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.

Whenever I read about high earners on MN I'm glad I'm not one tbh. Working 12 hrs days, always on call, never having an uninterrupted holiday. Sounds awful to me. I earn about average wage and it's plenty for me so I'll stick with that. My only advice for careers OP is talk to ppl who work in the sector you want and pick their brains, choose something less popular and volunteer to get experience if needed. That's what has worked for me.

Do you have an idea of what you want to do? Maybe you could get some careers advice to look at options.

The thing is OP you’ve been mistaking activity for progress. No doubt you’ve worked hard and you don’t quite see why that hasn’t been rewarded.

I came from a background of educated but not well connected or wealthy parents. I was always quite driven and so worked really hard to get into the best university I could.

At university I looked carefully at the career I was interested in - it comes in many flavours so I worked out what paid well and zoned in on that. Then I worked out what the firms who hire for these roles look for in their graduates and I made sure I ticked all their boxes and managed to get a job before I qualified. I then worked out what my degree examiners wanted to see in the exams and got very high grades and worked towards that when people who put more hours on the clock or were cleverer did less well.

At my job I worked really hard and looked for every opportunity to take on more senior work or responsibility. The hours were dreadful and I spent most of my 20s in the office. Dry Kate every night. I moved “in house” and knowing I was still relatively junior I worked hard but strategically, looking at what it took to get promoted and targeted that. I didn’t get what I want every time but sticking at it and targeting my effort I got promoted several times. When other didn’t always. I still did pretty long hours and made sacrifices others many wouldn’t. And importantly I didn’t assume that my work would speak for itself and people would just notice my efforts.

20+ years into my career I now work differently in a way that gives me more flex. But it was all the hard years of strategic work and sticking at my strategy that got me to where I can have more flex whilst still earning very well.

I would say though our working lives are long and you still have plenty of mileage to go so it isn’t too late to start afresh. The first thing I would really consider in your shoes is what drives you to wanting these more senior roles - is it earning well, it is “being a professional”, is it having status? Is it something else? What so you enjoy in roles? This may drive you in different directions so eg setting up a cleaning firm and employing teams might enable you to make more money but wouldn’t make you a professional. Some professional jobs don’t actually make that much money.

certainly don’t think it is too late to retrain but really you’ve got one big shot here so you need to make it count.

I would suggest spend some time really thinking. First about what you enjoy doing, second what you are good at and third what meets your motivations. If you can find roles in the venn diagram intersect of all three that may give you what you want.

When youve got ideas then work through all the things you need to do step by step to make them happen. Maybe some thing you’d like may not be practical and you’ll have to think of alternatives. But I think the time spent really thinking and planning will pay dividends in a way continuing to just do what work is at hands won’t.

@Hesafriendfromwork I love my coworkers in the NHS. I struggle with the private sector to be honest, especially the private healthcare sector. Our healthcare shouldn't be about profits, affordability, shareholders etc. Just my opinion. One job I had was trying to flog dental payment plans (high interest loans) to people desperately unhappy with their teeth. It was awful. It wasn't something I wanted to be the best at. Maybe that's where I've gone wrong.
Where I work now, we offer a frankly amazing service to everyone. Some of our service users have never worked, some have been homeless, some have been criminals. Right now I'm organising for us to do a sponsored volleyball tournament and a pop up Mexican restaurant. I love my job and I work really hard, it's also high risk. I earn £9 per hour.

Also OP, the comfort and salary of jobs often means they are dull, like a PP said. My job might be comfy and pay for my hobbies but I'm not going to pretend staring at code and datasets is my dream lol. It's the choice I've made, for now. I'm risk averse and the thought of gambling a degree fee on Fashion Design or the like, with no guarantee of a job (possibly working in Topshop like you said) was too risky for me. Maybe in future when I have a house and savings from my "safe" career.

OP- you haven't chosen a career where there are genuine prospects or worked for a large enough company where career progression is available. Yo can't work your way to a top-paid job working in a cafe or a dentists- what did you expect? High earners either work for themselves running their own businesses, or they work for a large corporate organisation.

"Sometimes I don't know what I've done to deserve this life."
Sometimes the reason you are where you are is because of what you haven't done.

"I was the smartest kid in my primary, I speak two languages, I got a first in my dissertation."
What about in secondary school? Did you build on your language skills so that you still retained an advantage over others or did they catch you up? Did you take 'A' levels in languages and then go on to further studies to become an interpreter?
Have you applied for jobs that require you to be bi-lingual?

It is what you do with the qualifications you gain in education that is important, not gaining them per se.

"People have never given me a chance and I always end up stuck, not able to go upwards. I applied for graduate schemes after Uni. I didn't get anywhere so I ended up in a cafe so I could pay rent. Every day is just surviving."
Everyone wants someone to give them a chance. Everyone is in the same boat. Sadly there aren't enough graduates schemes for graduates. You have to be that person that stands out from the rest, perhaps by showing leadership qualities or having a 'can do' attitude or being a natural problem solver.

Having a positive attitude is a really attractive quality to employers and you do sound as if you lack this. You sound like you are having a pity party.

Try to think about the transferable skills you have gained in your job roles and apply for other jobs where you can use those skills and which have room for progression.

Not being funny, but you sound like a bit of quitter too OP!

The reason why they don’t tell people is because that’s part of the process. They want the kind of people who are driven enough to go out and find these opportunities themselves. No one told me either. I scoured the internet on industry/student forums/blogs and job sites to find the kinds of places where I wanted to work then spent ours applying for dozens of vac placements while studying full time (with a long commute) and raising two children. In the end the job that I got (which I found myself and was outside of my study discipline) required (in addition to all the good grades, extra stuff on cv etc) about 4 hours on the application (filling out details, answering some general questions, multi faceted aptitude test, interview), a month working full time on the vac scheme and then eventually the job offer.

Its supposed to be hard because the job requires people who are willing to work hard. If you want to rise to the top in that particular organisation you have to complete a professional qualification, become highly specialised in a constantly changing area, have excellent commercial awareness, good networking skills, the ability to manage people and projects and the ability to find clients and for high yield relationships. It’s not easy and it’s not going to happen if you need other people to guide you through the process.

My DH is on 95k plus approximately 30% bonus. He works hard, but not that hard. He is in the office from about 8.30-5.30 and doesn't generally work weekends unless there is something major to get done.

Where I work now, we offer a frankly amazing service to everyone. Some of our service users have never worked, some have been homeless, some have been criminals. Right now I'm organising for us to do a sponsored volleyball tournament and a pop up Mexican restaurant. I love my job and I work really hard, it's also high risk. I earn £9 per hour.

You're clearly passionate about what you do -- I hope when you are sitting down to your next interview, you bring this all up! Half of the battle is being able to interview well.

If you want to rise to the top in that particular organisation you have to complete a professional qualification, become highly specialised in a constantly changing area, have excellent commercial awareness, good networking skills, the ability to manage people and projects and the ability to find clients and for high yield relationships. It’s not easy and it’s not going to happen if you need other people to guide you through the process.

I could not agree with this more. I freelanced still freelance! outside of my 9-5 to take on projects that build on my skills, take outside training on my own time and money, and have to actively work at networking because I find it exceptionally difficult. That's how I built my specialisation and experience, and it has paid off.

OP, yes you probably are working physically harder and maybe more hours than me but you haven’t seen my journey. I’ve worked my way up in large organisations and continued to take professional qualifications throughout my career and am now at a point where if you saw me working from home, you’d see me knock out a PowerPoint in a couple of hours and think I’m kicking back.

What you don’t realise is that in order for me to have been able to knock out that PowerPoint in 2 hours, I had to have gained 10 years experience and subject expertise. That’s what my company are paying me for, not sweat and physical graft.

OP, most people are striving for a better lifestyle and money helps buy services / products / experiences / time for you. So it's pretty competitive to earn good money be it running your own business or working for a corp!

You have to be involved and at the races to even stand a chance. If you've drifted from entry level job to entry level job and not put into your career value, then that's kind of down to you, nobody else is going to do it for you.

You do find that most successful people in life have ambition and focus on brining their ambitions to life. Sorry but you don't seem to portray that in your posts. You seem to have drifted around doing things you like, quitting things you don't. So not sure how you suddenly thought that just working long hours was going to get you earning more.

My office has a great cleaner. If she worked even longer she would then be a really great cleaner! But the CEO is hardly going to invite her in for a chat and offer a high paid job based on how well / how many hours she spends cleaning. Why would they? There's a whole talent pool of people competing for the next job up with relevant skills and experience.

Sorry if this post sounds blunt, but I do think you need a reality check. Outside of the top 1% life's tough and the world owes you nothing, so you make of it what you make of it.

Definitely not proportionate.

I worked 50-60 hours per week minimum wage as a waitress/bar staff general kitchen help. Exhausting work, on your feet constantly and didn't get paid what I do now as a social worker, which is physically easy, 36 hours a week. BUT I haveuch more responsibility now (not within my job, just generally in terms of the importance of what I do.

DH earned much less ph as a teacher, even taking in to account his the holidays than he does now in IT - his salary has doubled for far fewer hours per year. Teaching was more physically demanding and had more importance responsibility as well.

Someone once said that if hard work made money, all the women in Africa would be millionaires. A bit racist as a statement but the sentiment is certainly true.

You may just find that actually they work early in the mornings, or late in the evenings, or that they stop working when you are there as you disturb them You are not there for every minute of their day so actually you don’t know when they work

It is what you do with the qualifications you gain in education that is important, not gaining them per se.

This is so true. So many people haven’t clicked that having a degree isn’t any kind of key to an automatic good job in itself. So many people have degrees. It’s often the absolute beginning, a thing that opens a few doors, mandatory in many professions. But alone it means very little. You have to leverage it and be willing to work hard and for many professions, take on further qualifications.

People have never given me a chance and I always end up stuck, not able to go upwards. I applied for graduate schemes after Uni. I didn't get anywhere so I ended up in a cafe so I could pay rent. Every day is just surviving

I was in the same boat after my undergrad, ended up cobbling together a full time NMW wage with working as a cashier at day and delivering fast food at night. But while doing that, I continued to better myself. Applied for adult education courses to get a level 3 qualification in the area I wanted to go into, and spent two full working days per week volunteering in a prison and one evening per week volunteering at another job. All of which ended up getting me into a MA course to become a qualified professional. You don’t just get the cafe job and think ‘ah well, it’s a shame this is all I can do, nobody will give me a chance’ if you want to progress, you show up to that job and then on evenings and weekends keep plugging away building skills and your CV and developing contacts and researching your next move. It doesn’t matter how tired you are from your day job, if you’re unhappy remaining there for the long haul you find it within yourself to keep going and always be working towards the next achievement. So that eventually people won’t be able to afford to ‘not give you a chance’, you’ll be too desirable to pass up on.

I disagree that healthcare should be profitable. The NHS is amazing. But there is a place for a paid for service as well.

Paid healthcare shouldnt be being pushed on to vulnerable people. But my point was, you didnt like that call centre. You had a plan to work your way up a call centre. Thata how I became a hugh earner. It's very doable as often they look internal when promoting. I have worked in a few.

But you decided after a month to abandon that plan because you didnt like that particular call centre. Rather than look at a different one. So how much really, had you invested in that plan?

Where I work now, we offer a frankly amazing service to everyone.

Then what are you doing to pursue progression at this job?

I don't know anyone who got onto a graduate scheme; I don't think it's a prerequisite to doing well tbh.

Velveteen's advice is extremely useful. I was comparing my career (law) to user's. One thing I did tha tmost people didn't was look ahead - always plan things, even at 14 I cycled to the library to borrow a book called what people earn. The school suggested librarian,l probation officer. I picked lawyer as i thought it would be better paid. That was partly because I read and read and read all kinds of books form many eras for A level English lit and I had read so many life stories and autobiographies including those about people who had obtained university scholarships, prizes, who picked XYZ careers and all those feminist books which came out in the 1970s about women who chose hearth and home and regretted it as they had to rely on men or the state for the money. IN a sense reading for me got me that window into the world and also my trainspotter personality I suppose so I would be the first to apply for XYZ course, the first to do ABC.

I suppose I just knew through research that if you want law jobs you dont' wait until you graduate sa the firms recuit years ahead. one of my sons applied to law school yesterday which doesn't start until net year. Others are just messing around planning gap years and in some case pointless masters (not saying all masters are a waste of ime but some graduates do them because they have not planned a career and cannot think of anything else to do). He knows that firms recruit between now and Christmas for the jobs in 2 years time not because I told him but because the internet tells you.

So this might help for user's children but not for her.

So low paid NHS job but a good degree etc. How do people move from that into bigger money? I used to earn extra money on top of salary eg I marked A level law papers, law society finals papers but I am not sure what the requirements for markers are these days. I did at at the weekends or evenings and that helped. It used to pay for our family summer holiday.

The NHS has a huge amount of procurement and there weill be poeple hter who are not lawyers who work for it who are contracts manager, members of CIPS (you can do CIPS exams), procurement people - that might be worth getting into and there is demand across the NHS and elsewhere for that and I have often met (as I am a lawyer) very good procurement people who can earn a fair bit if they advance over the years.

People have never given me a chance and I always end up stuck, not able to go upwards. I applied for graduate schemes after Uni. I didn't get anywhere so I ended up in a cafe so I could pay rent.

I’m not absolutely sure where you think these people to give you a chance will come from. You can’t work in a cafe and expect that someone will just stroll in, see your potential and offer you a job. You do need to take a bit of responsibility in putting yourself in a position of being given a chance.

You do need to take a bit of responsibility in putting yourself in a position of being given a chance.

A lot of it is luck, but you can increase your own chances by putting yourself in the right place, in terms of qualifications, experience, contacts, etc. so you;re ready to pounce when an opportunity arises.

He knows that firms recruit between now and Christmas for the jobs in 2 years time not because I told him but because the internet tells you.

And that's part of the recruitment process - they want people who can research things for themselves rather than be spoon-fed. Most professions and "better" jobs need people with initiative.

Whenever I read about high earners on MN I'm glad I'm not one tbh. Working 12 hrs days, always on call, never having an uninterrupted holiday. Sounds awful to me. I earn about average wage and it's plenty for me so I'll stick with that

@dayslikethese1 But not all high earners do work 12 hour days. As I said, a friend of mine is on around 200-250k and works 9 till 5. No weekends either. She also has plenty of (fantastic looking) holidays.

Another point is what counts as hard work. I've taken the afternoon and done something else after a few busy days before now, and then had better ideas whilst walking along than I'd had all the previous week. Hard work is sometimes long hours or lots of travel or computer work and it is sometimes smart thinking. That skill isn't innate, but hard learned.

I am taking responsibility. I'm currently working every extra shift that comes my way, volunteering in training new starters, helping out with fundraising, using conversations I have with people during lunch break to make connections with those in better positions. I'm trying to make up for my earlier dithering. I don't want anything handed to me on a plate but you must admit that having parents at home who know about applying for graduate schemes, scholarships, internships is a bloody huge advantage in this life when you're 23 and not sure what to do next!
For example my posh mate (she knows I call her that) got a job at 15 working in the same business as her dad, earning £18. At 15 I was the person who handed the raw battered fish to the person who fried it.

Re: language skills. My dad is an illiterate immigrant who can't read and write in his own language. Therefore I can't read or write in his language. Plus there's no money in it as lots of people in the world speak it far better than me (I'm not fully bilingual but I can get by.) There's lots of Spanish speakers in my city, most are working in cafes. Being able to speak Spanish (badly) is not much of a selling point.