Is anyone here a high earner and DOESN’T work stupid hours?

[Llamasally]

If yes, what do you do? How do you avoid working long hours? Are you a high performer /successful/up for promotion?

I’m curious, as so far my experience is that they go unavoidably hand in hand, but I feel this is wrong and you should be rewarded on your achievements, skills, performance- not willingness to give 100% of yourself or to be always ‘on’. When considering promotion opportunities on the horizon I find this the scariest thing tbh. I’m not prepared to give up my life, am I being unrealistic??

By high earner I’m talking six figures - just because that’s how I would personally categorise - not because other salaries are not high enough etc)

Have good work-life balance, yes. Had my kids late but that was the way life panned out. I earn less than the top earners on here but a very comfortable income nonetheless.

I’m not a high earner. Teacher on UPS1 and I used to work stupid hours. Now I go to school for 8.30 and stay until 5. I refuse to bring marking home so if I have only time to give it a tick then so be it.
My notice boards haven’t been changed since before Easter and I don’t care tbh. I put all my energy into getting my class up to speed with their literacy and numeracy. There are some pieces of work I get them to swap with another child and we mark them together. It’s only since reading all the posts from high earners on here that I’ve realised that all teachers are essentially mugs for accepting such crap wages for so long.

I don’t work in the summer holidays either and we get 9 weeks here.

Thank you @KeflavikAirport

£120K - NHS/private medicine
Extortionate over heads for private practice
Work 1: 8 weekends Fri-Monday on top of normal working week
0730-18/1900 3 days per week, 0830 - 1700 one day per week if I am lucky, 1 day pp 0730-2000
Commuting on top of that.
CPD at home evenings and weekends
Constant ask to do extra especially Saturday and Sunday at the moment .
Guilt tripped most days to not let people suffer.

Never done normal office hours - but this is better than when I was a junior doctor on a 1:3 - 100+hrs per week regularly and studying for exams. Partied hard when I was not working though!!

Love my job most of the time - but after the last year - could happily take a very long sabbatical.

I work part time 15 hrs a week and can earn between 35-45k. I’ve never really worked full time because I decided to choose a career I could work comfortably around marriage and children. The problem with working more hours is that the tax increase means I’d have to significantly increase my earning to make it worth it. Never needed the extra stress and happy to live well within my means.

Nothing to add, but if anyone has any vacancies please feel free to pm me! 🤣

I work reduced hours now but if I was full time I’d be on that. I’m on that kind of money because I have extremely specialist past experience. My firm has a culture that you are not expected to regularly work outside your contracted hours. So much so that a few weeks ago I sent an email on a Sunday because I’d forgotten to do it Friday and I wanted it available for people as soon as they got in on Monday morning and my boss rang me on the Monday to ask why I had done that and make sure I wasn’t spending my weekends working.

I find these posts fascinating and admire people who can earn that kind of money. I work 60 hours a week doing 2x minimum wage jobs. My dad went to uni and qualified as a lawyer and he fell into working for the council and eventually climbed the ladder and by the end of his career earned £100k working crazy hours until the day he retired . He was able to retire on excellent pension to be fair but he made huge sacrifices in his home life for this. His youger brother did not go to uni and became a trainee for in the finance industry when he left school with no qualifications. My Uncle learned everything there was to know about accountancy, built himself a client base, went on to earn himself enough money to buy the business from his boss when his boss retired and now earns £300k+ a year (maybe even more) and only works a couple of days a week.