To ask women for the steps you took to get to 100k

[madasawethen]

If you're a woman making 100k or over, what steps did you take to get there.

Job title(it can be general like manager, solicitor)
Training
How long it took?
Any tips or advice for others who want to get there?

Completely agree.

It’s 2022 and women are still paid less than men. Women are still made to feel guilty for taking time out to raise a family. Women are still more likely to undersell themselves or request a lower salary than men applying for the same role. Women are still more likely not to apply for a job if they don’t tick every box.

We should absolutely be discussing these topics openly.

Reading these is depressing. So many of these women earning these salaries have the entitlement to believe noone else earning less has a work ethic! Most of them have neglected to mention what it has taken them. They genuinely think a few qualifications and turning up is what it takes.

Has anyone said that?

No. It’s a wilful distortion of what’s been said.

I think if you turned the question around and asked “If you earn a low salary, why do you think this is?”, whilst there would be some answers about things which have genuinely held the posters back in life, there would also be many which made it clear that many women just don’t prioritise investing in their career - stating as much either outright, or in an indirect way with things like “I like my work-life balance / I wanted to be at home more for the kids / I didn’t want my life to just be about work / DH earns enough that I can work part time.”

I suspect a large element of this is that too many young women grow up knowing that they want to be mothers, and with the idea that their work will therefore take a backseat and they’ll be financially supported by a husband.

Bingo. All this rubbish about talking about money being crass is just another tool to keep people in their places. If you've not been lucky enough to have someone to tell you what's possible how would you know?! And you can bet your bottom dollar the richest people out there are happy to talk about money to their kids...

I don’t think anyone has said that.

My husband is on high six figures, and it’s taken him twenty years to get all of the skills that he needs to do his current job well.

To get there took planning from early on, first in terms of getting good qualifications but then in terms of what he did in the firm, who he learned from, how to give senior management what they need, and so on.

It involved risks, set-backs, losses, and getting back up, finding a way back in, and trying again when it went wrong.

Yes, it was hard work, but hard work alone isn’t even vaguely enough. Carrying bricks up and down scaffolding is far harder in terms of physical effort, but will never pay the same sort of money.

No one said that people earning less work less hard. What exactly is wrong with women sharing their experience of climbing the greasy pole in order to point other women in the right direction? You could start another thread asking whether it's fair that some skills, attributes and experience are more highly paid than others. But that isn't this thread.

Head of department for a financial services business. I earn £90k base plus bonus this year of £20k cash and £20k deferred shares.

I studied management at university and did two year-long paid internships before I graduated, one of which was abroad. Since then I have worked my way up through half a dozen roles to this one. I am 38.

My tips and advice are to always say yes at work, don't just do what's asked of you but find opportunities to do extra things outside your role. Volunteer to run a lunchtime seminar, sign up to the social or diversity committees, ask questions in meetings, be visible and engaged. Be confident and ask for what you want. I asked for a careers coach, for example, and they gave me one.

Not one single person has said that those who earn less work less hard and if that’s what you have taken from this thread then I would suggest your comprehension skills need some work!

My family members in the NHS work far harder than I do; they work shift patterns, overtime, holidays are rota’d, no flexibility to take time off without being chastised. My work is hard, but it’s a different type of hard. It also happens to be better paid and I have more flexibility. Those are just a few reasons i chose to work in Tech and why I’d avoid certain old school companies or industries.

What I see from this thread is women being open and willing to help others, women encouraging one another to be strategic about their career, don’t settle for less, it doesn’t matter if have a degree or not, you can bloody well do it!

We all work hard, that’s a given, but to earn more you also need to work smart and sometimes take risks. Don’t accept the status quo, seek out opportunities to change and improve your situation.

Oh dear @Onlyforcake someone got out of bed on the wrong side!

No one has implied, much less stated, that those who earn less, work less hard.

There are literally pages of women talking about what has worked for them to get where they have and offering other women personal advice on achieving the same.

Stop being so miserable

Just proves there's always going to be people pulling you down. Got to ignore them and know your own worth.

There's honestly nothing new under the sun.
A server now is the same thing it was 20 years ago. Except that it's on fancy cloud platforms, you don't have to crawl under racks and plug wires in.
EVERY programming language must have basic integers, iterate through lists, handle errors etc.

All my mentors have been 10-20 years in the business. Started in now-defunct roles, worked their way up. Give them a piece of 'new' tech they've never seen before and in under an hour they can tell you how to use it, what to watch out for etc. The first thing before you even touch any syntax or code is understand in plain English - WHAT exactly you are doing. What pieces move? What information are you transferring?
And they trained me to think the same way...

Get started with any language mentioned, get your first job but more importantly find people who will train your way of thinking. Independent of programming language or whatever it is you're doing. Yes, you need to learn continually but it's more of updating your mental map.

wiki.c2.com/?MappersVsPackers

This is such a great thread. I’m another one without a degree FWIW.

I agree, we need to talk about what we’re paid and definitely ensure our daughters do too

• Magic circle law firm took me up to £100k
• USLaw firm took it up to £250k
• moved to National firm for £70kbecuse I wanted an actual life
• another city firm for £130k
• now National firm for £80k because life’s too short

Law degree at the right time.

We also need to talk about privileges that come with career. Many girls and young women seem to believe that you cannot choose a well paid career, because that's not compatible with family, while in many cases, the opposite is true.

I'm a lawyer that has had a long career break to bring up kids (8 years).

I earn a little over 100k for a 4 day, fixed hour work working from home. It is very easy, little stress, nice colleagues, nice clients. I can also be flexible and attend school events/appointments during the day if I wish. Its low paid for corporate law.

Background is I worked 12 years (with 1 18mnth mat leave) at a top law firm. Worked my arse off the entire time. Became senior in my field. I no longer have all the technical knowledge (due to career break) but I'm still able to assess risks/manage people so my skills are valuable to bust partners.

@KleineDracheKokosnuss can I ask how many PQE you were at each salary point you listed?

Make about £550K/year working in financial services (asset management). Did well at school and got good A-levels in STEM subjects while everyone else was mucking about or teasing me for being a swot. Went to Oxbridge and took a 2:1 in a STEM subject. Moved to London and took at temp admin role as had no idea what I was doing. Managed to get a grad entry-level job with an asset manager. Left after a few years to join a better asset manager. Have stayed here ever since (over 10 years). Am now a member of the senior management team. Hours are reasonable but people have high expectations, which can be stressful. You need to constantly demonstrate your worth by leading intiatives that will grow the firm's revenue. However it is interesting. The next salary/role step up is a big one (to about £750K/year), but I have stepped back from chasing that in the immediate term as I have very young children and I can't do it all at once. I will likely push for it for the end of next year. I think the things that have most helped me along the way have been: 1) having the Oxbridge brand on my CV; 2) choosing to work in the financial services industry (which tends to pay well); 3) being tenacious (I've hung on in there through some tough times); 4) luck.

On the working hard point:

High paying jobs require many years of very hard work. It would be exceptional to be paid a lot without having worked very hard for it.

Some lower paying jobs require sustained hard work too, but not all.

So hard work is an ingredient for high pay, but not the one and only ingredient, you need to combine it with other ingredients:

Some lawyers (see criminal barristers, basically public sector work) are on less than minimum wage. Some lawyers earn 7 figures. They all work hard. They are all lawyers.

Musicians, actors, dancers work extremely hard. Only a few earn well.

Private sector is easier than public sector.

Jobs requiring thinking, intellectual skills, analysis, entrepreneurial usually get more pay than manual jobs.

Typical "female" jobs: caring, cleaning, teaching children, cooking, sewing, PAs are less well paid than plumbing, bin collecting, groundsmen.

If you can find something you like in the private sector, non manual, not "typically female" AND work hard, chances if a high salary are very good.

@Isonthecase I agree. Two female friends spoke to me many years ago when I was on a much lower wage. One referenced the fact that I was a member of an all white male SMT and earned below half of the rest of them and another asked why on earth anyone would work for £xxx doing what I do.
Those conversations stuck with me and contributed to my journey. I vowed to move to something where the role is recompensed according to one's ability to deliver.

Jobs requiring thinking, intellectual skills, analysis, entrepreneurial usually get more pay than manual jobs.

Unless you’re an academic actually teaching the stuff to those who go on to earn the six figures! It’s taken me to my 60s to get to almost £100k and that’s by working excessively hard and not having any family.

This is such a fascinating thread - I’ve learnt a lot. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed.

I want to go back to the “get a few qualifications and show up comment”.

I manage a team of senior lawyers. They all earn well over 6 figures. The ones that do really well are the ones that display many of the additional skills listed on this thread. Others are good but will never be as successful because they think all they have to do is show up.

Every year I have development conversations with people that want to be more successful but don’t want to take on more work or won’t work with a particular individual or can’t get their heads around office politics or want to fight me on every single issue.

I work hard to help coach them, I want the best for all my team but some people don’t get it.

I'm a humanities academic. Not in the UK. Very flexible, I WFH 80 percent of the time and manage my own time and projects based on my own interests. Love it, it's perfect for me.