I earn a 6 figure salary...

[herehearher]

Just reading another thread and pretty much every post is going on about "6 figure salary" - as if this is some sort of meaningful marker.

But obviously there's a massive difference between someone on £100k and someone on £900k. So by "6 figure salary" are they just essentially saying they earn around £100k? If they earned £250k, how is it acceptable to describe that?

Indeed, we need to differentiate between those who work in the right sectors e.g. law or tech, bits of city or accounting in London versus really going up in your career e.g. I reckon you have to be very good at a lot of things to be in the teaching or nursing profession on a six figure sum. But you don't have to work that hard or be that smart to be a programmer, it just pays well.

Where I work there are extremely high expectations on the people on the salaries approaching 6 figures (and rightly so). I’ve been asked a couple of times if I would be interested in applying for one but I know in doing so I would have to put my family second to my job and over time it would take a toll on my health.

Some mumsnetters love to boast that they earn a lot. "My 14 children were all privately educated". "I earned ten times more than my husband". "I love gardening in my several acres large garden".

OK I'm exaggerating but I have seen very similar posts to these, and I find them all rather crass.

@5128gap yes totally agree with you! Just wondering if some people think the opposite so they don’t feel so bad they are not earning six figures?

It’s not exactly helped by the public school system which means some children get an unfair advantage purely because their parents are rich.

But remember that a vast number of high earners don't work for other people and will have the knowledge and skills to charge very high rates for consultancy work. These are among the ones who have relatively stress free lives and pick and choose where and when they want to work.

A lot of people still think it's uncouth to mention exact figures. Six figure salary - as PP have said - gives enough of an indication and means they're well above the national average. It's also terminology that is used a lot in business eg I manage a six or seven figure budget, etc. No-one needs more detail than that.

I upvote. TO me, usually it's someone in the 100k to 300k bracket, above they usually will give a number or another type of range. But what do I know. Let's give credit to the majority of high earners who work extremely hard and who don't have a well off back ground, they are the majority. But again, what do I know.

That's the mistake most people make.
Your career is something you need to be working on in addition to your day job. It's not about working hard, but focusing on the correct things.

My first job, team was terrible. Line manager didn't care, I had no work for 6 months, etc. So I nosed around, found out what other people were doing, and maneuvered myself into a team with a great boss. I learnt so much from him, got promoted, got great projects etc.

There was an element of luck. I was lucky to get a first job at a large company, with clear and structured HR guidelines showing the skills required to advance. Lucky, with my 2nd boss. But I didn't just sit down, 'work hard' at what I was given (that nobody cared about). I was strategic, I took the initiative, promoted myself.

I also did a lot of work on personal development. I'm not extroverted, I don't talk over people in meetings and I find it hard to interrupt even if people waffle on. But I got the message out, my way, to the people who mattered. They noticed, they thought of me when stuff needed doing, and here I am.

Most people don't realize this. They think they just do their job, work hard, go home and it'll be noticed. How will people know what you've done if you don't tell them?

I think of it like dating really. There are always lucky people who met their spouses at uni, while living their lives with no extra effort. Nobody can guarantee you a relationship. But the more you put yourself out there, the higher your chances.

There's also the barriers to women advancing but that's a whole different topic and this post is long enough as it is...

We don't all live in London @xippo.
DH and I earn a lot less than a six figure salary, but we are mortgage free and have no debts. We can also save every month.

Wrong. Programming is very hard work.
You don't need to be smart (as in academic), but it's a craft and there's no substitute for hours of actually programming. I (and my peers) have side projects, are always reading about the latest developments, etc. We get paid well because while everyone can code, GOOD programmers, who truly understand the impact of their decisions and won't leave a mess that costs loads to clean up, are rare.

It's also a myth that all programmers are highly paid. There are plenty of people learning 25-30K, maintaining websites for small businesses etc. That's pretty average, these people are in their 30's.

Sorry but I had to reply to that. You have absolutely no idea what the life experience of this person was. You believe in luck, actually you believe in bad luck, and that might be a problem. I have seen people coming back from hell and making it to the top.

I earn nothing- I am a sahm. My husband of almost 20 years earns anywhere from £400,000-600, 000/yr in an executive role. We are in our mid - 40’s and were together since I was 18 and he was 21 (both broke uni students and I mean so broke we received food checks from the university just to feed ourselves ) . This is the whole package as declared income for the year to the tax department (base salary, bonus and shares). His boss is probably on close to a million but it varies year to year (base salary remains pretty much the same but shares and bonus change). When I did work full time I was paid £40,000/yr (degree qualified job).

I can understand that you may think this is a “fantasy salary “ for him but it is legit not. Some people are on much lower incomes and some people are paid a ridiculous amount, even well higher than what my hubby earns. It’s just life.

I might add that we live pretty frugally compared to other people with the same household income. It’s all invested for our retirement (future income) and we aren’t at all flashy - no luxury cars, houses , no designer clothes etc. Our own families have no idea, we are pretty secretive but not intentionally. Both of us came from nothing in the sense that we were first to obtain university degrees from both sides of the family, we paid for our own tertiary education , we lived financially independently from the age of 18, paid for our own wedding etc etc. Hubby came from a single mother family (she raised 3 kids by herself, most of the time on benefits with minimal child support ). I was luckier (mum and dad both worked but lived paycheck to paycheck).

If someone says they earn £100k plus I always assume they are earning up to £175-80k as above that in my experience they start saying I earn nearly £200k etc - most people inflate or average out if bonus related
The next marker might be ‘I’m making over a quarter of a million’
In real life most people I know would not dream of discussing their earnings or savings - but bizarrely house prices are acceptable even if boasting
I don’t join in - even DP doesn’t know how much I earn, if people want to guess at house value go on Zoopla
I will boast about my other successes in life though!

It occurs to me that we have a bit of an untapped (AFAIK) resource here on MN, of people who have achieved higher salary roles, through a variety of different ways, from different backgrounds.

I think it might be interesting (though I'm not sure how it would be done, perhaps a survey?) to gather info on how people did it, with examples from different sectors. That said people aren't always the best at self-assessing how they got from A to B (particularly where 'luck' or 'spotting an opportunity' have played a role). It's not always simply 'being good at job X and recommended for job Y' or 'working hard'.

People have achieved this in all sorts of ways: following a prescribed training course from university leading to a job in a high-salaried industry, retraining as an adult, moving away from a company then moving back to it later on a higher salary, actively following threads here to pick up advice from other posters, getting a mentor / coach, starting own business, exploiting family connections / friends etc etc. In many cases it's not accidental, I'm not sure how many people drift into a 100k job!

I'm not sure how much of the info could be easily distilled into a don't do this but do do this, but there's a rich seam of expertise available here, spread across several threads.

I can't see me ever taking on the effort / faff of a £100+k job but I do enjoy reading about what other people are like (who are probably very different from me temperamentally) and who are also probably spotting stuff about the working world that I am not bothering to notice. Not just how the other half live, but how the other half parse the world :)

Jo
P.S. I have an interest in making job adverts more 'available', outside the narrow window in which they appear - they tend to be live for six weeks then disappear. I also run a community for science communicators / public engagement professionals. Big salaries are perhaps a bit thinner on the ground in that sector (or are done by headhunting rather than job ads, so less visible to me as moderator).

JoBrodie there have been some good threads directed to women on high salaries that have been interesting, I agree it can be useful

What a jealous post.

People on higher salaries work harder that's why they are on those salaries.

A road sweeper wont know how to restructure companies.

Just because people do manual jobs and physically work harder doesn't mean they deserve higher salaries.

Higher salaries are for mental strength / brain power.

Plenty of people are on high salaries that didn't just get lucky or know someone.
All the children of immigrants in this country for a start that you find in these jobs.
No one gave them breaks.
They did the right subjects at school, went to a university not always necessarily the top tier ones.
Went into the right professions.

If you don't study, choose the right field, you don't get paid much - simple.

I agree with PP I don't actually know anyone that is 'poor'.
Everyone is on healthy salaries.
£70k - £250k.

I've yet to meet the £500k plus earners.
However, I don't doubt they exist and I'm not going to be jealous because I don't earn that myself.

It's not about anecdotal evidence though, isn't it? It's probabilities.
Out of VERY BAD conditions, 1 out of 1000 might make it.
That doesn't mean we can relax, making no effort to improve conditions. That 1 might have been 'lucky' to have been told that a bigger world was possible. To believe. Some of our apprentices for example had no idea that a 40K salary was even possible. They'd never seen anybody around them earn that.

Conversely, if 'privilege' was all you needed then every single person with a 'normal' childhood would be earning 6 figures. Which they are clearly not.

So why tear people down? Why, when faced with success, go 'ah you must have gotten it because of X Y Z.? If you're saying 'we should give people more help;, fair enough, but that's not what you're doing. You're saying other people don't deserve it, and if you go down that slipper slope EVERYONE who has a somewhat functioning body is privileged, so anything they have isn't thanks to any of their effort, because there are people who can't even eat or dress themselves without help!

So many women like @Mycatsgoldtooth and @ihavenocats have seen the opportunity, and are going for it. Just like I did. Why not support each other?

@TyneTortoise I don't mean that programming does not involve time and effort. However, it is a well paid field i.e. on average more people will be better paid than in other fields. Similarly, on average a lawyer will be better paid than a nurse or teacher. The big problem in the UK is that STEM subjects are seen as hard and maths is perceived to be difficult so there is a shortage. However, a headteacher trying to manage a school right now will need to be a much more exceptional individual in every sense of the way than a programmer but the pay differential is huge.

One way of remedying this could be to enable late career switching. But taking on 60k debt is unmanageable once you have kids. Talking to my friends on the continent - many of them are switching jobs (which is good both for themselves but also the economy) but they are doing this because higher education is free. This isnt possible in the UK. I guess we can just hope that automation sorts it all out

Also to add I also do a lot of outreach work for women, people from underprivileged backgrounds, etc.
This does NOT mean that people deserve low salaries (every job including min wage should pay enough to live on), or that people should be blamed for poverty.

It just means that sometimes we don't know what opportunity is there, and once we do, we can grab it. Again, some people are lucky to be born into circumstances where it's as natural as drinking water, but it is in our power to expand stuff for others.

Absolutely agree!

And I've pointed this out on MN before.

This is all lovely - but as demonstrated by the current uproar regarding public sector jobs do you really think that it's all about brain power or how did they magically lose 35% since 2009. And yes perhaps twenty years ago we should have predicted that Tories would create austerity and just not pay them anymore money? Thats why this argument doesnt work. The problem often is that it's hard to predict age 18 what job will pay when you are 40. The fact that it is so hard/expensive to retrain is a real problem

It's funny that out of the small percentage of 6 figure earners that most of them seem to be on mumsnet.

I do not think that you have replied to the right person.

How surprising that the person who wrote:

People on higher salaries work harder that's why they are on those salaries.

Also wrote:

I don't actually know anyone that is 'poor'.

Rich people mostly just hang out with other rich people, that's why they all think they're not actually THAT rich and they all totally deserve to make 10x as much as the people who do the worst jobs that keep society functioning