, however, and maybe big firm law in the long run isn’t the right career for him/her.

Tell him to go ask a teacher about how much they're paid and for how many hours. Before anyone mentions the holidays I'm on half term at the moment and have worked three of the five days for school. We're not on our own either. Plenty of other jobs are the same and not even paid as well as teaching. However much you're paid there aren't more hours in the day to achieve the unreasonable expectations of many jobs. At that level of seniority he could presumably take a less senior role with less expectation and still earn an eye watering salary. His choice but he shouldn't moan.

I need to find a magnifying glass for the tiny violin for the OP's friend. This is bullshit and bonkers salary.

Stopgap the published figures are usually PEP- profit per equity partner, not profit per partner. It's an important distinction. Some firms have many partners but most will be fixed share, probably on 150-300k (very roughly). Obviously a very nice amount but not $3m! A few will be equity partners on the big bucks.