To ask if you’re in a highly paid job but do very little…

[Workbutba]

Do you feel uncomfortable or worried? I earn over 60k. I know this isn’t loads but it’s obviously decent. Some days I do very little. That said there are times I will work a whole weekend or very late night so perhaps it evens out. But on Wednesday for example, I sent two emails and had two calls and then had a bath and tidied the house. I used to feel anxious about it/job security and was always asking my manager for more work etc but they are relaxed and say it ebbs and flows, which it does I suppose. The company makes big profits generally.

Is this common? I now have a dc so I worry even more about job security. I have a friend in a different industry who earns similar in management and she has days she can be on the phone to me for 3 hours and it doesn’t matter. I wonder how common this really is?!

I agree with posters saying its a privilege. Like many others, I spent a few years volunteering to gain experience, often paying more for childcare, travel and supervision while being paid nothing. So I'm very grateful that the experience paid off and allowed me to have a more strategic role now (youth violence and justice, mental health and suicide prevention etc) but I do try to stay aware of it and use a lot of my free time delivering free workshops, courses and mentoring to various organisations around mental health, wellbeing, crime prevention, community relations/interface, getting off streets and into education and employment etc) so I hope I am giving back to society. Plus my volunteering makes me better at my job as I keep in touch with issues affecting people on the ground so I am not removed from the people I am making decisions for, rather make decisions with them

I do wonder who's picking up the financial cost of these highly paid people doing nothing very much until their moments of expertise and brilliance are needed.

Yep me. But it’s demoralising. I want to work for the hours they pay me. I’m looking for something else but don’t want to lose WFH. I have to be available in case there is something they need but there hardly is. In the early stages of the projects so it’ll get a little busier when they kids off properly

what is the job and how do I apply 🤣

The truth is - swollen companies with people doing cushy jobs like these is good for that economy. Lots of people in work with spending power. When companies contract and inevitably get rid of these roles, job markets become more competitive and more people go on the dole. So the answer is - companies pay the wages. But they can afford their workforce which is a good thing. Better than the state paying.

You don’t get paid according to the value you create.
You get paid according to how difficult you are to replace.

If you want a slower pace avoid jobs where you are a link in a process chain. Avoid jobs where you must bill your hours.

Capitalism eh? An honest day's pay for an honest day's work. 😆

But of course we can't have a decent welfare state, properly funded schools and hospitals or social housing provision coming out of people's "hard earned" tax proceeds. 'Cause that would just be rewarding laziness!

So you slum it in a low paid job doing more than you are paid to, and think because of this, everyone else should spend their free time making that up to the community? Why don't you seek a better paid job? I'm sure you wouldn't turn down a high wage yourself.

Yes I had a job like this for 2 years. I was paid £500 per day as a User Interface designer for a large corporate and it was so slow it would take a whole team about a week to sign off on the most minor design ideas/tweaks. Weeks would go by when the design team did literally nothing.
It was actually the most stressed out i've ever felt.

I need to know what you all fo and whether you're recruiting!!

Yes, but who puts the money into the companies to pay these people?

I'm on minimum wage doing admin in a GP surgery. Literally something to be done every minute of the day. I guess it's true that the higher up you are the less work there is to do!

Cor, the bitterness is real.

Have you seen the number of vacancies for nurses & teachers? And doctors? Highly trained individuals (expensive on the taxpayer to train as well) leaving in droves because working conditions are appalling.

Those people are actually hard to replace. Funnily enough, most of the types of big bucks jobs mentioned on this thread aren’t, and loads will undoubtedly disappear in the next recession. Hope you’ve all been saving your pennies for when that happens!

No shit Sherlock! Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to contribute

I work as a nurse in a paediatric intensive care unit. I sometimes don’t have time to bless myself during a shift . Highly stressful dealing with emotionally broken parents and highly complex interventions including ECMO/ ventilators/ inotropes/ resuscitations. Sometimes on the CATS retrieval team going all round the country picking up sick kids/ conversations re withdrawal of treatment/ dealing with one way extubation and supporting bereaved families. Pay: £35,000 pa. I absolutely love my job but we wonder why no one wants to be a nurse/teacher

Well, this is just the thread for me at the end of a massively hectic week in my minimum wage job.

Please could we have a list of all the job titles and all the organisations involved in the posts so far, just so the rest of us can try and get one of these very niche, ultra specialist arsing about all day jobs.

I really don’t think this is true for many people, certainly no one I know. A few years ago (pre-career change) I was earning £100k in a professional role and working bloody hard. My DH was earning considerably more but in a very intense and high pressure environment.i certainly couldn’t have coped and I was used to a different kind of pressure. All our friends who earn well are working very hard. I’m sure these high earning, low pressure jobs exist but I can’t believe there are that many of them

I'm in a sector where the people who actually make things happen are really badly paid despite being highly skilled, generally very experienced, difficult to replace and highly valued by service users.
Without us there is no service.
And it's an expensive service which our customers need, value and are willing to pay high prices for. We work hard to give it to them and that often involves unpaid (and unrecognised) overtime, early starts, late finishes and 15 minute lunch breaks often taken at our desks whilst trying to squeeze in some admin.

Our line managers work really hard and are paid not too badly.

Our top management coast along thinking they are very important because they get paid a lot. The reality is that they often make crap decisions which makes the lives of the people they think they are brilliantly managing even harder than they already are.

And yes, it's capitalism. I suppose you might as well enjoy it if you're well paid to do little. IMO it's an unfair system that is unsustainable. I also think that AI is coming to get a lot of highly paid coasters who are paid to make the odd decision.

They won’t drop their prices if they weren’t paying the salaries, they’d make more profit

Not me but DH earns over 100k. Sometimes he comes home and says hes been stuck on a problem at work all day. Couldnt solve it in the end. So basically didnt do anything actually productive. He then sometimes figures it out the next day or asks a colleague who looks at it for 2mins and figures it out 😅 This also happens the other way around. New pair of eyes and all that 🤷🏻‍♀️
He doesnt feel bad. Also never had complaints. Its just how it is in IT, he says.

I know people who earn high salaries and do very little. I’m beginning to think it’s just the way it is - climb the career ladder and put your feet up!

The thing is though with all the PP saying oh how do I retrain, I’m a teacher I’ll do this instead, for me anyway, I got to have that WFH job which was highly paid and fairly quiet after 15-20 years in the same company and industry working my way up - I didn’t start on £60k+…..and I bet others are the same. You work at lower level much less paid jobs and if you stick around for long enough in the private sector you earn the privilege (or not!) of the ‘cushty’ jobs. However, I also agree that jobs like teachers, nurses etc should be paid WAY MORE for what they do!

I’d be bored stiff. I earn 63k, and am super busy - I don’t know what I’d do all day

Why?