To think it’s normal for high earners to get home late/work long hours?

[NCDays]

SiL got a new job last year which was a significant step up from her previous role and she now earns enough to pay additional rate tax (so must be £150k +). The job is in London which is a 30-40 minute train journey away, plus a short tube journey to her office. Over the past year we’ve constantly been hearing about “poor SiL” / “life is unfair to SiL” from MiL and the rest of the family as SiL is not home most week days until 8pm and leaves for the day at 6am. It’s supposedly a 9-5 job, she’s only a year in to the role and is apparently already exhausted and drained from working longer than her contracted hours and struggling to cope with the constant train delays/cancellations on top of that, meaning she has no time for herself or her hobbies during the week. I should point out that SiL is 29 with no DC, so she’s certainly not coming towards the end of her career.

AIBU in thinking that this is all pretty standard stuff and par for the course for successful, high earning city worker?! The rest of the family seem to think I’m mad in thinking it’s to be expected.

It’s supposedly a 9 to 5 job. Who told her that? They really don’t exist anymore, you know. Unless it’s shift work in a menial role, I suppose.

I think it is normal but only if your SIL is okay with it. Money doesn`t buy you good night sleep and time with your family

AIBU in thinking that this is all pretty standard stuff and par for the course for successful, high earning city worker?! The rest of the family seem to think I’m mad in thinking it’s to be expected. confused

My husband earns 32k per year in a stressful role. He leaves at 7 and returns at 7.30. We have 2 kids and I also work.

Long hours are not just for high earners. I loathe the suggestion that high pay is the reward for long hours when it is very much the norm for middle and low paid earners too.

If long hours and 'hard work' were always rewarded with pay then our NHS workers would be millionaires.

7am and 7.30pm!

Normal in my experience. I'm surprised she didnt realise this and thought she would be able to just leave at 5 and walk out on a multi million deal if it wasn't finished or a deadline for a multi million contract.

I have a friend who was in a similar position. She hated the hours as did everyone she worked with. Taking coke to perk yourself up was common. Having a stay at home partner to deal with everything domestic was common. People crying in the toilets from pure exhaustion was common. As was back / rsi issues from sitting on the computer all day. She eventually left but it took her years of moaning how difficult it was but equally she didnt want to take a massive salary cut which was the main thing stopping her. In the end some of our mutual friends got a bit sick of it - just leave and get a lower paid lower stress job if you dont like it! There were plenty about at the time. I dont think a 30-40 min train journey into london then a short tube is unusual either, its unusual to have a commute into central London much shorter than this

Very normal - I, and most people I know, have been expected to work long hours for even very low-paid jobs!! For a salary of 150k+, very long hours would be standard.

I used to work as a City PA. 40k a year and I did only work 9-5 and worked from home when I could.

Now about to start a job as a teaching assistant to see if I like teaching. The TA pay is low of course and I won’t be working unpaid overtime for £11k a year which is the part time, pro-rata salary.

If it doesn’t work out I’m going back to the civil service with flexi-time! I have no intention of working over 40 hours a week.

I think it’s crap that humans have evolved to work in sterile, bright offices doing what are largely, bullshit jobs. Does anybody else question where the hell we have gone wrong and what is the point in it all?

Normal

Waiting for this to end up in the Daily Mail, so unwilling to post too much more TBH.

I don't think it's inevitable and I don't necessarily agree a high salary means you have to accept insane hours, or that it's best for the company. I'm not in UK anymore, but earn over equivalent of 200k and work 7.30 till 4, if I ever work weekends I get early finish following Friday. Work life balance is totally skewed in UK and U.S., and there's no way it's productive. Our company is currently looking into reducing hours further, we're researching how Microsoft Japan have implemented their 4 day week to see what would make sense for us ( very different industry). We want our staff to be healthy and happy.

No, it’s absolutely not productive, but it is very much part of the work culture here. Presenteeism is a very real thing.

I posted earlier. DH has earned multiples of this via his own company (self employed) but did not have to put in insanely long hours at work. DD is a self employed barrister and does. All jobs and occupations are not comparable. It would also depend if the OP's Dsis in law is £50,000 or £150,000. If the latter, most have to work hard in London. At 29 she may not yet be experienced enough to go freelance. However, in the future she willhave decisons to take about her career and this might be an option. Lots of free lancers (self employed)do not make shit loads of money. It really depends on the industry and scarcity of skills.

I love the idea above that a TA in a school won't do extra time. You will!

PlomBear yes of course they do, and many of us leave and do something we hope will be more worthwhile, though it doesn't always work out that way (secondary school teaching in England - I've heard that Scotland is different, and Ireland unsurprisingly totally different - can be more like working for the Ministry of Truth in Oceania than about inspiring and supporting young minds..).

Some people secretly enjoy the long hours culture though, especially in the very well paid sectors where there's a mix of presenteeism and semi compulsory work socialising and passing the time with high adrenaline deadlines where everyone is "in it together" working like mad into the night and ordering take out... There's a buzz to it for some (I enjoyed it very much for a few years when young and childless and essentially single/ dating, with totally different priorities).

Some people love the excuse to take no responsibility for anything domestic too; plenty of colleagues back then openly admitted that they stayed late or lived in London Monday to Thursday essentially unnecessarily so as not to have to do the daily domestic drudge work in a family.

Some people are living that lifestyle by choice, it works for some. It's not productive, no. As much work could usually be done far more efficiently in less time with some creative thinking about managing time around the various rushes and quiet times.

If people are genuinely honest though that's not necessarily what everyone wants.

Obviously it's unsustainable long term and pushes out talent, but there's a high burnout rate anyway and always someone else ready to backfill...

It sounds normal

BTW I work on a job with similar hours - running programmes with offenders. Sometimes I'll be in work for 8 for a morning group (to allow time to prep) and not really finish until 9ish after evening feedbacks. The good thing is you can have Friday off if you've the hours to take - but only if you've not got any reports due. 2hen I first finished treianing I found the hours really hard, I'm still knackered now but I'm used to it more. And I don't get paid anywhere near 150k. More like 23k.

My DMIL was like this about DBIL but DBIL has never ever complained! And we hid our hours (at the time similar to OP’s SIL) because DMIL would have been scandalised. She’d never had a job that wasn’t paid by the hour.

I agree with PP re two well paid rather than one very high paid job being an excellent solution once you have DC. We do this and it’s meant the DH’s employer has had to stop holding him to ransom (a recent conversation about how tough it is to have to work silly hours to keep the family did not go the way his boss expected).

Totally normal.

Usually the contract says something like “Your contracted hours are 9-5 but you will be expected to work such hours as are necessary to complete the work required”. Everyone knows this means you will actually be working FAR more thank 9-5.

Your SIL needs to move closer to London. It’s daft to do those hours plus a big commute. Is she still living with MIL by any chance!?

And if she wants DC in future she needs to start thinking about what she might swap to that’s got better hours. Or find herself a DP who works fewer hours and will do drop offs/pick ups etc. But maybe she doesn’t.

It can be normal, it doesn't make it any less draining though.

What jobs?

IT

It is completely normal for those sorts of jobs but I know many HR directors are trying to stop this from being the norm.

I was at a meeting where it was discussed and gender pay gap came up, we were shown a graph of NHS staff and how many men/women were at each pay band. Majority of the highest bands were men and the lowest were women. For me I am middle management as I have 2 kids who I need to get to various activities etc so I stick at that level even though I am qualified to do more as it suits my life.

The answer to that from the HR Director was that shouldn't be a factor, having to work more hours shouldn't be putting me off going for a higher level job as I should be able to work a reasonable number of hours and not loads extra. That's all very well in theory but it is never likely to be a reality. If people in those £100k+ jobs were working 37.5hrs a weeks companies would need almost double the staff!

I can't say I have huge sympathy for people earning over £150k. A friend of mine and her DH earn really good salaries but have to commute to London (about an hour or so on the train) so they leave 6ish and back 830ish but they have no kids so actually get home for dinner way earlier than I do to be honest and have the whole evening to themselves. Plus obviously have loads of spare cash. It's all about choices I guess (and yes I am slighty jealous at times)

This culture is so ingrained, it’s ridiculous. Even when I was an undergraduate law student most students would compete enthusiastically in the “who spent longest in the library” competition. I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now. What’s the point in investing so much of your sense of self-worth in something that ultimately makes you ill and unhappy? The world has more to offer than that. And it’s a self-perpetuating madness, if everyone refused to play it would stop.

I didn’t go into law because of the hours/culture.

Of course it's normal. There are VERY few high-paying jobs that don't take over your life with long hours, stress, on-call, etc.

Just because it is normal, doesn’t mean it isn’t soul crushing.

It’s why I paid my dues until my resume looked great and then moved to a non-profit. Reasonably competitive salaries, with much better work life balance to make up for the deficit.

One she gets more senior, she will have more flexibility. My husband can choose to work at home when he feels like it, although he is always at the behest of clients and deals, and that will shape his week during the busy periods.

The legal team in our company work longer than anyone else, although they don't work as long as the city firms we recruit them from. It seems terribly hard to break lawyers of the notion that you can be excellent and well rested

I would argue that the problem for lawyers is the unreasonable clients.

Today I saw an email going to my team, sent around 9am, saying that they had a client meeting at 10.30 so needed advice from the team before then.

My husband is on a general circulation list for his work and someone sent an email to that list from Hong Kong, asking for some advice on something, by the end of their day HK time! So more or less as soon as the email was received in the UK office.

Ridiculous deadlines which means lawyers have to drop other things from less CFers and then work into the night to get other things done.

Sounds exhausting but fairly standard.

Could be better, could be harder. As she moves up it might change.