To ask what high earners do all day?

[WearyCat]

I genuinely don’t know what CEOs, that type of role, people earning over 150K pa actually do. How do they spend their time?

Not whether they are worth the salary. But what do those jobs involve on a day to day basis? All I have is an idea based on films and guesswork. Is it golf? Lunches? Meetings? What sort of decisions are they making? What pressures are they facing?

I’m interested, curious, and I don’t see how I would ever find out in real life because I don’t move in circles where people have that sort of job.

Is it just me, or is "meetings" vague as fuck? 🤣

The glimpses I see into a day in the life of the CEO of my company (a FTSE100) include this kind of stuff…

They have days where they’ll be giving trading updates to the markets and investors (quarterly) - early morning (7am) giving a press conference about the company’s performance where they have to have robust answers prepped and memorised, difficult questions anticipated. Then they give a news interview on Bloomberg about performance and future strategy, taking messages from investors about whether they’re happy or not, then later in the day giving an interview which is broadcast out to the whole company to answer questions about the results, give everyone a pat on the back for contributing and reassurance about the future strategy etc.

Other days they’ll be visiting the company’s offices up and down the country, seeing how things are performing. Signing off complaints that have been sent to the CEO office. There will be a LOT of meetings - board meetings, senior leadership team meetings, board risk committees, 121s with their direct reports, meetings with the CFO and internal investment teams and external investors all over the world. Meetings with other companies about mergers and acquisitions or about selling off parts of the business.

Then some CEOs also do bits for other companies on the side, e.g. they’ll sit on the board as a NED (non-exec director) to give advice and challenge.

I wouldn’t want to do it!

DH earns not quite what was quoted in the OP, but would be classed a high earner. Basically he works his socks off, laptop is on 7.30am and he works pretty much solidly until 6/6.30pm. If he’s lucky he’ll have a sandwich away from his desk

Definitely no golf or leisurely lunches for him!

I earn about what you’ve quoted. I work, like you do. Long hours, technical work, lots of decisions, managing people (sometimes the hardest bit!). As a PP said, things that find their way to me often tend to be problems I need to find a solution for.

My dh was talking about this yesterday. Attend meetings and write emails.

I make decisions, mainly. Go to meetings, decide ways forward with things, then figure out what that looks like. I create organisational strategy and then work with other people to break it down into digestible parts, so other people can go off and do said parts.

DH earns multiples of what I do, and he looks at spreadsheets and tables all day, does things with them, has meetings about them, and as a result a multimillion pound building in Nicaragua goes up, or similar.

DH earns around £300k.

He works at home, in court or chambers (he’s a barrister) writing tens of thousands of words every day in advices, submissions, skeleton arguments, reading thousands of pages of evidence and bundles, talking to solicitors, having conferences with clients, writing and delivering talks and PowerPoints for seminars and conferences with solicitors. Or he’s at court or in tribunal, or travelling across the country to courts or tribunals, or occasionally to visit clients at home if they’re very ill. He works late at night, often away from home and usually both afternoons of the weekend.

He does not play golf, take long lunches or go to the pub in the afternoon.

And no, £300k does not buy the lifestyle you might assume…

You really can’t imagine what a headteacher does all day?

@nietzscheanvibe a typical meeting for me, would be with the CFO/Head of Treasury for clients borrowing billions of pounds. They want to talk about how they can protect their company from debt servicing costs spiralling if interest rate go up. So I give them an update on where interest rates are (market interest rates, not base rate), where they are expected to go under various economic circumstances and how to manage that risk using a variety of interest rate derivatives - basically fixing their interest rates. How much they should fix, how long for and what those rates would be. It’s my job to then go into the market and secure those fixed rates for them.

They work, like everyone else.

A lot of the very senior people I know professionally are very switched on. All over a topic that can take someone years to understand but takes them 5 mins! Can see big picture and ask pertinent questions.

Well, what the meetings are about depends on the job. A CEO will have board meetings once a month, regular meetings with clients and prospective clients, internal meetings with Finance, HR and operational teams, business strategy planning meetings. External speaking appearances and conferences. Lawyers meet with clients, opponents/lawyers on the other side of a deal, have internal meetings on case/transaction progress and strategy, deal with billing, attend court/tribunal hearings, travel nationally/internationally to see clients/attend conferences.

The more senior you are (in any sector) the more your job becomes less about the doing of that job (whether it be sales, professional services, or anything else) and more about the business of selling whatever the “job” or product is.

I think times have completely changed. Working for directors as a PA in 80s and 90s, I observed a lot of drinking, meeting with buddies, golf and other non- curriculum activities. Fridays off to the country post- lunch. In at 10am Mondays. People at ceo level have to be ever present in one way or another now.

This video might might help (always cracks me up!)

I think my sister must earn that sort of money.

It involves a lot of responsibility for decisions that involve huge sums of money, landing deals with clients, fire fighting, problem solving. Lots of meetings, lots of reports, lots of presentations and travel. It seems very very stressful.

My brother earns that and barely works at all, he’s the first to say so, he gyms, cleans his car, bakes sourdough, walks, socialises, generally lives his best life. He doesn’t have much responsibility, no people management, but he has very specialist knowledge and earns every penny through what he offers his company. I’m very proud of him. And he makes exceptional bread.

CEO of a small company - circa 100 employees. My days include meetings with potential and existing customers and partners to build an ongoing pipeline of work; internal meetings to turn those conversations into opportunity pipeline and drive through to landing work. Continually assessing company value proposition and services against market demand and evolving the offer. Assessing skills needed, ways to improve delivery and where to invest in transformation. Meeting SLT to keep all the weeks turning in the right direction. Meeting as many people in the company as possible on a regular basis - otherwise I wouldn’t understand enough about how things are working, what customers need, whether my employees are happy. I work about 100 hours a week, there’s a lot of travel, a lot of lunches, lot of context switching. I spend a lot of time worrying about whether I’ve got enough in the pipeline, whether cash-flow is sufficient to pay everyone and dealing with priority delivery issues. I don’t sleep
well, and I keep meaning to exercise more, but i couldn’t work for anyone else ever again .

Golf and lunch!?
Meetings, strategy, succession, risk analysis and business plans if lucky.
Putting out various fires.

exactly what my boss does. he is pulled in every direction. anything admin is sent to me. before covid I would often have to sit around waiting for him to come back to his desk to sign stuff, go through etc. thankfully with covid wfh etc we have docu sign teams messaging etc. makes things so much easier and no as much hanging around for me. he is a very fair boss and great to work for I must say

I'm only just in that bracket, promoted in summer. It's hard to describe without living it, it doesn't sound like much.

I'm in meetings most of the day, longer hours than I used to do but mine are OK and flexible where needed.

I help to protect the company from damaging mistakes. Try to educate people, try to find out what's going on and step in, try to stop more senior people doing stupid things.

I'd need to take ownership for things going wrong unless I could prove I'd done everything possible to stop it. And even then I'd need to clean up the mess and answer the questions.

I think what I do needs a certain type of mind and it isn't that common. Im ASD and a mathematician, I don't think that is uncommon though. I seem to see links others don't and maybe have a terrible opinion of humanity because I can quite accurately predict what stupid thing people are going to do.

Why are you asking? Are you trying to figure out a high salary career?

The people on golf courses are generally business owners networking, they probably do little else but fair chance they worked their arses off for years.

DH earns more than that doing a 40 hour week with occasional travel and relatively little stress. He has niche technical skills in a boom industry that few other people have, certainly in combination with also being personable and able to work well with others. He used to do more hours, travel and deadline stress in the first decade of his career, now he’s mostly past that. He certainly isn’t a CEO or doing anything with great responsibility though. Yes there’s occasional pub lunches and team social afternoons but no golf to my knowledge.

What does he do all day? Meetings with high ups and clients giving advice and feedback, guiding and mentoring more junior staff, planning future projects and mostly a lot of technical design stuff that I don’t begin to understand.

Being the geeky nerdy kid at school sometimes pays off big in adulthood.

My boss earns about that and his entire calendar seems to be made up of meetings, calls, meetings, “do you have a minute’s” and more meetings. He gets paid the big bucks to be where the buck stops and take responsibility for things going wrong. He’s always being told to be here there and everywhere at a moments notice as well.

Making very pressured decisions - mostly judgement calls. Told you must reduce headcount - who can you lose (answer - none, it will be bad whichever way you do it). Regularly having to choose between many bad outcomes and determine the least worst.

Taking risks - authorising spending a million quid in legal fees to defend a dispute and having the experience and expertise to weigh it up and take a position.

Giving people difficult news.

Having to take a 100 page report which has 20 5 page sections, each of which summarises the output of a big team of people, and very quickly read, understand, assess what needs to be questioned and challenged.

I used to earn a similar amount with reoccurring income, i worked very hard for 18 months then did sweet FA for 5 years

I'm not a CEO but what the CEOs I've worked with have to have is an overview of everything that's going on across their organisation - health and safety, sales, financial performance, public reputation, property, technology, marketing, operations. And, ultimately, they have to make decisions across all those functions.

Smart CEOs put smart people they can trust in charge of all these areas, but they still have to be responsible for it all. So all the meetings are because they need to keep in touch with all these people, delegate, respond and make decisions.