High Earners on MN?

[BitOfFun]

How? The actual leader of my county council doesn't earn more than £100K- where and what are all these super-maxed out occupations? I genuinely don't understand how mumsnetters (often relatively young) access these magic jobs I've never heard of.

YABU- they are there for the taking, you just made poor choices

YANBU- people here are very creative and there's an outside chance they may be lying exaggerating.

@DeliciouslyFemale what a lovely balanced post, and I wish you every success.

One tip I would give (if you don’t mind) is to join a woman’s mentoring group, so you can pick the brains of other successful women while you do your research.

One of the things I do through work is volunteer with a programme that links schools in disadvantaged areas with local businesses for mentorship, work experience, information about work/subjects etc.

Traditionally, the school we work with would have exceptionally low rates of students going into the workforce, let alone going on to higher education. Huge unemployment and social issues in the community. Lots of students are targeted by gangs, or drug dealers to use as mules.

The students we work with would break your heart. They’re often shocked when they come in to offices because it’s just so far away from their concept of “work”. One girl asked me if we were all rich because we all had nice clothes and hair and drank coffee.
They were amazed when they learned that people who sat in our nice office drinking coffee do it because they liked maths/history/business in school, and pursued jobs they were interested in.
None of the girls had ever seen a link between school and work.

Sadly, I think the best that we can hope for with students on this programme is that they’ll finish second level and will stay away from gangs. So many don’t have the support to get to university. Though, at least if they finish school they might aim to get a job instead of going straight on to benefits, with no volition or means to ever get off of them.
Sadly, many of these children have been failed.

This is an extreme example, but I really do think it’s so important to talk to children about how their choices at school link to the choices they’ll have for the rest of their lives. I don’t mean booking toddlers in for advanced maths, I mean speaking to children (girls, in particular) about careers that might interest them but that they’re unaware of.

I know growing up, I had a very clear idea of what a doctor or a postman did, but nobody ever spoke about communications roles in hospitals, or governance positions in the postal sector.

New jobs are being created every day as consumer demands and legislation change- GDPR is a prime example.

[quote TheLastStarfighter]**@DeliciouslyFemale what a lovely balanced post, and I wish you every success.

One tip I would give (if you don’t mind) is to join a woman’s mentoring group, so you can pick the brains of other successful women while you do your research.[/quote]
@DeliciouslyFemale I agree with @TheLastStarfighter, both about your post and getting mentoring or even coaching

I have found mentoring useful in my career from people who have been there, seen it etc

[quote TheLastStarfighter]@DeliciouslyFemale what a lovely balanced post, and I wish you every success.

One tip I would give (if you don’t mind) is to join a woman’s mentoring group, so you can pick the brains of other successful women while you do your research.[/quote]
You’re very welcome. We should be lifting each other up, not criticising those women who have succeeded. I never even thought about a women’s mentoring group! Thank you very much for that.

Thank you CarolineBingley. I’m going to look at that.

Accidentally pressed post too early!

I meant to add, don't assume that your mentor has to be a woman. Most of mine have been men and in hindsight while there were nuances that they probably missed, it didn't really matter.

Most successful people (both men and women) I know, have executive coaching or mentoring of some sort including Board level people.

Hopefully others might come along with ideas of organisations who can help you. The one I know well is aimed at getting students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds onto graduate jobs, so I am hoping there are others focused on women.

Thank you.

How? The actual leader of my county council doesn't earn more than £100K- where and what are all these super-maxed out occupations?

Depends if you mean the actual Chief Exec of the Council, or the Leader of the Council. Two different things. If it's the Chief Exec, they've got a crap deal.

I doubled my salary and had a car thrown in when I moved from the public to private sector. Traditionally they are crap payers.

I do not fall into the high earning bracket, but do comfortably well. Nevertheless, I find the way high earning women who mention it on here are treated very strange. They are often knocked down for bragging, boasting, lying or being insensitive when that is rarely the case. However they got there, isnt it bloody amazing that women have had these opportunities to scale these heights of career success, if they want to. This is good progress for women's equality and is the beginnings of addressing gender imbalance in earnings.
What we need to do now is educate our girls more and more about the careers they could do so more of them have the confidence to access high earning careers and have good, comfortable lives.
I wish I had been better educated on money, careers and what I could have done with my skills and abilities. I became a teacher basically because my parents were, and I didnt know much about anything else. I am quite senior and do okay, but if I had known what was out there I might have made other choices. I have a DD and we talk a lot about the types of jobs out there, how much she might earn doing them and what we then use money for. I hope she ends up with a much greater awareness of how she can earn well if she wants to.

I think one of the challenges for successful women is networking. Asking someone to join them for a coffee/drink takes on a slightly different edge when it’s male/female...but no one thinks twice when a man meets another man. So much of business is created and won over these informal connections. One of my colleagues won’t do it, it makes her feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, another did do it (in a previous job) but was accused of getting her promotion by sleeping with a senior staff member despite her having the highest assessment results they’d had for years. It created a lot of tension in the team. One partner remarked that his females colleagues are never as successful as the men in winning jobs because they don’t/can’t network enough because of how they might be perceived. Clearly it is not so much With Covid but how do women on here get around this issue.

ToryA, on networkjing when I set up on my own I stayed on the committees I was on (I think it was 3 of them) and I became Vice Chair of one which I was for years not that that was anything special but I think it helps public profile. I also gave about 50 often al day courses/presentations a year, although some of those were just an hour or half a day but some were three days. That was a vast number for a full time practising lawyer but it meant I met loads of people. I started doing that at the firm I was at before.

I tried by the end when I was in charge (rarely) of putting the panel together to get women. ( I decided to stop the speaking about 2 years ago as it involved more travel and although paid was not as well paid as other things and I just wanted to give it up in my 50s). I remember the last one I had I invited only other women but we still ended up with about 50% speakers male and I was the female chair. That was because women turned us down and / or were busy and sent a man. Also you have to get in early, travel etc so childcare can be an issue. Even so more new lawyers are female than men these days so I hope we can move to more female speakers than men at events.

I did other stuff too eg I remember getting good local client by giving a talk at the business club at my gym of all things.

Anyway in covid 19 times I suppose people can do things on-line and still you can meet people for work which is not illegal. Indeed the new English London lock down rules specifically have an exception from meeting indoors for work events which can be any number of people if you put in measures such as soap and other CV19 precautions.

Stop perpetuating the myth that women have to quit their job if they have kids. That they can't do science, maths, coding etc etc and see what happens.

Start by doing a job you really enjoy, that challenges you and you'll work to do the best you can which will mean you get recognised for your expertise.

I love my job but I've also made sure I'm at the forefront of development as and when they happen in the sector. That's always kept me both enjoying my job and well paid.

The networking is interesting. I was talking to a senior HR exec this week and she was commenting on how “screens are the great leveller”.

With working from home, opportunity to have side bar conversations or pre meeting meetings has been reduced greatly - so there is a more level playing field.

The male interns aren’t getting 5 mins to chat golf as the room fills and so be remembered as the “high performer” when in reality all he did was prove an interest in a shared hobby.

I’d just like to say that you can earn over 100k in the North too 🤣!

There are lots of roles OP, across the professions mentioned and also senior management positions across many disciplines in a large national or multi national business will likely pay that and more, regardless of location.

What I always think is how do these women do it if they’ve got kids, some roles might not but when you’re talking that kind of salary (DH was on nearly 200k working for one of the big four at one point so we know). The self sacrifice is huge. I don’t know how you do it with a young family.

It is amazing @Ploughingthrough I still wonder how the hell they operate at that level with young children though. I’ve taken a massive step back, I was never a high earner in that league but like you say was comfortable, but I just can’t operate at the level I used to. My DC is nearly 3! When doses it get better?!? 😂.

Well it's location and profession and maybe age isn't it? I think Mumsnet is pretty middle class.

I'm 56, earn £135k as a CEO in the public sector in London. I have friends with salaries ranging from £35k - £300k and that's really dependent on sector and how they view their work - as a job, a vocation or a profession, the sector they work in and the hours they work. The highest earners are lawyers, accountants and in business with big bonuses.

The highest earning men I know are in advertising/digital marketing strategies and corporate law - mergers and acquisitions. The highest earning females I know are a judge and a geologist in the oil industry. All have several further degrees, professional qualifications and MBAs.

SusannaSpider
“Only 4% of the working population earn £100k, seems odd that so many people here earn so much”

Have a look at how many women use MN.
And do the maths.
Most posts on this thread are not actually by women who are high earners, and of those that are they have often made more than one post.

And MN has always had a high level of professional membership compared to other forums.

Your own DH was part of the 4%.

I don’t understand the incredulity.

@Chuggington2

I’d just like to say that you can earn over 100k in the North too 🤣!

There are lots of roles OP, across the professions mentioned and also senior management positions across many disciplines in a large national or multi national business will likely pay that and more, regardless of location.

What I always think is how do these women do it if they’ve got kids, some roles might not but when you’re talking that kind of salary (DH was on nearly 200k working for one of the big four at one point so we know). The self sacrifice is huge. I don’t know how you do it with a young family.

When the dcs were really young, the order of priority was the dcs, work, dh and our families. We didn't have an awful lot of time for socialising with friends (minus the kids), sleep was a luxury and there was zero me time. It was exhausting!

We have always had a full time nanny or housekeeper and part time cleaner so the mornings, evenings weekends were 100% spent with the kids rather than chores. As they've got older, more me time has crept in, eg they're both on Roblox right now with their friends and ignoring me!

Seniority also gives you flexibility to call the shots in your diary, so I always do the morning school run, and occasional coffee morning with the other school mums, and dh and I have "red lines" in our diaries that both our PAs guard ferociously - no missing parents evening, sports day, school plays, harvest festival or the Christmas fair. Oh and the Mother's Day tea.

@RainingBatsAndFrogs

Your own DH was part of the 4%. I don’t understand the incredulity.

That’s actually the craziest bit - there are at least two posters who have come on this thread to express incredulity or imply posters are lying at their salaries. A then thrown in the fact that that their husbands are high earners

The misogyny is mind blowing

I am a high earner, around £170k a year and dh is around £140k. We have 3 dcs.

I'm from a poor background. I ended up where i am through a lot of luck, yes hard work (that is not to say everyone else doesn't work hard but of course I've had to, too) but actually mainly i would put my progress down to being very "forward", not making any apologies for my ambition. My 3 big jumps in salary in my career have all been because i pushed myself forward for roles which i wasn't quite qualified for and at the time just thought I'd see what happened and in all 3 cases i was given the new role (these were all internal promotions so i already worked at each company). I also saw a therapist at one of these junctures, i was being paid £55k for a role which my male predecessor was being paid £95k for. As crazy as that sounds to me now, i couldn't work out how to tackle that conversation (i did though).

I agree with pps about this being an anonymous forum and who knows who's telling the truth etc but in general i thnk we should be talking more about salaries in real life. The taboo nature of this kind of talk is one of the things that leave women trailing behind.

As per @CarolineBingley

When the DC were very little (2 under 2) I had neither time nor money. The DC were in nursery, we didn’t tend to go on holiday, there were limited treats. It was tough.

As they got older (and #3 came along) we had FT live in nanny plus a cleaner. I was earning much more and by time #4 was a toddler everything that could be outsourced (gardening, laundry, a lot of cooking) was. We had a nanny, housekeeper and for a time I had a driver.

By that time I had enough seniority to manage my diary pretty much as I liked: if I needed to be at school for an hour or two for a sporting fixture or recital it was easy to take the time out because I’d pick it up in the evening.

@PegasusReturns

The networking is interesting. I was talking to a senior HR exec this week and she was commenting on how “screens are the great leveller”.

With working from home, opportunity to have side bar conversations or pre meeting meetings has been reduced greatly - so there is a more level playing field.

The male interns aren’t getting 5 mins to chat golf as the room fills and so be remembered as the “high performer” when in reality all he did was prove an interest in a shared hobby.

I would disagree quite strongly with that HR Exec. Many C-suite people on FTSE companies etc are concerned (as am I) that gains that have been made on D&I will be eroded the longer lockdowns go on.

That's because progression comes about from someone giving you the opportunity and it tends to go to whoever is in front of you, or you feel you know or who you naturally bond with because you have something in common or they remind you of yourselves. Progress has been made in recent years of trying to break people's natural inclination and bias. The risk in an era of working remotely is that people (mostly men in positions of power) default to what's easiest and therefore women and other minorities will miss out. It's incredibly important that women still network in these times and eg put 30 minutes catch up meetings in with the people who can make a difference to their career.

[quote PegasusReturns]@RainingBatsAndFrogs

Your own DH was part of the 4%. I don’t understand the incredulity.

That’s actually the craziest bit - there are at least two posters who have come on this thread to express incredulity or imply posters are lying at their salaries. A then thrown in the fact that that their husbands are high earners

The misogyny is mind blowing [/quote]
Obviously bullshitting about her husband’s salary. You really do need to take everything on the internet with a pinch of salt

[quote PegasusReturns]@RainingBatsAndFrogs

Your own DH was part of the 4%. I don’t understand the incredulity.

That’s actually the craziest bit - there are at least two posters who have come on this thread to express incredulity or imply posters are lying at their salaries. A then thrown in the fact that that their husbands are high earners

The misogyny is mind blowing [/quote]
I know

It's incredibly important that women still network in these times and eg put 30 minutes catch up meetings in with the people who can make a difference to their career

Absolutely women must network. My point is lock down has removed the informal boys club drinking/weekend golf networking (or whatever is common in your industry) and limited it to the more formal: which does start to level the playing field.

Over a thirty min zoom catch up you strip the bullshit away and are left with: is this person sensible? Do they understand the business and my challenges? What can they do for me? Rather than did I enjoy chatting to them about rugby, was their golf handicap impressive etc.