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.

@BrokenWing is right it’s not just about how physically hard you work! My DH could be one of the people you’re talking about but he’s worked his ass of for years and years and still does but now he works for himself he can be at home a lot when he’s not with clients. But what you wouldn’t see is working into the early hours of round the clock on a weekend to get something ready for a client on Monday. He does the role he does and gets paid what he does because he’s incredibly bright and exceptional at what he does and not a lot of people are able to do it as it relies on you being very mathematically bright - when those two things collide you get paid well for it. And yes there’s things like luck along the way but you’ve got to be good enough and bright enough to take advantage of lucky opportunities that might come along in the first place.

Just as an aside we sometimes use a very well known cleaning franchise and the owner of our local one lives in the type of house you are describing and has two very very nice cars in the gated drive! So the opportunities are there in cleaning - I would say you’re probably better off doing that full time than an NHS administrator.

It’s not all bankers and traders either the industry my DP works in they probably get paid a similar amount especially if you’re at Exec Director level in one of the larger firms but there’s of that shenanigans they’re all geeks 😂.

Exactly @LonginesPrime it really is just jealousy my DP is from a working class background. Me and my DB are from a very solidly middle class background but could never have hoped to achieve what he has as we’re just not bright enough to do the roles that pay the big money. In fairness in my industry I could quite easily (I say easily with bloody hard work and probably not having children) have got to director level and the salary that goes with I just couldn’t cope with pressure and the responsibility along with raising children.

That’s another thing you just don’t have awareness of OP is responsibility. You may not see people working physically hard but do you know what they are responsible for. A department manager will be responsible for the performance of his department and that will be reliant on the performance of his team. The mental pressure of this can be untold - as I can well tell you!

I’m not one of those ‘5+ bed, brand new cars, 3/4 foreign holidays a year’ massive massive earners, but I do earn a very high wage for what I do (wouldn’t be able to earn this anywhere else) and I now ‘work from home’, take & pick up my son from college, walk my dog etc etc...
But I had to pretty much sell my soul for many years to get to this point! Slogged my guts out, worked easily 2 people’s jobs to really prove myself & be highly thought of in my company.

Then I got sick, really sick & was diagnosed with a life changing & what will eventually be a debilitating illness.
My company call it pay-back time now...time for them to look after me. And they really do. So to the untrained eye looking in, wow I’ve got it good & it’s so ‘unfair’.
But it’s not as simple as it looks!

Luck/definitely definitely plays a part. It's clearly not enough on its own, but is needed to enable the skill to find its way.

As I get older, one of the most important skills I see in success is resilience - the ability to get back out there and have another go, to not be too sensitive or take things personally. I think it takes a certain type of confidence and willingness to take risks to be really successful. Putting yourself out there and bouncing back from failure and rejection.

Oh the irony of OP complaining about priviledge, but using uni as a chance to study something that she fancied dpomg not something that would help her career, but just expected a good career to fall in her lap anyway. Because it happened to one person. That shows how privileged the Op actually is. Clearly one of the large group of people that thought going to uni, to do anything automatically made you better and more employable.

Then she says 'you shouldn't be able to earn more than you need', then reveals that her mother gave her a deposit for a house. So it was ok for her mum to have more than she needed. It's ok to be given a big amount of money for house purely by virtue of being the child of someone with money......but God no.....you can't actually earn a large amount of money, even if you got to that wage by (mainly hard work).

OP are you on the wind up or have not realise how hypocritical you are?

Op it’s great that you enjoy your job but it seems that you do support work in a mh unit. Like it or not, your job is entry level.

There are lots of ways you could improve your prospects but you don’t seem interested in any of them. You don’t want to progress- you want others to give you something.

Yes some people have advantages you don’t. Likewise you have advantages other people don’t.

If you want to improve your lot, you could do so. It would help to stop blaming everything on someone else.

So many posters here seem to say they are smart and capable but seem ignorant of the fundamental attribution error en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error.

ie over attributing their own success to their own hard work

People are blaming the op/ poor people for making ‘poor choices’ but arent recognising the context in which those decisions are made.

ie uni choice - I went to a Russell group uni. But this was chance- no one in my extended family had ever been to uni and my parents had no clue about advising me on subjects/ uni.

When I graduated I saw the well supported graduates get work experience in their parents’ businesses, or have their parents fund masters.
The poor graduates just ended up in retail/ staying in whatever part time job had got them through uni.

I’ve got a decent paid job now with scope to 6 figures eventually but that’s because huge debt/ my DP funded me through a postgrad.

People are blaming the op/ poor people for making ‘poor choices’ but arent recognising the context in which those decisions are made

Absolute bollocks. No one said poor people made bad choices.

In the ops case. Ahe has made poor choices. She came from a very priviledged position. Job hopped fron one entry level posts to another. With no real plan about what she wanted to do

That's why she is where she is. On an individual level, ops attitude and decisions are why she is where she is. We are discussing OP at an individual level. Not all 'poor people'.

Of course we are all biased to ourselves. Like op is sat saying 'but no one gave me chance. Its not my fault I should have had more'

Posters, me included, have admitted some luck and some priviledge in our lives. But that's not the whole story. The fact is that no one offered me a job out of the blue, in the street. My CV was online for years being updated, changed added to before a head hunter found me. Yes it was chance and luck they found me. But without the work I put in to maintain it, it would not have been there.

The OP has had a lot of priviledge including the privilege of having a deposit for a house given to her. She appears to think that a good job should just have come along at some point. She has had more priviledge than lots of people, so it doesnt make sense that just priviledge is what it comes down to, because she would be where she wanted to be.

The fact that she thinks your shouldnt earn more than you need but quite happy to have a deposit handed to her, says that actually she is also heavily biased to her own situation. She believes she has been badly done to and deserves more and thats it. Anyone who has more doesnt deserve it because she doesnt have it.

OP this is more a reply to your initial post and I haven’t read the entire thread.

Something I’ve noticed about successful people as that they worked hard when they were young, but combined that work with smart choices and focused their work in the right direction. It’s not about working hard later in life, just working smart.

I see a lot of younger people messing about with degrees that don’t lead to a good job, scraping by in their studies and not talking life seriously. In reality there is a small window from a person’s late teens to mid/late 20s to obtain qualifications for a high paying job, then to compete with a small group to secure good employment opportunities. The smartest graduates think about this and know how to stand out from their contemporaries. Usually about 5-10 years of really hard work will follow, to establish a career. This creates the framework for a high paying job where your skills are valued in the market. Hard work may then only follow more sporadically as you can delegate to juniors and invest in maintaining and building a professional profile. This doesn’t always work but it’s my personal experience. Obviously a stand out education, connections and class privilege will help (unfairly so). It’s much harder to do this from as privileged position.

I worry for younger men and women who seem to think they can party when young and catch up later. It’s not impossible to do that but the odds are that they’ll be left behind by their more conscientious contemporaries.

Has £50k been suggested as a high earner? I wouldn't say that it was- that is a pretty average graduate professional salary?

Statistically according to ONS you would be a top decile earner on 50k as a woman.

It is clearly both luck and hard work. Luck to be born somewhere where there is decent education and opportunities, intelligence, resilience, determination and good health. Hard work then uses these things to succeed. There is still luck in relation to getting that break you need but you kind of make that luck because without working hard you wouldn't get it.

Has £50k been suggested as a high earner? I wouldn't say that it was- that is a pretty average graduate professional salary?

Depends entirely on your perception, and area. Where I live, the average salary is £17k. So I very much consider myself a high earner on £40k! Especially as I grew up assuming all I could end up doing is retail on NMW. Many on MN would consider it strange that I see £40k as a high salary but from my background round here it is.

to be born somewhere where there is decent education and opportunities, resilience, determination and good health.

These things aren’t necessary for high earning or aren’t luck.

Many refugees and immigrant children do exceptionally well after moving to a country where they don’t even speak the language. They have the trauma that refugee status confers.Many have health problems because of their earlier life.

Resilience and determination aren’t luck. You decide how you face the world. It’s learnt behaviour.
Health is not necessarily a factor. Lots of high earners with health problems. Lots of high earners are not young and have problems related to ageing. Good health isn’t necessarily luck either.

I think people are conflating a few things because OP mentioned working from home and people tend to get defensive if others accuse them of looking like they are not working. Obviously, if you have a flexible job where you WFH alot it can appear as though you're taking it easy when in fact you work hard and travel alot at other times.

However, to answer the point about some high earners not actually working that hard, then I would 100% agree. Yes some have had a hard time to get to where they are and now they get to take it more easy in their senior or specialist position. But many have not. Some have climbed the ladder due to neoptism or well timed career moves. Some senior people are poor leaders and poor managers but keep in favour with the right people to avoid getting caught out.

For example, I worked in a small bank and honestly, most of the senior people did not add any value to the firm. There was alot of attending meetings (including the travel to get there) and creating work for the sake of it but nothing happened quickly. They would tell you they were busy though. However, the productivity of that firm was so low. If those senior people were genuinely working hard, then more activity and progress would have happened. Instead major projects constantly failed and activities drifted on, people in office sat around doing nothing all day. I know this because I was one of them. There was no urgency and I found the whole thing very demotivating. My boss started recruiting for a new role in the team of £100k + a year (way more than my salary) but I had no idea what actual work they would do. It was so strange. In most office based roles you should be judged on your output.... and at this firm there was basically none by large swathes of senior people. Financial services in particular is rife with the above.

Depends entirely on your perception, and area. Where I live, the average salary is £17k. So I very much consider myself a high earner on £40k! Especially as I grew up assuming all I could end up doing is retail on NMW. Many on MN would consider it strange that I see £40k as a high salary but from my background round here it is.

Have to agree with that, sounds like I live in a similar area. I consider myself a high earner, yet have never earned enough to pay higher rate tax! Around here, it's the public sector workers who live in the "nice" areas. There are no "big" employers outside the public sector - just schools, a big hospital, and a university. Nearly all "private" employment is small/medium firms where low pay is the norm. A pretty typical northern run down town really!

Good for the original poster, user, for continuing the debate. I saw the list of points she has taken on board. i think she has been infected by some left wing views amongst low paid people in the NHS - she seems to think doctors are saints buy anyone who does anything remotely finnancial is some kind of devil incarnate. Nor have those of us who have done well said luck plays no part at all. I would put luck at about 5% or 10% depending on how you define it. Obviously if you put luck as meaning you were born in the UK rather than papua new guinea forests then I suppose we are all very lucky.

The thread has shown a lot of useful examples of how women and their husbands have done well from all kinds of backgrounds which in a sense shows Britain at its best. I think it has given a lot of tips to others or which they can pass on to their teenage children who may be choosing careers now.

Secondly perhaps user just needs to decide her priorities. If she wants to earn a lot more she might need not to take and collect her chilren from school for example. We hired someone to work 3 to 6pm for example to look after the children then and I saw that as a bonus as school collection often means you see the chilren at their worst and the loss of future income in some careers can be so massive it is an easy decision to make to give up the "pleasures" of the day in day out school run.

I think she wants to earn more but may not want to give up the school collection (a lifestyle choice at least for those where husband and wife both earn more than the minimum wage - we have to remember childcare costs are something both parties in the couple pay not one). She proably wants to stay in the NHS or some kind of charitable contribution which may well limit earnings a bit as those jobs tend to be easier to do and there is much demand. however my suggestino of NHS procurement surely would fit with that - hospitals buy things and they need people who can negotiate the contracts etc. hee is an ad I just googled for NHS procurement £50k - £57k). So that of course is the end point.

We have to remember a vital point on the thread - successful people often make plans years, sometimes decades ahead. So you wouldn't get the £50k job now but could work towards it. I have not researched the career path in the NHS but getting to know the procurement people locally at the hospital for a chat might be a god start. See what exams they have, perhaps take the CIPS exams www.cips.org/en-GB/learn/qualifications/#new

"The Forensic and Prison Services Directorate is part of Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, specialising in mental health and learning disability services. The Bracton Centre is a central part of the directorate, providing medium secure services to the boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham. Forensic services offer mental health support to people who have been though the legal system. The Bracton Centre also provides a low secure challenging behaviour service based at the Memorial Hospital. In addition, the directorate provides mental health and primary healthcare services to a number of prisons within Kent and the Sheppey cluster, the Greenwich cluster and HMP Wandsworth. This is an exciting and new post within the Directorate for an experienced professional who has proven skills in procurement and performance management."

I think there is the hours worked angle but then there's the risk and responsibility. My dh is well paid in the finance sector, works long hours but that work is usually decision making and oversight. If he messes up a decision (i.e. takes the wrong level of risk or misses an error - things that are pretty common) they can fire him with 2 weeks notice, so there's the added job insecurity. The bonus is paid because they pretty much own him, we haven't had a holiday that has been completely work free in years. So in a way i do think he works hard, just not physically hard. I don't have the same responsibility in my work, and wouldn't enjoy the stress at all, so i couldn't do it. Nor could i be a teacher or nurse, it looks bloody exhausting.

(There is quite a lot of the thread to read. I just saw this post to me

"Treesthemovie Tue 08-Oct-19 19:11:14
When your dad is a psychiatrist, you can afford, in more ways than one, to keep doing those applications 'unlike the other students'."

I am not sure that is fair. I was applying years ahead whilst at university. I was not being supported to be an unpaid intern by a rich parent. Any student doing a degree today who wants to be a solicitor eg reading a subject other than law, makes their applications within a certain window of applications. My point was about timing. The poster got to 23 graduated and throught about careers and others have said you need to apply for things ahead of time and that we found that out by research.

The original poster then said that was very helpful, she had had no idea until this thread that that was the reality for students who want jobs. If that is so then I think it would be useful for parents and schools even to tell pupils this - that for some jobs you haev to think ahead. I suppose most people know eg if you want to read medicine you have to have some A levels like physics, biology, chemistry, maths rather than all arts but may be the planning ahead isn't known by all.)

In the ops case. Ahe has made poor choices. She came from a very priviledged position

Yes, the OP had some advantages, but growing up black in Britain put her at a significant disadvantage and I suspect she has encountered much racism over the years that has served to 'keep her in her place'. You can pretend that race isn't an issue at all if you like, but of course it is.

The OP started off this thread questioning economic inequality and was told all the little things that the rest of us did to get ahead that she's realising now that she didn't do. She has said some things that I don't agree with (like suggesting that people should get paid what they need when market forces obviously dictate how much someone is prepared to pay for someone else's work) which make her look sulky and bitter but I do feel that some people here are downplaying their own privilege.

Racism plays a huge part in someone's self-esteem and I can see why the OP didn't have the confidence or gusto to put herself out there and chase down opportunities while the rest of us were telling ourselves we're just as entitled to these jobs as anyone else.

Yes, some of you will also be black and will have advanced in your careers. I know a few high-earning black people in the city, but they are certainly in the minority, and there are hardly any black people in senior positions in law. My firm uses special recruitment schemes to attract black people because they just don't think it's for them and don't even apply otherwise. I've spoken to uni students from lower-ranking unis at graduate recruitment fairs where they have assumed that the top firms don't want them either and there's no point in even applying, and we really have to persuade them that we do want them to apply as we want to increase diversity.

So while OP's children will hopefully have the balance redressed somewhat by these schemes, I can absolutely see why OP feels hard done by.

Xenia You are right. People assume advantage that isn’t necessarily conferred by parents.
Our youngest returned from her year abroad having secured a paid internship in London without any involvement from us. She did well and has a job lined up with them for after graduation next year with a 39k starting salary. Most will be eaten in accommodation but it’s a stepping stone.

People are blaming the op/ poor people for making ‘poor choices’ but arent recognising the context in which those decisions are made.

I feel like this takes away people's agency a bit, I recognise that not all the decisions I've made have been the most sensible financially.
ie - I had a nice wedding instead of using that money as a deposit. I had DS at 28 when I could have waited a few more years. (So now I'm in a worse financial position than a lot of peers but have lovely memories and a 3 year old, I'd choose the same again)

I think a lot of high earners either put a lot of hours in/network etc at the beginning or they have niche skills. DH and I are slowly working on it. DH, who is much more of a people person than me volunteers for everything going at work eg. going on training to show everyone how the new IT works. I'm much more of an introvert but am lucky enough to be academic so am trudging my way through a technical MSc and teaching myself 'extra' bits that aren't in the modules.

Have to agree with that, sounds like I live in a similar area. I consider myself a high earner, yet have never earned enough to pay higher rate tax! Around here, it's the public sector workers who live in the "nice" areas. There are no "big" employers outside the public sector - just schools, a big hospital, and a university. Nearly all "private" employment is small/medium firms where low pay is the norm. A pretty typical northern run down town really!

Yes exactly the same here. I live on a really nice new build housing estate, and the majority of my neighbours I’ve gotten to know so far are nurses, social workers, physios, ODPs, speech and language therapists. Those ARE the jobs round here that make you comparatively well paid. The rest of the town, in the more deprived areas, people are working in shops, cleaning, hairdressing etc. MN has a super skewed idea of what ‘doing well for yourself’ means, probably posters from wealthier areas where you assume you’ll go to university and walk into a £25k job and progress from there, but in so many areas like where I live now and the council estate I grew up on, if you’ve managed to break the £20k salary barrier then you’ve done incredibly well for yourself and are comparatively pretty comfortable.

For me, £40k is a high salary because I’ve gone from being unable to make ends meet (accruing debt) in a house share working ridiculous hours in awful NMW jobs to having a professional rewarding career, enough to pay the bills AND do some nice things AND save for a rainy day, having managed to save up a house deposit on our own without any help from family in any way at all. I feel rich.

@LonginesPrime you forgot to mention she is black and female Both of these effect directly how you are perceived.

I've had interesting discussions over the years with women from different ethnic backgrounds. What loads of white women don't appreciate is depending on your ethnic background there are different perceptions associated with you before you even open your mouth.

@CherryPavlova your child is earning much more than plenty of people around me in London. If she is smart and doesn't mind sharing she can actually save a lot on that income so purchase her own property sooner.

our child is earning much more than plenty of people around me in London. If she is smart and doesn't mind sharing she can actually save a lot on that income so purchase her own property soone

A two bedroom flat to buy where I live in London is £650,000 upwards, even if she did save £65,000 deposit (which is hardly easily done!!!) there's no way she could get a mortgage on a salary of £39,000

I wouldn't say you can save loads on this salary

Grrrr top section should be bold