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?

@cupcakesarelife consultants have not accepted anything. The results of the vote are due this week.
Doctors are asking for £20 an hour. Do you think that's unreasonable for the person saving your child's life at 2am ? Because that's what a 35% increase means. And they are not asking for it in one go. Spread over several years has always been the ask.

Remember when the health secretary said she could be found the negotiating table in 20 minutes if strikes were called off ? Well no strikes for 3 weeks, no strikes planned. Has are turned up to negotiate? Nope. Nada. And meanwhile doctors leave weekly from the NHS. It's almost like that's what they want. Wonder why ?

I earn similar to OP, I'm public sector and I'm pretty busy though the nature of my job means it's peaks and troughs. I'm paid for 25 yrs of experience in a specialised area and the accountability I hold. I'm underpaid compared to the same role in the private sector

You're getting paid for your experience and may be underestimating how much that's actually worth.
Also, for some jobs, you need to keep some mental bandwidth free in order to process things well. They may want you to have down time so as to be able to process, contemplate, and let things gently simmer in the background of your mind. It may be that if you worked at what you perceive as 100% capacity, the quality of your work, and/or your happiness level due to work-life balance, would diminish.
Trust that they are paying you what you're worth. It's a good salary, so there's much to be grateful for. Focus on gratitude and doing a good job in what they ask you to do.
And well done for having a well-paid job that doesn't exhaust you!

It’s interesting, I was recently head hunted to a high paying role, stayed out but a friend went for the role, on day 2 they had to do a pitch of a new project, in the office at 0900, I couldn’t do that.

Maybe you are good at what you do and you finish quickly? My job has extremely busy times and down times. I know the guilt feeling when there is some downtime

I think it could be:
A) there simply isn’t enough work and managers do t want to lose the headcount.

B) something you should or could be doing is being blocked by a manager higher-up who thinks they know everything but is actually causing more problems elsewhere.

C) you’re being managed by someone who isn’t dynamic and likes things to stay the same. When I worked in electronics purchasing, I proposed a simple plan for chip shortages as I had my ear to the ground and picked up on murmurings that there might be issues. (I had no idea the issues would be as bad as they were). A risk-adverse manager was too scared to even look at my plan so I couldn’t develop or implement it. He had never heard of shortages before and had never needed to put any contingency plans in place. He wouldn’t listen to me because I was junior..
Then not long after we had a massive global shortage which got steadily worse. The worse it got the more he kept saying it would blow over. Every opportunity we had to look at my plan, he refused.

D) they don’t want to give you work because they’re giving it to someone else, they’re not confident in your ability, your industry is slowing down, etc if this is the case you need to work out which one it is….

As i said in an earlier post, I do think they should be getting a pay increase (junior doctors only, not consultants who are paid well enough!), but not 35% increase. Yes doctors save lives. So do many other professionals, albeit indirectly: scientists, academics, teachers, carers, software engineers. Who do you think creates the xrays and ct scans? Who do you think builds the surgical beds for obese patients? Who do you think researches the health issues and who are the countless people involved in creating the medicines doctors prescribe? Do you think theyre all paid well? Healthcare is not just doctors.

Most junior doctors become consultants,so paid very well for the rest of their career with a huge pension package. You can become a consultant at 9-10 years after graduation. That’s by age 35. Imagine getting 20% pension sll that time and for the rest of your working life? But you sound like you’re s doctor?

Most jobs take about a decade to become a specialist in. GPs are paid well too, they even go part-time. I cant even see my GP because she is only in two days a week and this ridiculous surgery have a policy that you have to see your own designated GP. I am in the process of taking this to the Cqc because it’s against GMC guidelines and patients should be able to see any doctor they want. You’d think doctors would know this 🙄

As also mentioned, the situation for all patients is dire. Paying doctors more does nothing for patient care or services. It stays the same. There are other issues too that doctors dont seem to mention or protest about: bullying amongst themselves, poor training delivered by well paid consultants, even racism in medicine with many Black patients inc mothers who significantly receive poorer care. Who is actually providing that care though?. Let me see what other culture problems are there: Shipman, Lucy Letby and some doctors found dead after committing suicide die to bullying and lack of support amongst themselves. This is tragic. Pay does not fix this.

I think it’s doctors themselves driving each other out.

As Ive said and as doctors striking themselves also say, it’s not “just” about pay. The culture within the nhs is the root of the problem. Just as there’s a cultural problem in the police and even government. Paying police and politicians more doesnt make the country safer, less sexist or racist, nor provide a better run country. Throwing public money at anything without dealing with the root causes doesn’t fix anything.

anyways that’s my thoughts. I’ll leave it at that.

I work in tech and don’t think my role is particularly hard. Get in around 9 and leave at around 5 if in the office. Slightly longer if at home but with breaks to do other stuff.

However, I have 30 plus years industry experience and have done my years of 12h plus days and working all weekend. I’m paid to apply my experience. Nobody cares how many hours I work. I contract these days so don’t really have to worry about career bullshit any more. Just do my job.

I’m definitely getting paid (very well) more for what I know than what I do….

I take your points. But i think the reason why people dont blink so much when others are getting paid seemingly little in other industries is because doctors have a choice. You’d think they’d exercise that choice since they keep reminding us all how well they did at a level. Just like the posts saying theyd never work in healthcare, doctors have a choice about that too. Yet medical schools are still full?

Also the pension is great for doctors. Better than the average 4% most people get which they may never live to see too. As mentioned i know a couple of consultants retiring with £1.2million. Doctors work hard, they really do. and when they become specialist like the rest of us, usually by the age 35 they are consultants and GPs, they have a much easier time. Consultants flog off everything to their registrars, this is a cultural problem. Ive heard trainee surgeons just put up with doing horrible jobs “because their seniors had to do it too”. This is a cultural problem. Bullying in the nhs is a problem amongst doctors. So is sexual assault by surgeons towards female surgeons - link below. I dont see why the public should be throwing money at bullies and abusers. The root of the cultural problems need to be fixed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66775015.amp

Thank you! Sorry, I’m a student nurse and about to go into a £29k role. It’s such hard work and I’m not even qualified yet. Reading these comments fills me with 50% rage & 50% existential crisis. I’m 32 and this is my second career path, I already have a degree and a masters in psychology, and will have a nursing degree and I plan on doing a masters in a specialism. Why on earth am I even doing this for such little pay and for a huge amount of debt?! This country is messed up.

I think you're being unwise to keep highlighting to your employer that you have capacity!

Better to send early morning and late emails etc. so it looks like you're busier than you are!

Fair point @Gia79. So perhaps there's some imposter syndrome going on (OP mentions training and qualifying to get the job), some temporary fluctuation in demand, or poor job design. If either of the last two I'd also be worried about my job (sorry OP).

Of course it also sometimes happens that people don't grasp the nature of the qualitatively different expectations of delivery at a higher level and stay down amongst the weeds when they should be exercising that strategic oversight.

All these people on megabucks doing fuck all and being paid for their mythical "special knowledge" just strikes me as massively inefficient. If this is the nature of their role, they ought to be paid on a consultancy ad-hoc basis as clearly their role doesn't justify a full time position.

Perhaps I'm bitter. I earn 25k working in university admin and don't stop. I only managed a week's annual leave last year as there was too much to do.

I work in Child care - started off in a nursery, then a nanny, worked for the LEA for 15 years - now in the Private Sector- wfh excellent salary- but it’s taken me 30 years and continual professional defelopment and some really stressful roles on the way! The wfh role didn’t just happen overnight.

But aren’t you entitled to your annual leave?
If you keep doing too much they will keep piling the work on you - you can only do what you can do.

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.

I’d agree with this.^^ Big companies and private industries have been propped up by governments for years (bank bailouts, tax credits, energy payments).
Anyone doing anything we really need (food , education, healthcare, elderly care) is not valued or paid properly. I’m disgusted at the way junior doctors are treated. I would rather my doctor was well rested and well paid so they can give the best care fgs!
And as for all those on 100k+doing 3 hours work a day, I say good for you, but don’t kid yourself that you are so valuable for your “leadership” and buck stopping responsibility..
I know my esteemed “leaders” do bugger all but sit in meetings, go to leadership seminars and come up with pointless “strategies“ that have usually been tried before, put pressure on the staff that do the work to implement, and will inevitably be changed by the next manager eager to prove their worth.
At the same time us plebs are hoping to be in your position one day- that’s the game innit!?

^^This

Sometimes stating the bleeding obvious seems to be the solitary skill I am paid so relatively highly for. Sometimes I am open-mouthed at the lack of supposedly common sense people in business have.

@cupcakesarelife sorry to derail,, but the way things are going very few doctors will ever get to be consultants now. There are not enough training places to get into speciality training. 6,600 doctors got turned away from becoming a GP last year (lots of PAs though). 1:12 chance of getting into IMT. Doctors are worried about being unemployed this August after foundation years.

Read the facts. Not the hype.

Sorry, do you yourself believe what you are saying? Seriously? I hope those who are reading take it with a huge pinch of salt, and I think you should write books, like the other one here who says 'she is a problem-fixer' the only one who knows how to fix things. And yes, legal finance is legal accounting, i.e. legal book-keeping. Plus and minus, like all finance. Spread sheets, really.

This

We have enough doctors. We don't have enough jobs for them. Anyone know why ??

I earn a lot £85k including salary and car allowance. Depends on what you mean by how much do I do. I probably work 40-45 hours a week but I can balance my life well and I’m very much not an advocate of long hours = working hard because they’re not the same thing. I tend to go in 3 days and WFH 2 but can it’s entirely flexible on what I want. Different times are busier than others. Some days I think I’ve not done much but that can mean actual tasks whereas I’ve done a lot setting things out, planning or strategising. Am I paid fairly…yeah, I’m happy with it and also aware I want significantly more than plenty of people.

This, all of this.

15 or so years ago I had my hand in every training possibility going, every additional project on top of my day job, anything I could get in on to get experience and work with Senior staff.

I worked like a dog for it.

I'm on a very good wage for the cou try I'm in. I do 10% of what I used to do for barely above minimum wage when I was starting in the profession.
I'm enjoying it as long as it lasts :)