Doing very little for this salary? Panic

[Greenwip]

I’m earning close to 70k. I do have times where I am worked to the bone and very stressed (maybe 7 days since start of the year so averaging one day a month). The rest of the time I work 90% of the time from home and have naps, a bath, food shop etc in between a few emails and remote meetings. It sounds great and sometimes it is but I am constantly worried about job security. I wonder if this is more common than I think?

No one really wants to do my job. It requires a lot of technical knowledge, people skills, and working in sales, which most highly trained scientists/engineers don’t want to do. Also requires travel and an always on mentality. You spend a lot of time not working much but are always on call. I’ve never gone on holiday without my laptop. The money is good but you pay a price yourself.

Medical Devices. The following roles will have a similar pattern within MD: medical writing, quality, clinical affairs, medical affairs, sales training, marketing.

You should be paid for what you know not what you do. Is it simply that you think your job is easy because you are good at it?

Another thing to add on the adding value front:

My role is in data protection. I've specialised in this for a long time, and I'm pretty damn good at my job.

But there's no reason that my company would know that a) I'm shithot at data entry and b) I actually kind of enjoy the race of "how many can I enter accurately and can I come up with a UI efficiency to improve the process".

It's not mentioned on my CV that I absolutely BLASTED through work like that. That I could complete nearly double the work of my nearest colleague. Because my CV is tailored to the role, and the role is to be available to deal with compliance matters when they arise. Not to hammer through lightweight admin work.

(I very much enjoyed turning up to do admin work whilst still getting paid the fact salary too! Was kind of annoyed that I developed the processes well enough for the rest of the team to mange without me.)

In a company of 350 people, the path to them finding out what else I can do is quite hard.

In my small, lean company, we did personality and work behaviour analysis and people could reflect, stick their hands up because they knew the sort of work that was available, see when someone was snowed under etc

I wouldn't know who was snowed under where I could really help in the org, and management don't have the imagination to realise that "knowledge" staff might be able to do some grunt work quite happily.

I appreciate that and know I am fortunate to earn as well as I do. It took me a long time on much much lower pay to get to this point and half of me thinks that the stress/working hours culture in my role is part and parcel of the salary I earn. My qualification route cost 30k, pre sky high tuition fees (would now be approx 70k). The other half of me hears about roles for more money where the commitment is much lower and wonders if I'm a bit desensitized to the pace in my field. I should add my role also involves fairly traumatizing clinical work. But this is the career I chose and I do feel fortunate to be able to do it.

It’s common. I feel like most people do Jack Sh*T these days. Few busy days but you’re good at your job and switched on you can get it done with your eyes closed. No one’s “slammed”
anymore. Well very few. Nurses. Drs. Etc but office workers? (Huge generalisation I know) nah.

I’m in the same boat on the same salary. Although to be caveated that I live in London so wages are generally a lot higher here.

In all honesty I’ve NEVER felt like I’ve really have had to push myself at work. Never worked long hours, never felt like people massively rely on me or that I’m irreplaceable or offering anything that anyone else can’t do. I’ve been given opportunity after opportunity and climbed the ranks. I’ve also survived mass redundancies and actually been promoted soon after.

I guess if the shoe was on the other foot and it was my husband talking about himself like that I feel I’d have to give him a reality check and say he wouldn’t be where he is today if it wasn’t for his talent. It sounds like you have imposter syndrome.

The fact is the more senior you are, the less work you do. Good managers are effective delegators and empower others to further their own careers. You probably are adding value but maybe are extremely efficient at doing so!

If I was to be kind to myself I’d probably say I have good people skills and people generally like me, and it’s useful for companies to have people like me in senior positions because not everyone has that. I’m also have a clear sense of what I want from a job. I’ve turned down jobs because I sense the culture isn’t right - I wouldn’t accept long hours or a very competitive, toxic workplace. You might be the same. Congrats on making good choices.

WTAF

I recently retrained and went into teaching. I am amazed at the promotion payscales and the amounts the deputy head is earning (£88k) for doing very little as far as I can tell. Obviously she is in school all day though and not at home having a bath and getting her nails done! However I’ve just had a decent promotion and next year my teaching workload is less but I’ll be getting a lot more money. I feel very happy with job security too although obviously anything could happen at any time. My head (on well over £100k) has spoken to me about ‘working smarter’ - ie doing less but achieving more. So I think if you are doing this, then great.

however, if you have feelings of guilt and insecurity, maybe the job isn’t very fulfilling and you don’t feel stretched or challenged? Which is another issue - maybe there’s something else you’d enjoy even more and which would give you a true sense of purpose and satisfaction. Depends what you want out of life! 🩷

Tech sales/client management. Close relative doesn’t have a degree but did a tech apprenticeship and within a few years was earning huge amounts for very little work and now mostly works from home with a few emails/zoom calls and earning over £100k. Keeps tech customers happy as far as I can tell. He says it’s a ‘bitty’ job but his bank account is happy!

And hopefully less masturbation

@KikiShaLeeBopDeBopBop 😂

Tech sales

Clearly no good salesperson ever actually runs out of tasks. Worst case is trawling round contacts for leads, improving standard sales materials, reviewing new release info and training, going over case study options with marketing, inputting to product enhancement plans, coaching juniors etc etc. Nobody can do good work in tech sales on a few hours a week, it simply means you aren't doing a good job.

Funny, because I absolutely smashed all targets as detailed upthread, record breaking figures, and even had to slow down because I was selling more than the company could handle. When I volunteered to work on 4 other areas to help the team get through the workload, I was always told 'no, we dont want you doing that'.

I COULD trawl through contacts, but pestering them just to make myself busy is a sure fire way to piss them off! I guess thats difference between a GOOD salesperson and a busy one 😎

@TheStickySweethearts totally agree with this sentiment. Often it’s just not that you can work more efficiently but also being able to predict problems that may occur and mitigate them beforehand so that you can get through much more than other people in the same time. It’s also being very deliberate about not doing busy work.

I'm sure you met the written sales target figures, but that's not the entirely of a sales job unless you have a very superficial understanding of the industry or a very junior role. If the tech company couldn't handle the work, then you were selling the wrong thing, selling at the wrong price, or selling with the wrong timeframe. Selling the wrong thing is unfortunately common with software; naive salespeople sell upgrades that take engineering effort instead of targeting the opportunities that are right for the product. Easy sales, but harmful for business expansion, and they do get caught out eventually.

You didn't comment on all the other sales activities I listed apart from contacts, yet those things are all also your job and don't get done in an hour or two. Someone heading up the career ladder would support expansion planning too if they were over-selling, which would give insight into what caused the delivery constraints. It's great that you're happy with your role and feel pleased with yourself, but you could do with stepping back to think for a moment. With truly great employees, continuous improvements are not always down to "someone else" following up, nor having everything written specifically as an objective for the year before working on it.

Ooo, lots of fancy words. Basic answer: you dont understand my role. None of what you wrote applied. I have since voluntarily left the company as I was bored. If I'm junior, I'm loving the money 🤣 in previous posts I explained I am moving to charity after this next role as I feel I've earnt enough. That, to me, feels like the top of the 'career ladder'. I've been asked to teach my techniques before but find it difficult to do so and lack the motivation so I'm not going down that route.

What words were "fancy"? 🤔

Targets were clearly wrongly set.

Obviously we need ALL jobs to be filled so saying change careers for more money etc doesn't really help the sector. If we leave someone has to take those places, or not as is often the case, but then people suffer in those sectors ie nursing, social work, prisons, cleaners, bin men etc.

My dh runs a large primary with 40+ teachers/TAs. He is in work from 7.30am until 6pm. And before holidays are mentioned he spent over 2+ full weeks in school over tge summer and i also did a full week, helping, sort the school. He also works late many evenings but doesn't earn anywhere near most of these amounts being mentioned.
Could he get a better paid job, most definitely but we want dedicated people like him educating the next generations.

Public sector jobs across the board, wafes snd other resources have been starved of funding for 12+yrs and all of them should be recognised and paid properly for their contribution!

I'd say you're very lucky and not at all common for my friends and famoly!!

Who's keeping you green on Teams when you are napping or having a bath......or have you bought a mouse wiggler off Amazon

Surely you appreciate that many, if not most roles don’t require you to be constantly logged into Teams?

I only use it if I am attending an online meeting, otherwise it’s closed down. Same for many I should think.

Sit down for this - we don't even use Teams! We have meetings via Zoom or Jitsi. When we are not in a meeting (2 or 3 a week) then we work independently.

I'm pretty sure this is how most professionals work.

Not my problem, i delivered a further 75% and got told to slow down. In a new job now, double the pay of that one and far more stimulating but still wouldnt say I feel rushed/busy/am pushing it.