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 have no idea if you could do my job as well, what I’m saying is many people couldn’t so because of the laws of supply and demand it’s a more expensive resource. If you think you could and want something that pays more and is less physically demanding then good on you! I guess that’s some of the factors really, the desire to find something like that and then the will to make it happen. I’m sure a dose of luck too.

I saw something the other day along the lines of - you’re not paying me for the 30 mins it takes me to do something but the 10years it took me to become this skilled. In my case that’s probably true but as always there are many exceptions.

FWIW the woman who runs the cleaning company I use is doing incredibly well, she’s so passionate about it and takes huge pride. There are many routes to earning well if that’s what motivates you.

I get paid a good salary for my accumulated knowledge and experience and the stress and responsibilities that go with making tough decisions.

The 'hardest' I've ever worked though was as a 15/16 year old in a shoe shop. That was long, physical and tough.

My husband works from home on the days our cleaner visits and I bet she's seen him
playing on championship manager. He also does the school run those days and doesn't shave etc.

What she won't see is that he works away from home 6-8 days a week. Long hours. Staying in hotels. Not seeing his family.

Like me he is paid for his knowledge and experience and level of accountability plus compensated for large amounts of time away.

Yanbu of course but far too many people think the more you earn the harder you work! I earn more than my FIL's carer and she definitely works harder than me.

Me and hubby are high earner and sometimes work hard it's ups and downs.

We have our own business and our fury five years of running it put in 16 hour days for five years, we've done the hard work already and maybe it's the case for the people you're taking about.

Usually the hard work is at the beginning and once something or someone becomes successful sometimes they can relax a little as they've nurtured things to a point where they don't have to do the long hours anymore.

Just to reiterate OP said ‘some’ not all high earners, you don’t need to defend yourself about how hard you work if you don’t fit into the category she describes

@reginafelangee your husband has got it tough, working away 6-8 days a week

Typo aside, I agree with everything you’ve said.

YANBU. There are loads of coke-addled, super-privileged, well-connected arseholes who earn stupid amounts of money for doing absolutely fuck all. These are the men (and it's nearly always men) who were born into wealthy families, went to private school, then university for a bog-standard degree, after which their family connections got them some sort of junior executive job which mainly involved a bit of paper-pushing taking clients to lunch. Unless they do something absolutely horrendous (abusing women or doing drugs tends not to count - stuff which loses the company money might do) they will stay in that line indefinitely, racking up a nice payrise every year or moving to another company for more money.

The whole business of executive pay is out of control . Noone works 5000 times as hard as anyone else in their company, so why should they be paid 5000 times as much?

@Sparklesocks I don’t think anyone has been defending, more explaining.
I’m sure some high earners do very little, and well done to them! We’re just explaining that based on what the OP has observed, it’s really not enough to put those people into that category.

My husband's boss earns a lot, I dont know how much but obviously more than my husband. He works about 4 hours a day.

There's a key thing here which is what you consider working hard.

Some of the support workers I manage probably don't think I work as hard as them. I sit at a desk for a good portion of the day when they are on their feet working directly with service users. I don't work 12 hour shifts and they do.

What they might miss is I do all the work to allow them to do their job. I work most evenings and weekends at home and carry all the risk of our service users. If something happens to them it's me in court not them. I attend meetings, keep clients coming in to keep the service open, I work long hours to keep everyone safe and manage some complex care. I train them and I write the guidance and care which keeps us an outstanding service (cqc).

Just as an aside for a PP - nurses who don't work for the NHS work hard too 😉 we all do the same job for the same clients just some of us have a different name on our paychecks.

Physical labour? Not for those at the top in the main but they do work hard in different ways. That said there are always gonna be excepts. For the exceptional they can kick back now. A lot of them would have worked exceptionally hard in the early days.

If you want more go out and get it. Remember most who are earning big bucks now started at the bottom (short of nepotism) so the sooner you get started the better.

They're not old, seem around my age, what jobs do they do and why can't I do them, I have a degree.

What is your degree in, and what types of jobs are you applying for?

I was always told that you have to work hard to get what you want in life,

Life just doesn't work like that. If you're born with a high IQ and well-off educated family, everything is just easier. You can work hard stacking shelves and serving coffee 70 hours a week, but it won't make you a millionaire unless you do something else.

Me and my husband both went into fields which start at 30k (he's on 50k now), which might not be 6 figures, but I consider 50 to be a high salary. He works exactly 36.5 hours a week, and on his WFH day just watches Netflix. But he works in quite a boring field that needs a specific Masters in an already unpopular subject, so it's hard to recruit for - hence working conditions are ace.

I work in a slightly more fun field but similar broad area, it's still 9-5.

Don't work hard, work smart. If your spare time and hobbies are important to you rather than an all-consuming career, then Google the best jobs with the best work-life balance/salary ratio, and see if you can get qualified in that. Right now that's a lot of stats, programming, engineering and analytics. If you go for something hyper-competitive with few vacancies like medicine, law, journalism or design - then don't be surprised when it's long hours for often crappy pay.

I earn quite alot. Start at 8am leave at 3.30ish.

I echo what pp said. No one really knows my phone is always on. I reply to emails at all times. Conference call on a weekend.

No one except my exh saw the 70 weeks I used to pull to get up the career ladder.

I have worked damn hard. Theres been some luck involved. My current CEO met me a year ago and was really impressed by me. It took a year of on/off negotiation to get me to go work there. The luck was a head hunter found me. The rest was my practical experience and personality.

I was lucky that head hunter found me. However, I keep my LinkedIn up to date and always update my CV on sites like CV library. So even the head hunter finding me wasnt pure luck.

In all honesty, I think you might be able to do my job. I am 37 and been learning since I was 24. I have had 2 kids and was never a sahp. Only took MAT leave. I have consistently taken calculated risks and job hopped. I took jobs and stuck at them, that other people looked down on. I researched how to write a good CV and covering letter. It's worked out.

So yes, my neighbours may see me come in at 3.45pm. They may not see me leave at 5.30am to get to a meeting 3 hours away. Or the things I do outside work.

I have now got to a level where I can balance things better. Because i put the extra work in, i can not be in the office as much. I dont need to present in one place to do my job. I might do work once the kids are in bed. But I can dictate that I dont want the kids doing hours of afterschool club so leave early. Or do a few hours S.turday morning and no one moans the phone is switched off after that

I have done minimum wage jobs. They are hard in a different way.

@ellusandra

• @reginafelangee your husband has got it tough, working away 6-8 days a week* 

Sorry that should have been 6-8 days a fortnight

Its interestingto read this because there are a lot of threads where posters have explicitly said and believed that the harder you work = the more you earn as an absolute black and white truth. When i have questioned it i have been patronised and say unless i have been at the top i wouldn't understand about all the responsibilty and mental load. By my reckoning film stars and footballers ought to be the hardest working....but sonehow I'm not convinced thats true.
I do believe high earners work hard but i also believe that sometimes intelligence, privilige and luck also play a part.
One of DH friends went to boarding school and got a good job in the city....but he literally never sees his kids during the week, he is working 14 hour days.
My DH is self employed, he gets a very average salary but he often works 12 hour days, has to deal with pensions, wages, hmrc and actually the less money he makes the more stressful it is, not the opposite!

Yes! I'm a PA, my colleagues get paid a lot! They don't work that hard, but they are very, very clever!

Dh earns a six figure salary I wouldn't call it hard work as such, he's busy and he travels but he works from home a lot too, they pay him for his skills and what he knows.
However he worked very very hard and long hours to get to this point on not a huge wage, we struggled a lot.

Oh and we never worked hard in the beginning to get promoted - in mine and husband's fields, everyone gets promoted automatically after a certain amount of time. I'm not interested in scrabbling any higher than that, would rather have my evenings.

The higher up the ranks you get the more flexibility you get. In many roles you're only really answerable to yourself and if you're competent you can probably make it work for you in less than 40 hours a week. People in crappy jobs can't take time out to see school assemblies etc but senior people can move things around to ensure they can.

@ReanimatedSGB nobody earns 5000x more than someone else in the same company.
That’s like £75 million a year vs £15,000.

That article was taking about a 5000% increase in executive pay, not a 5000x multiple. The multiple in the example was 169.

My CEO gets less than 169x my pay, but sticking with 169...

Does he work 169x harder than me? No. He probably works less hard (or feels less hard) because he really loves his job.

Is he 169x more likely to not just keep the company from going under, but actively grow it in a really tough market than me? Hell yes!

My CEO is easily worth many multiples of my salary.

I’m well paid and a bit lazy these days tbh. I worked bloody hard in my 20s, studying and sometimes putting in 100 hour weeks but then deliberately took a more relaxed job in to my 30s. Because of my experience and expertise, I am now being paid more than I ever was but not working as hard. I’m very sure I look a bit lazy to my cleaner who can only see me dicking around on my laptop (and I’ve been accused of it from MN when posting on here during the day ) but I can only take it easy now thanks to working really hard in those early years

Saying that, it was very frustrating when I was in my 20s to see my superiors working shorter hours than me, I did feel like we juniors did all the hard graft for less pay but I see now that that is paying your dues

I don’t work as hard as an NHS emergency services nurse or doctor though, I think they should be paid more.

Internally I find the level of tax I pay slightly galling but I think it’s the right thing to do and am happy to support the system in that way.

While you might wonder if you could do someone else’s job, there are nice perks to having a service-industry type job. One of them is that you will never take your work home with you, whereas there’s a certain amount of mental load that comes with higher paid roles

Ellisandra fair enough, but it might read like you’re protesting too much

Some low earners work even less 🤷

You only see a part of what SOME high-earners do - and some people work more at home, others more in the office.

how do you know that I couldn't do your job as well as you do?
why don't you try to do it? How do you think people start? They apply for job, they temp in the place they like, they put a foot in the door and go from there.

Some cleaners starting as private cleaners and build a business and end up employing huge teams.

Sometimes it's about sheer hard work, but you do that when you start, other time about the amount you bring to the business, about the stress, the responsibility.

If you look at my own day, it's not the busiest during business hours, but I have to do a lot before and after, and I might be vert busy from 6pm to 10pm plus. It's the nature of the business>

You do seem to know an enormous of amount about a full day of your client, do you genuinely spend your entire day there?

No one works 5000 times as hard as anyone else in their company, so why should they be paid 5000 times as much?

People aren’t paid only on the basis of the precisely quantified ’amount’ of work they do, though, are they? In many (though not all) cases Person A is paid more than Person B because they have more experience or greater responsibility.

I could earn a lot more than I currently do, but I’m fairly risk averse and don’t want the stress of the additional responsibility.

Not protesting, just trying to give some insight into what other people don’t see when they haven’t had a job like mine 🤷‍♀️