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.

Agree with all everything above. I am lucky to be on a decent salary and have the luxury of working flexible hours BUT I have worked 15 hour days in a very high pressured job to get here. I have travelled with work and still regularly spend a week away from home. I also take calls early morning/ late evening and work weekends as needed. This doesn’t mean I think I am more deserving of this salary than nurses/ doctors etc at all but given the opportunity to get this salary, I am going to take it!

You're absolutely not being unreasonable, OP.

DH earns a very good wage and there's a fair amount of travel (national and international). But his job is pretty much 8.30-5.30. He rarely works in the evenings (sure, sometimes).

My DB earns an obscene amount as a partner in a magic circle law firm, and yes he has a lot of responsibility and can't exactly slack off, but it's absolutely not the 'pound of flesh' it's made out to be. Not at that level.

I find this idea that high earners work really, really hard (much harder than low earners) quite naive. And pretty offensive.

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

What I should have added here is that you could do my job. But to get the wage I do you woild need 10 years plus experience solid experience. I dont have a degree. Grew up in a single parent home, with a mother who had MH and no education above a levels.

I did recognise in my 20s that I like managing people and enjoy trialling different way of managing different personailty types to get improvment out of them, without just telling them to improve. I like to see people who work for me, do well.

So that was the route I chose. Theres loads of course i could do to full my CV. But in all honest, alot of them are just guff and a scam. So I didnt do them. Hasnt really impacted me because in an interview I can demonstrate I know what to do, and can prove I have done it rather just have a qualification.

That was meant to be a not a !

Generally, you get paid in knowledge/expertise based jobs for what you know and what you can achieve - not the hours you work. I'm not a high earner, but doing OK, mid-5 fig salary. I don't work hugely long hours, less than 40 hrs a week, flexible working BUT after getting 2 degrees, two professional qualifications, chartered status in my field and after 25+ years as a professional scientist, I know a lot about a tiny, technical area that it's difficult to get expertise in. I get paid for that knowledge and experience.

I've worked in a bar, which most people could do, changing barrels, dealing with pissed up customers, on my feet all night. In lots of ways it was harder wok than what I do now, but it's relatively low skilled and easy to replace, so it pays far less.

Senior managers get paid for the responsibility they have, often managing hundreds of staff and millions of budget. They're not 'doing the work' but causing it to get done. People who moan about the salary for this sty of job generally wouldn't know where to start if given the role.

It varies. My old cleaner (I dont' have one now) saw how hard I worked with 5 children - for me even 5.30am to 7am on a Saturday before the baby twins woke for a breastfeed was working hours and she coudl seem my hours were vastly more than hers. Might be why her son read law. (I am a lawyer and work for myself). However it was lots of years of very long hours and about 30 years of paying a mortgage before now when for the first time in decades I don't have a mortgage to pay and I have this year - 35 year into my career - stopped doing the business travel/lecturing that was such hard work so it will look like and is now that I work less than I did.

If the queston is could anyone do my job? You need to learn an awful lot of law and to continue to do that every day so that the case that changed the law last week is on your radar and if it is not you can get sued and lose your career. Not everyone can pass the exams. Then you need to be able to interact with clients and keep their business and then you need to be reliable.

However life isn't fair. There will always be someone worse off. We can look at the reasons I earn a lot starting with no sex until I had graduated with law prizes (so not surprisingly I didn;t' have a baby either then - as no sex ). We can look at working full time for 35 years including until I went into labour and back full time after 2 weeks - not all women are prepared to do that although I accept that cleaners as much as lawyers will do that in some cases and work 60 hour weeks + and will at times have working hours that can be 6.30am to midnight and sometimes through the night - for me in the past not today.

how do you know that I couldn't do your job as well as you do?

You likely could learn to do my job, if you did the qualifications and worked your way up, learning as you went. I don't know what separates us -- opportunity, circumstance, or just life choices. What I do know is that yes, you could probably learn to do my job.

Whether you'd do it well would depend on your ability to look at the role, see what I see, act on it, and carry it through into real profit for the business. I believe my last assistant thought much like you that I can't be doing much work based on the flexibility I enjoy and I believe they found out otherwise. My current assistant works 10x as hard as I do and will hopefully someday step into my role (that's what I would like to see, anyway!)

I busted my gut in the first 10 years of my career. Worked evenings and weekends. Didn’t take all my holiday days. Got really good at my job. Learned loads. Made lots of mistakes too. Now I can do my job really fast. What used to take days I could do in hours. So I work less hours, but earn more money now. I almost burnt out though so had to really slow down.

My dh is a high earner and doesn't work that hard. But he worked really hard when he was younger, made partner, and now employs graduates to do the hard work for him.

High earners tend to be experts in one or more areas. The expertise they bring to an organisation often justifies their salary.

I am in a management role but not an expert in any one thing (very much Jack of all trades and master of none). I was stuck in senior support roles for the first 15 years after graduating. This is due to lack of confidence, a pointless degree and not being skilled enough to take up opportunities.

Unfortunately I did not get the grades needed for my desired degree course and had to choose a less desirable course. I missed getting a 2:1 so could not apply for graduate roles. I started full-time work from the bottom.

I really cannot blame anyone for not being highly academic - I applied myself and still received mediocre results. It does not stop me from feeling like a thicko though.

I am trying to become an expert - my organisation will contribute towards a qualification. It has been a slow journey

I also wondered if you were my cleaner too I agree with many of the points Luckygreeneyes makes. My husband and I are now early 40s and we are well paid for what we do.

We've both done hard minimum wage jobs. We worked really hard in our 20s and 30s doing all the qualifications we could and working for free to get the experience in new and niche industries. The careers are along the lines of health economics and online IT security.

We are now reaping the benefits of working in these industries as there are relatively few people who want to/can do the jobs so we've been able to negotiate good terms and conditions.

We have the autonomy to manage our workloads so can do the school runs and go out for lunch in the day. But, people also don't see us working with clients abroad out of hours and on holiday occasionally as well as the travelling.

There is also an element of risk in what we do in that Companies pay us well so they expect us to be profitable. There are serious consequences if we make a mistake so we never really switch off which isn't sustainable for the next 20 years.

But, we are lucky that it worked out well and I agree I don't work as hard as a nurse or teacher.

My boss went into work late today because he’s been in New Zealand this weekend on a conference...prior to that he was up on 12am conferences with New Zealand..

Don’t judge what you’ve no idea about.

A lot of my pay (definitely not super high paid but have the potential to earn enough) is based on risk and the fact that if I fuck up then there’s consequences and I’d have to deal with them. I sometimes lay awake at night with the worry and it makes me think maybe I want a lower paid more manual job that doesn’t have horrendous consequences if I fuck up

Any literate, numerate person could do 99% of my job, which pays about 190k per year before my bonus. I’m in the office about 25 hours per week and ‘reachable’ another 10-15 hours.
1% of my job involves making and implementing very difficult and stressful decisions informed by years of experience along with a bit of innate talent in my field. The wrong decision, or a bad implementation of that decision, would have life-changing negative repercussions for many people. So that’s where I earn my money. If you saw me any other time you’d think I was lazy, entitled, privileged, and massively overpaid. Which is probably true, just not quite AS true as it might seem to my cleaner (who hoovered around me this morning while I played Untitled Goose Game on my Nintendo Switch while glancing desultorily at my emails every once in a while).

I'm not sure why you'd think all high earners do work hard? Life's not fair.

Both myself and my dh spent our 20s working like dogs, boring work travel of course cutting into non work time, overtime and weekend work, years of post grad study, international moves you name it.

My dh still works like that - he might be at home sometimes has he has schedule control now but I can’t remember the last time he didn’t work a weekend and often doesn’t get enough sleep.

I don’t think there are many people in the country that can do what he does and his salary reflects that, you’d need to have maths ability in the top I don’t know perhaps 0.1 percent as well as the qualifications and experience.

I agree there are many jobs where other people with similar privilege could earn the same but not all of them.

I've worked equally hard in all the jobs i have had, but the pay has varied a lot. Work and pay dont seem that linked other than if i dont work, i dont get paid. Its all kinds of other things than effort that decide the rate of pay most of the time.

When someone with 20 years experience and several professional qualifications charges you £300 for half an hours work - remember you're not paying for the half hour - you're paying for the 20 years of experience that means they can do in half an hour what would take you weeks.

In other words you can't possibly judge what came before the half hour on the Xbox/hanging the washing out, nor what probably comes after.

If you think you could do their job why not apply, or train - do what they did.

Dimensional £190000 a year! You must have some responsibility!

I agree that the higher up you work, you 'do' less in terms of tasks but make decisions that have a big impact.

I agree with pp. I am very well paid and even my colleagues comment bitterly how lucky I am with my territory.m (sales) But what they don’t see is the 10 years+ I spent working my patch very hard, 12-14 hour days, building my client base and learning everything about my area. Now I can relax a little and work shorter days because all that hard work means I’m known and my products are everywhere. My customers come to me now not the other way around. Whenever anyone new starts I always advise them that the first 5 years will be hell, long days and hard hard work but then it will all be worth it. A lot don’t last that long

Sometimes part of the high earnings are due in part to high risk and high levels of personal liability.

I think people have a propensity to judge others based on a perceived unfairness.

Higher salaries aren't given based on physical hard work, they are given for long working hours, ability to manage others, to take responsibility for huge budgets and staffing. It's about risk and responsibility. If you really wanted to do their job you would take steps to find out how to get where they are. Of course not everyone will be able to rise to the heights they desire but that's just life. Some people just have 'it'.

Many years ago my cleaner was a single mum of 3 having left a violent relationship, very little education, absolutely no money, living in the sticks. She was a fantastic cleaner and became a good friend. She wanted success. She wanted money and she was determined to get it. She posted samples through doors with 3 children in tow, she stuffed envelopes when they were in bed, she cleaned when they were at school, they delivered newspapers together at the weekends. She gave up every spare minute of her life to earn money. When she had enough she got a job in a large retail store and signed up with local college to complete basic exams, when she passed them she signed up to do law. Then she got herself a job in a lawyers office in Wales. She carried on studying while the children were at school or asleep and now, in her early 50s she is a fully fledged solicitor earning decent money.

I have never been that driven. Even if I felt that it was unfair that people who appeared to work less than me earned more, I didn't have the drive to match them. Many people look at the better off and think "it's not fair" but the same people wouldn't put themselves out to get there.

I'm not a massively high earner, I have been in the past. Although my job is not physically demanding there's an enormous amount of accountability for the decisions I make that could result in the business being prosecuted and me personally. It cost me, personally, a lot of money to train to a level to be deemed competent to make these decisions. I appreciate that the emergency services personnel also have a lot of responsibility for the decisions they make but there are generally a few more layers between responsibility and accountability; there's no other layer that I can push upwards and I get paid accordingly.

newgame Your dh is clearly highly academic. Being smart gets you through the doors.

DH's friend is a life coach. On an average week he works approximately 3 days and manages to take his DC to school and sometimes pick them up too. He earns as much or more as DH and J as teachers earn full-time put together. He hasn't had to put in a lot of long days in the past to get there either. He is naturally blessed with great social skills and the gift of the gab.