To think that SOME high earners don't work that hard?

[Usernamemcname]

I'm a domestic cleaner. The people I clean for are usually quite well off, five bedrooms in a posh suburb of an expensive city. They are often in whilst I clean, sometimes they come back whilst I'm here.
I see a lot and I know they are in quite high paid jobs. Yet they always seem to be 'working from home' also known as fannying about the kitchen a lot and playing X Box. A lot of them either start late (10am so they miss the traffic) and finish early. One dad picks his daughter up from school every day even though his wife is at home!
I was always told that you have to work hard to get what you want in life, so why do I have to work two jobs whilst my partner works 45+ hours and we just scrape by? What have these people done to be so lucky? They're not old, seem around my age, what jobs do they do and why can't I do them, I have a degree.
Life just seems unfair sometimes. Unless it's a doctor, I'm sure I could have a crack at it.

I'm not unhappy that people earn more (money can't buy happiness) my query is that I worked hard (and still do) and why hasn't it paid off?

Because its jor just about hard work. I went and worked in a call centre. Not a great job. Lots of people say its shit and looked down on. It fit what i needed at the time. Decent paid and shifts that fitted.

I decides to make that my career. I constantly spoke to my manager about development, jumped at every chance that came up. Moved teams, asked to go on internal courses, did different jobs and worked my way up. I constantly focused on progressing. Made sure I helped out where I could but set boundaries and said no when I couldnt (our call centre manager saw that as a plus)

Then I acquired skills that could be used outside call centres.

I went to a normal school. Single parent family for most of my youth. Mum has MH issues. I thought about being a solicitor and was basically told I wasnt clever enough, in the 20 mins session with the career advisor during my gcses.

I am 37. I didnt know how to write a CV or cover letter. So googled it. Ready up lots tried lots of different template. Sent my CV to agencies and got feedback on then and tweaked them.

Now I ensure my LinkedIn is upto date and update my CV regularly on job sites with new and additional skills. Even now, I am looking g at further course that I or my employer can fund.

And yes, I have worked very hard in my job in the past. That's relaxed somewhat now.

Working hard only gets you so far. You have to sell yourself. You have to do additional courses, use Google to read articles on revenant subjects, watch TED talks etc.

If I have been in a job I dont like, no matter how many hours I do, I make applying for news a priority. Again, with technology this is easier than ever.

Its is difficult to get our fo a cycle of poverty. But for those of use that did, we werent given CV writing skills or interview techniques. We went out and learned them.

but I spent 5 years after university sitting some of the hardest professional exams around to qualify in my profession.

Something else that far too many people don't realise. In most professions, a degree is the entry requirement, not the profession itself. Eg. for accountancy or law, an accountancy or law degree doesn't make you an accountant or lawyer. You use your degree to get a entry level job/trainee job and then you start studying and taking the accountancy/law professional body exams. So you're looking at another 3/4 years after leaving Uni before you pass your professional exams, and then also another year or two of supervised work before you formally become a practising accountant/lawyer. And even then, you're only just starting and need many more years before you become manager level.

You're right though. There's not enough guidance for those from more deprived backgrounds. Only 4 people out of my entire year group at school went on to Uni and I think they were so delighted that it was a case of, yeah just go and study what you enjoy!

I do sometimes wonder what I'd have achieved if I'd had more of those opportunities..

@massistar it's the expectations of those around you as well. My mum didn't sit me down and asked what I was going to do with a creative writing/ English literature degree, she was just proud that I was going! Same with my friend. From where we are from, working in a bank is a good job, whilst compared to her fellow graduates, it's basically McDonald's.

My mum basically told me humanities degrees were all a waste of time, and even chemistry would be a 70h/week struggle for jobs.

Obviously she was exagerrating, but my friends with humanities degrees are in jobs that don't need degrees (receptionist, marketing)

My mum didn't sit me down and asked what I was going to do with a creative writing/ English literature degree, she was just proud that I was going!

But what did you think you were going to do with it?

yes and if you take the wrong degree for what you then decide you want to do, you can add more years onto the post grad qualifications. It requires a lot of early certainty about the career you want to set everything up right, or a lot of determination to invest 5-6 years into a career change when you're in your 20s/30s/40s and have a lot of financial and familial obligations.

I do think it's misogyny to say that you consider the views of a certain group of women less valid @ShirleyPhallus - I've a pretty good view of the route my DH took. Of course it's great to see high earning women on the thread - I was one myself until the constraints of having children with more than usual needs prevented me from doing the hours and travel that I needed to.

I haven't read TFT but people aren't always paid for their effort but for their skills. I'm sat in my kitchen right now with my laptop, I'm on here so it looks like I'm not working but I've just spent several hours writing some computer coding which is now running itself through some tests. I can't continue to use my laptop so here I am, dossing on MN, I may make a sandwich and watch a bit of tv till it finishes. At that point I'll start to work again. My skills are bourne of hard work into my education in my earlier years.

I can clean my bathroom but my cleaner can't do my job. It's as simple as that, I'm afraid.

I do think it's misogyny to say that you consider the views of a certain group of women less valid@ShirleyPhallus- I've a pretty good view of the route my DH took. Of course it's great to see high earning women on the thread - I was one myself until the constraints of having children with more than usual needs prevented me from doing the hours and travel that I needed to.

Not sure I agree. The OP is female. It's difficult to compare a man career to a woman's, because men dont face sexism.

Fact is that a man and a woman in the exact same position, same qualifications and experience, arent equal in general. Woman also need to overcome the fact that they are also a woman.

Which is an additional hurdle many women have to overcome, as well as what OP has already talked about.

Sorry to say OP but your CV has a lot of moving around in it, it really does look like you’ve never been interested in staying at one place long enough to get promotions. A lot of highly paid workplaces are paid well because the work is so dull and the workplaces uninspiring. You had a job in an insurance company - an underwriter or broker now would be making good money but it really was your choice to give up.

You can’t flit from job to job and never spend long enough there to get good experience and promotions and then complain you haven’t ever been promoted beyond an entry level job.

Read more of the thread now, lol

I think more guidance needs to go into careers and not just doctor, lawyer, IT. More granular detail is needed about entry level roles and not just the ultimate goal.

I do think it's misogyny to say that you consider the views of a certain group of women less valid@ShirleyPhallus- I've a pretty good view of the route my DH took

Still don’t see how this is misogyny. If my DH is a doctor, and I came on to a thread about training as a doctor and offered my second hand opinion on it, that wouldn’t be relevant to the thread. I can’t really see how that’s different to “I’m not a high earner but someone I know is...”

I'm a lawyer and always advise students interested in law to study what they want at uni - as Kazzy says, they have to do law school and a training contract afterwards anyway, so it's worth the extra year (usually paid for by your firm) to convert your history/biology degree, plus firms like people with different backgrounds nowadays.

I often wish my parents had advised me better (they were quietly supportive when I dropped out of school and told them I wasn't going to uni), but they're just people after all. I think it's very difficult for parents to advise on what course to do at uni as it will have been different in their day (as trends change over time) and they can't predict the future. Conversely, I meet quite a few people who were pressured into law by their parents so there's a downside to too much parental 'guidance' at that age!

@Grafittiqueen
Out if interest, what are the exams? My profession is also notoriously known for difficult exams, but everyone eventually passes, maybe after a couple fails.

I think DH and I are very well informed to help our kids land s good lifestyle. It’s actually very hard to do without the right information and as people upthread mentioned, most people get no career advice. I already speak to my kids (all still under 7) about work/quality of life/entrepreneurship/financial freedom/choices in life and their knock on effect. It is more important to me that they understand that than their subjects at school. Though we do teach them that doing well at school gives you choices.

What you do with your choices determines the everyday quality of the rest of your life.

well, if you don't see it, you don't see it, doesn't make you right @ShirleyPhallus - I do and I see it time and time again on Mumsnet. In fact in your example my perspective is that your opinion would still be valid, but perhaps not as valid as a first hand opinion. Historians don't exclude secondary sources even though the historian didn't have first hand experience.

It's not like my DH is someone I know from the pub, I've been with him from the start of his career journey. But whatevs, we'll have to agree to disagree.

I take the point about sexism though @Hesafriendfromwork but I don't think that sneering at female partners of higher earners is the way forward.

The top of IT in the firm I used to work at is female, she works crazy hours and her honest view was that one family would pay a high price having two parents working as hard as her. Something like women could live men's lives but they couldn't have it all. Not very pc eh?

@Queenbean as you will observe from CV, 90% of my previous jobs had no career progression opportunities. As for the insurance one, I didn't know anyone who went from being 'on the phones' to being an underwriter. It's quite rare. It wasn't for me, I'll admit that. There must be other jobs I could have done.

Hmm. Sometimes I work extremely hard, non stop from 6am through to the early hours and 16 hour days are not uncommon. This morning I've been fannying about choosing wallpaper and trying to decide on wardrobe fittings and have done absolutely nothing work related.

but I don't think that sneering at female partners of higher earners is the way forward.

I didnt say it was. But I also dont think that someone comparing their male partners career and how hard they work, is really relevant to the OP.

@Usernamemcname you went to a call centre and didnr like THAT environment. You had a plan about booking a career in a call centre. Why not go to another one.

It sounds like you generally havent liked a lot of your coworkers. Have you been unlucky, or do you think you are simply someone suited to working alone better?

@newgame989 you’re right, I don’t see it. I can only see that I would disregard someone’s opinions because they haven’t experienced something first hand, not because they’re woman.

OP I guess the problem is that you’ve taken jobs that don’t have career progression opportunities, and that from applying for those jobs you could have seen that. None of them were really in your field of interest either.

You could try applying for an office admin role which would then give you a lever to get in to being a marketing assistant and working your way up that way?

YANBU.

I worked for the NHS for a while - in a management role, NOT a frontline role where (and I cannot emphasise this enough) things are very different. But in this back office, a bunch of very, very mediocre people were very, very overpaid for running a pretty important national service very, very badly. Even those on £100K+ a year used to work little more than a 9-5 most days.

The cleaner used to come in. She worked longer hours than most of the people in the office, but on minimum wage. Her working conditions were MUCH harder and her job was much more tiring. And yet she would be the first one to say that rich people "deserved" what they had. And she was eternally puzzled by the fact that, however hard she worked, she was ALWAYS struggling. It never seemed to click for her that IT IS NOT FAIR and that the system is fundamentally exploitative.

I’ve got a friend who’s not mega wealthy, but on over £50k who literally does fuck all. Admittedly he should be doing more and if he was found out he’d be fired. But it’s amazing what he gets away with.

as anyone reading a thread could choose to do - dismissing anyone without first hand experience though is a high bar and it is typically women commenting about their partner's careers. What do you think the effect of the unnecessary comments are?

I don't comment on every response I don't agree with claiming they have less right to post, even if I might think it's not especially relevant - this op is talking about higher earners loafing about though. I do agree as with most threads, the Op does need to look at her own career history for clues.

Totally agree. I have a friend who earns about £200-250k in finance and works 9 till 5 every day. I asked her if her job ever stresses her out and she said not at all, and that it really is the best of both worlds.

I often see posts on Mumsnet where people will say, 'I'd rather be on my average wage because to earn big bucks you have to work all hours of the day and never see your kids'. Of course some high earners are like that but others really aren't.

OP, if I were changing careers again, I would look at careers where I could complete a qualification/structured training plan and move up from there.

It's all very well working your way up gradually from an office junior position when you have time on your side, but as a career-changer you'll likely want to be able to progress relatively quickly so having a set path to follow, and having qualifications that reassure people that you're committed to that career, are the simplest ways to get potential employers to say yes to you. It's also important to be prepared for the fact that many will say no too (we've all been there!) and to keep going - which is why the first step is figuring out exactly what you want to do and knowing you'll stop at nothing to get there.

It will take a lot of independent research to work out exactly what you want to do and how to get there, but that's what the people who've changed career (myself included) have done and is the first differentiator between the people who really want the job and the ones who don't.