Please tell me where all these cushy, well paid jobs are...and how I can get one!

[malificent7]

Working in health care ...love it but high stress, poor pay. Not getting any younger.

Someone on the work thread said they know lots of people in cushy, well paid jobs. Posting here for traffic...where are they?!
Disn't have to be interesting or worthy...just cushy and well-paid!

I think some may call my job cushy. It is well paid, flexible (we are hybrid workers), I get a lot of freedom to plan my work hours, we are treated well (free hot drinks, subsidised canteen, private healthcare). It is generally an interesting area of work where what I do helps people.

But it has times of stress - documents drafted on 30 mins with little or no notice, long working hours, challenging meetings, a lot of complex decision making with real world consequences.

Also some of it can be quite dull - lots of board papers, endless decision making meetings, so much project admin.

This is easily achieved in the advertising and marketing industries, if that helps.

My DH worked for the council doing projects/facilities for about 6 months. He got paid double my staff nurse pay. It was all WFH and everyone on his team was completely stressed out their box but he had about 4 hours of work a week. The hardest part was trying to make himself look busy. One meeting on a Thursday his boss said "OK I'm off Friday/Monday, just do x job on x project over that time" the job took him 40 minutes.

To be honest though there was literally 0 satisfaction of a job well done and he was losing the will to live. He applied for a job in his previous field and went back to the drama of crazy deadlines and 60 hour weeks as soon as he could.

Unless you are very well connected

See I'm a band 5 nhs (within an ICB) and I'd say my job was very cushy even though I only earn around 28k. No way am I leaving! And yes yes I know public money etc but I am paid for my time to be available as and when needed. Just so happens I'm very rarely needed so 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ridiculous statement.

OP - project management but would need to take a few course and maybe start at project coordinator / project admin

@NineToFiveish I bet that 'nose for opportunities' is the talent that people are paying for. Not many people have that entrepreneurial vision.

The best advice on careers I ever read is: work out what you do without thinking that other people keep praising you for, that you think is easy and obvious and they seem to think is amazing. That is what will earn you money.

I literally followed this advice to the letter and it helped a lot.

My job is pretty cushy and well paid (in-house lawyer, six figure salary, actual work isnt particularly taxing for the most part and I rarely work outside of 9:30-5:30).

However I definitely paid my dues building up to this - lots of 80 hour weeks, weekends, overnighters etc as a junior! Plus getting all the qualifications needed. It's been worth it as I'm now late 30s and it's been pretty cushy for several years now but I doubt there's many jobs you can just walk straight into that have similar conditions!

Whoever said unless you're well connected is right.

The best way to get a well paid job is to move every few years imo

I bagged myself a really cushy number working from home 28k a year. Not well paid for some people here on Mumsnet but i was working as a teaching assistant before and oh my god!!!

I don’t work half as hard as what I did. I also get to have a wee and drink tea whenever I like along with having a lie in everyday. The job is totally easy and I’m paid 14k more a year for it.

Well, innumerable posts on MN over the years says teaching is cushy and well-paid. Plus there's a shortage.

This ! My husband is in what you would call a cushy managerial IT job now. Works from home, sets his own hours. Paid quite well.
He started out when he was younger doing silly hours, driving to site early starts, cutting his teeth on jobs no one else wanted to do.
He has definitely progressed and can take his foot off the gas slightly now.

Ditto to this advice.

I have said this before, but I'd recommend any school leaver to consider a call centre for a massive company.
You need to look at what 'cushy' means to you - to me, that means roughly 9-5, possibility to WFH to save on travel costs, and doing a job where I can close my laptop and walk away at the end of the day (mostly)
What kind of jobs have that kind of environment? Office jobs. Which sectors out of the biggest industries on the planet fall into that? IT/Telecomms. Both of which have stacks of call centres.
You just need to get in through the door. So if that means a call centre job, then you do that. Then move into complaints, or incident management, or management - none of these need qualifications if you are already in the call centre. From there, you can look at internal job listings and move based on your transferable skills, company knowledge and reputation. You don't need to be an IT whizz, you just need to be organised and put your hand up for stuff.
Obviously it's not for everyone depending on circumstances, but everyone I know whose got a cushy job works in these areas!

You probably find it in the same place as the rocking-horse manure.....

I have a job like this, but it was 7 years at uni including a doctorate, so I worked hard to get here.

I have a mostly pleasant and well-paid job but I did my time in stressful jobs first for the first 20 years of my working life.

I only have what some might see as one of these (8-2 4 days a week, 8-6 1 day a week so can do pick ups all bar one day, WFH 4 of the days) because I spent years qualifying and then working my backside off with stress and long hours to now be experienced enough to have a pretty easy ride

I have one but it’s taken me a long time to get to this point

Mine's pretty cushy. Low stress, decent benefits and perks. That's partly because I choose not to let it stress me. It's also doing hard maths all day, which I trained for for 15 years. I find it easy now, and enjoy doing the extra learning I have to do. I guess a lot of people wouldn't count doing hard maths as cushy though, which is why I get paid well!

UN jobs (actual staff, not consultant) from about a P4 level on up.

IT/Software development for a multinational. Work from home (as the rest of your team probably aren't even in the same timezone let alone country), results-based so as long as you do the work well and on time you can do it however you want and your boss will leave you alone (your boss probably also doesn't live in the same country, you may not have even ever met them face-to-face). Very flexible ways of working - picking and choosing what you want to work on is very much encouraged and work approach is highly collaborative but you can focus on just your thing too if this is what works best for you (assuming your team are doing Agile properly rather than just paying lip service). Very well paid especially if you are dealing with hot technologies around AI/ML and automation.

I am a WFH accountant. Without sounding big headed this is an easy job for me and I would describe it as cushy. It's an OK salary, but I only work 3 days a week. I could be on a lot more money for some also not too difficult jobs but this suits me.

BUT I had to work really hard, at really crap wages, for stupid hours when training. So you couldn't just walk into it.

No idea. I used to be a nurse but gave up in middle age as it was too much for me. I'm finding life as a podiatrist in the NHS still hard work but most definitely not as tough as nursing.

It depends on what you see as 'cushy well-paid'.

To be honest a truly cushy, well paid job is like hens teeth and the majority of times their are becuase they are held by acomplised people with great skills they have honed over decades.

My job is relatively well paid (over 100K in midlands), very interesting, I have near full flexibility to run my own schedule and get to travel the world.

However, I have to incorperate periods of grueling scheduling into my life and my job is ride or die by my performance which can be stressful.

Posted too soon...

To get there I've got 10 years experience in sales. The past 5 of which are in a very niche tech field.

Your best bet is to look at the skills you currently have, make a sideway and slightly downward move and then work your way up to the well paid, maybe not so cushy, job.