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?

@456789098765g more like benefitting other people whilst also getting job satisfaction and working for your salary, without feeling guilty and potentially losing your job due to poor productivity

How do I get one of these jobs? I can only dream of earning that kind of money :(

You don't know what she does, though. If she's Head of PR at an accountancy firm, or Compliance Manager at, I don't know, a school, there's not going to be a long line of colleagues wanting to learn at her knee. They will have their own, very different, jobs that they are busy with, and their own training and professional development plans that don't involve having their ear bent by a random colleague.

That said, if applicable, I'd say to the OP that it might not hurt to chat to whoever manages staff development to see if there's anything she can contribute in some form that would actually help the company. Might raise her profile. Not necessarily training, but explaining how her function fits in, the kind of thing that helps departments understand each other better.

Do a STEM degree or a data analytics/software dev bootcamp. My friend went from teaching, which she hated, into a software dev training course where she stayed with the company and now gets paid 80k.

Same 😂

I might reduce my patient facing time by 50% and, when complaints roll in, state that I'm being paid for my brain and experience.

So, in answer to the questions about sector/how to get such a role…

I work for a non profit legal advocacy organisation. I have relevant qualifications and 26 years experience in the field. So it’s relatively easy for me to do the work required in a couple of hours a day, compared to someone new who will be double checking, second guessing and just taking longer.

I don’t have to manage any staff, just individual clients and other organisations we advise.

I know how bloody lucky I am - I used to teach!!!

I wonder whether those people saying they'd happily pay more tax are those with a very healthy work life balance like on this thread. I earn well but I'm also making myself ill with overwork. No time for self care or exercise. I'm turning into a miserable bastard 😆 and I want to keep every penny I earn as far as possible as I feel every last ounce of work and mental energy is being wrung out of me.

@DrFoxtrot and @ThePure I am exactly in your positions also, 15 years of experience in the NHS in a specialist area and for what! There is literally no scope for career development, and even if there was that would be more responsibility and I'd be even more run off my feet that I am already. I already do a load of extra unpaid work.

Nc4dis could i pm you? I used to work in data analysis then strategy but have had a (very) long break. Don't know if it's even viable to update skills and get back in?

Omg you are definitely not Civil Service, NHS or local Council Senior Management. Those people work insane hours. I think this is a bit tongue in cheek - I can't believe you get away with shirking from home to this extent! I hate working from home because the culture is that you have to be seen to be constantly working. At least in the office I can go and sit on the toilet. I work in a public sector regulated profession, educated to postgrad level.

I have been told this about data analytics as well.

My question is how long can that gravy train run? My best friend has just been made redundant from one of these roles.

I guess it's no problem if you can just jump from place to place she got a new job very quickly. But at some point the industry has got to turn hasn't it? Certainly not worth anyone retraining. It'll be gone by then?

Amen. Some really flagging why they dont have roles like this rn

Sure 😊

@EmeraldRoulette absolutely not, it’s here to stay and get bigger, especially with the sheer volume of data and all the talk about AI and machine learning (most companies just mean advanced analytics when they say this). It’s why Rishi was trying to get everyone to do maths to 18. Massive skills gap and shortage atm. We’ve been trying to fill one of our vacancies for ages!

I'm certain you are aware of why you're paid that money.

"...it's been a team I've grown over the last 10 years ... and have a responsibility to maintain and develop the culture that's taken a long time to establish."

To others reading this, this is clearly why she is paid so much. Ten years of successful hard graft building a team of a 100 people.

Yes, day to day, there may sometimes not be anything too pressing to do. But to be successful over such a long period means thinking about so many different areas and possibilities of what may happen and pro-actively planning for these eventualities that being successful for ten years or so isn't just done by chance.

I have no idea what area you work in (although I can probably rule out some - especially City based - occupations), but this sounds really great.

And I also remember a line from a film where the boss of a company says this:

"Do you care to know why I'm in this chair? I mean, why I earn the big bucks? I'm here for one reason, and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more."

A large part of managing is to anticipate what might be coming.

Outside of certain occupations, many roles offering these sorts of levels of pay involve managing teams and developing teams. Doing this well often involves a lot of work but that work isn't always paperwork.

@Winter41 @DrFoxtrot

we have to expect that certain public facing roles are never going to have the WFH perks, but I have teacher and doctor older family members who say these jobs used to have relatively good conditions and decent pay. It seems like pay and conditions in the private sector have improved while in the public sector they have only declined.

Thank you. I always had it in my head that tech was really boring but i find work just boring now generally.

Stuff that I can do from home from behind a screen is really appealing. I am going to check out courses tomorrow.

Genuine question - how do I get one of these jobs 😅

Generally you spend many years gaining a high level of skills and experience in a field that pays well.
They pay for that not you turning up.
DH is on a good day rate but they aren't paying for the day so much as the years of being excellent at his job that means he can solve complex problems quickly and save literally millions of £

‘All the ppl muttering darkly about being 'found out' and sacked dont get the idea of being paid for your skills rather than hours, and they wont GET a job like this until they do.’

Exactly. I’m measured by results, and if I bring in the £€_$ I am successful! I am also a. Positive, helpful team member always willing to assist a colleague and give advise, but as my role is an individual one the only impact me not working would have is a drop in the company revenue. It would affect my team mates. No one else does my work, has to pick up any slack or stand in for me in any way.

I guess its the difference between being task rewarded vs time rewarded

Agreed.

On a much lesser scale, I did the same thing. I turned a company with no reserves and no strategy into a highly investable one with solid reserves, income for investment, and turned a miserable staff into a lean and motivated one. I negotiated for a lot of extra pay and holiday. And I did plenty of housework and exercise - whilst thinking about company strategy!

I also cut working hours and increased holidays and pay, and if there was slack in the schedule, everyone was encouraged to leave early.

A lot of people presume for whatever reason that "nose to the grindstone" is the only way.

I started at the VERY bottom 20yrs ago, and i kept up with industry advancements, going to all the webinars and conferences etc so i not only remember how we did things in the old days, i'm still at the cutting edge.

I'm naturally great at sales. Not only can i comfortably communicate in any format (I could write a compelling blog, do a radio interview or deliver an entertaining talk to thousands right this moment if called upon to do so) but i am great at understanding others' motivations and keeping in touch, making them feel special and knowing when they are likely to buy, or not. Other people would be up all night at the thought of delivering a presentation and agonise over it, or put off picking up the phone to customers. I'm a machine with it.

To those asking how you get a job like this... you get really good at something businesses need not many people can do. I was on £21k doing something a lot of people can do before I started building my experience. It took five years to get to the £70k range.

Let me guess are you on the local council gravy train ?

I think there is something about working from home. I spend some days in the office, some at home, some out at different sites. When I am in the office I am constantly interrupted, people come and ask me things, nip in for a chat or to run something by me. When I am at home my productivity is exactly the same but I do what is needed in a quarter of the time I do it in the office.