To ask how much work you actually and honestly do if you’re highly paid? I am worrying!

[workworkbaby]

I’m on 58k. I know it’s not huuuge money, but it’s decent. Honestly, I do very little. I worry all the time about job security and have mentioned to managers I have capacity to do more etc. Sometimes more will land and other times not. As I work largely from home I often find myself just hanging around. I wonder if this is common? I have a toddler in nursery so I can collect them early sometimes which I love so I’m not complaining but I do worry… anyone else?

Such a fascinating thread! Does somewhat explain the state of the country where so many things are failing because there are not enough trained and willing staff. Look at the NHS, the police and teaching facing crisis after crisis with fewer and fewer staff. However I don't blame anyone who would choose to work a handful of hours a week for a high salary instead of on the front line of difficult careers. I will definitely take it with a pinch of salt when people call £14 an hour junior doctors "greedy" when they're striking for better pay! They should ask for even more.

I can see why you are worried. When a company wants to reduce headcount, those that don’t have enough to do are likely to get the chop. Not that being busy is any safety net. The company might decide what you are doing is worthless. A good work friend of mine was just made redundant even though she’s very busy with work.

I am on slightly more than you and I don’t have enough hours to get through my work.

@Angelsrose I somewhat agree with you, but like everyone, doctors get a compensation "package", not just a salary. For example, their NHS pension is huge at 20% contribution from the NHS (aka publicly funded pension): https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pensions/additional-pensions-advice/nhs-pension-contribution-rates.

I do think doctors should be paid more, but not the 35% the Juniors are asking for. So far, consultants have won a pay increase, with the lowest paid at around £100k. It increases every 7 years too, so the next pay scale is at £115k I believe, then eventually £130k. That's a lot of money tbf in an NHS that isn't working for patients, with terribly long waiting lists and many not receiving the care and surgeries they need. When you combine these salaries with their massive pension pot, it's a huge package. No one non-medic gets that. Not to mention, a lot of senior doctors work part-time by choice and do what they want a lot of the time.

So, a lot of doctors retire with £million or so. I know because a couple of friends and family members are.

Where I think the problem is in the NHS is the culture (not so much the pay, but the pay should definitely be increased for them). It is a horrible, bullying environment for many doctors. And that's what needs to change first and foremost. Paying doctors more doesn't fix the culture sadly.

I would love to make £58k / year. <wistful>

I really hope none of this jobs are charity sector! I work for a charity, just under £50k wfh and I am busy all day long. I often do emails and bits and pieces evening and weekend too.

When teaching the job never ends . There will never be enough time .
I absolutely burnt myself out with my piles of books surrounding me until 12midnight . Plus the planning and correspondence, all
the e mails 🙈🤷‍♀️. Loved the job but it’s a killer. I eventually had a stroke now in a wheelchair. Dr said that teachers nurses are most likely stroke victims.

I earn over twice what you do OP, so difficult to compare but I’m very very busy and work 5-6 days per week.

This question and most of the responses must be a fucking wind up? If not please divulge what you all get paid extremely well for, at home, doing next to nothing? I'm clearly in the wrong job! Teacher, abroad, earn less than a quarter of OPs salary, work damn hard and have to tutor privately in addition literally just to make ends meet. Please enlighten me! 😳

The only job I've ever had with multiple colleagues driving Ferraris was within an national charity.

Another nurse regretting my life choices. The things I've seen, physically and mentally broken for 37k (junior management)

No wonder it's so hard to recruit into healthcare and education etc. Really wish I'd made some different choices earlier in my career.

It is not capitalism itself that leads to this ridiculous situation but our particular brand of broken capitalism.

Companies are not required to pay the full cost of the goods or service they provide. This can be covered up in a multitude of ways. The most obvious being the benefits that top up the salaries of working people paid too little to live on. There are heaps more examples though such as oil and gas companies not required to pay for the environmental costs they create. Food manufacturers not required to pay the extra health costs created by the food they create.

This leads to the situation where people are paid ridiculous amounts of money to make decisions that are good for business but bad for society. And people who do good for society are paid much less because there is not enough money to go around. Jeff Bezos is a perfect example of this.

Thanks @Golightlygoodnight. As you'd mentioned a bonus of over 100% base salary I was curious as there are hardly any sectors left that seem to do that now.

I'm a healthcare assistant in the NHS on £25,000 per annum and I am busy all day long. I love my job.

I want your job.

I'm about to head off for a 10hr shift in a nursery where there is no let up and I'm paid a fraction of what you get! More seriously, I am looking to move on and a WFH would be great.

You are a full time teacher for £14k a year?!

I earn close to 200k and work very hard. It’s pretty much non-stop. But then I can’t sit still for more than 5 mins and have a need to be constantly doing something.

WFH 3 to 4 days a week from home and typically 9 to 10 hour days (maybe not tons when compared to some jobs). I Often work on a Sunday too to get ahead of the week.

The kids are at uni now so I am not under the same time pressures I had a few years ago. I have more availability.

But I have been with the company nearly 30 years and have a lot of knowledge and experience and so always make sure I am passing it on and helping younger colleagues to develop and gain the knowledge. I will retire in 3 years and want to make sure others have the same knowledge before I go.

I am also proactive about taking on new projects and work as I know I am very well paid and wish to give back an enormous amount too. A way of saying thank you for how well my employer treats its staff.

I’m really interested to know what you all do - ? I’m in education and earn similar money but I work 70-80 hours a week and still have incomplete tasks looming over me all of the time. My colleagues and I often say that it seems like people in the private sector have to do very little for their money a lot of the time and this post has certainly proved that, as loads of you are saying that’s the case.
I wonder if it is this thing about being paid for your experience etc. I’ve been doing the job for 17 years, and now have around 40 adults and 700 children to be responsible for, but I still also spend more than half of my contracted hours (and loads of my own time) doing the original, teaching/prep/marking part of my job.

It sounds like I made the wrong choice when I chose my career! 🤣

This is very similar to my life.

This week has been hideous as I have been in court all day every day (well, 10-4) but I will spend most of next week lying on the sofa, responding to the odd email and answering the odd phone call.

When I left my last job they had to replace me with two people, and they still both moaned about the huge workload- no actual increase.

I am not ambitious in terms of wanting to earn more or be more senior. Unsurprisingly I like the balance I have now. I keep my head down and keep taking the money.

I work in healthcare, with a job plan for LTFT, but regularly work a lot more hours. It's normal for me to work 10-12 hours on site, then come home and after DC's bedtime use remote access to do another 3 hours' work. On 'days off', I'll usually still need to be available. I recently did a 48 hour 'non-resident' on-call shift where I was in work for 36 out of 48 hours, and that's pretty common for those shifts.

The work is high-pressure and there's a lot of it, and I need to be able to make equally sound decisions and carry out equally good interventions at all times when I'm at work.

I hope you aren’t a detective! I head up a change team .

Our CEO gave a talk the other day where he said to people if you don’t turn up to the office, you risk being forgotten & I couldn’t agree more.

Around £100k a year. Honestly, I do the bare minimum. Most days I'm able to take 2-3 hours out to go to the gym or for a swim. I rarely pick up DS later than 4pm. I feel very, very lucky. But I worked very hard to get here and have mountains of experience.

Money would certainly help the situation massively. Being so overstretched in the NHS when there are are clearly a lot of people working for 20 minutes a day for big salaries is quite shocking. The NHS pension isn't quite as wonderful as you imagine and is much worse than in the past. That's if you survive to get it. Plus the pensions system is creaking and people sometimes genuinely struggle to access their own pension due to the system putting all kinds of barriers and delays in place. It's interesting that people get so passionate about explaining how much they think doctors should get but don't blink when people on this thread say they work a few hours a week for more than any doctor could ever dream of. It seems hypocritical and silly. When more and more services are privatised, (clearly the way Sunak and Starmer want things to go) doctors may get paid better but the vast majority of the population will struggle to access decent care.

I would feel anxious too