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.

I can’t play golf. And I don’t really eat lunch. I have a lot of meetings (commercial, H&S, HR, finance, buying, customer relations etc) and the buck stops with me. On high days or holidays, evenings or weekends, if the shit majorly hits the fan it comes to me. I am also the person who goes to prison if we get it really wrong. I spend an awful lot of time and money making sure we don’t.

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

But also this. The top people where i work are just very clever. Terrific memories, they seem to just understand everything and process complex information very quickly.

They are making a lot of high stakes strategic decisions, for example:

• are we investing our resources into building a Kindle, or an iPod, or iPhone although this is completely new area for us/risky
• Are we expanding into an international market
• what goals we have as a company/strategy to achieve them
• lots of crisis management

Generally dealing with shit from hospitals who dump all their shit on me; dealing with more shit from my directors who are dealing with shit from the centre; dealing with shit from the general public who have no idea what I do but are convinced it’s pointless because they believe the shit that is being spouted about us by our Secretary of State and media. I’m tired of the meetings, the abuse, the shit but I have a mortgage ans bills to pay so I stay and deal with it more and more.

I work in a private school. I know lots of people who are high up and wealthy. I know if I can call them and if there’s an issue with their dc they are able to drop everything and are at the other end of the phone.
I also know some that don’t pick up. They’re clearly doing it all wrong 🤭
My dh earns well and he can be found fraternising with golf, socials and the such. Not jealous at all 😳

Being part of a leadership team responsible for 30 different multi million pound / euro / dollar businesses.

Meetings. Risk based decision making. 3am meetings with China. 5am meetings with Thailand. 10pm meetings with America… sometimes in the same day. Being away from home most of the week / month. Weekend plans being kaiboshed at the ring of a phone. Having the back of my team and making sure they feel capable and equipped to do their job, whilst having their back if they do take a misstep and giving them the space to learn whilst managing any fallout or disruption.

I might not be saving lives or teaching the next generation of school kids… but I have a lot riding on my shoulders and there’s a lot that could go wrong if I’m not on my A game.

Slightly off topic, but I hear a lot about barristers' salaries plummeting in recent years and it not being worth the training etc- how would your DH feel about that statement? My DC is interested in this career but keeps being put off it, with more than one person saying it's hard to earn good money, etc. I'm not aware of the before or after so no idea what's led to any change?
£300k sounds like a very healthy salary!

I spend all day in meeting and then most of the evening doing the work that arose from the meetings.

They spend a lot of time sitting on Mumsnet all day, moaning about not getting help with childcare costs (sorry, couldn't resist).

I mainly have meetings. I'm the person contacted when something has gone wrong. When I'm not talking to people I'm mostly doing or directing PowerPoint decks that outline various strategic plan type things. i sometimes speak at events. Travel.

My husband earns 300-400k in a senior job in finance. He is meetings, all day every day. He is certainly not golfing! Either on zoom meetings with clients, or face to face meetings with clients. From 8am until 7pm.

My husband has meetings, meetings and more meetings. Travels regularly internationally often for 2 weeks at a time, Is ultimately responsible for the QHSE for 10000+ employees and sub contractors globally. Is technically on call 24/7. Does 12 hours days. Ultimately the buck stops with him. He’s very well paid circa £200k+bonus but has made lots of sacrifices. He’ll openly admit he wouldn’t be where he is now without my support.

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

Not necessarily. Notice how many times "meetings" gets mentioned in this thread. It's back-to-back-to-back meetings with everyone connected to the company all day every day, and having to play an active part in those meetings to boot. These are high-pressured social situations, with no let-up, more than they're high-pressured intelligence ones.

The bits about making the right decisions sound easy to me (for areas in which I know my shit). Selling them, persuading other people, not being pressured into misspeaking by those with different agendas - I couldn't do that and have no interest in trying. My ideal working life is one where I'm left alone to get on with what I do very well. The back-to-back meetings life sounds exhausting.

There are certainly questions raised about how the kinds of people who end up making the decisions tend to be the extroverts who gravitate towards this life...

For me it feels like someone brings you a problem, or a decision to be made. You have a limited time to ask the right questions and understand the issue, the options, and the implications. Then you make the decision. There’s no other grown up around, you’re the grown up.

you have to understand a lot about a lot. Not everything obviously, but you are expected to know stuff. Someone earlier said it was like an exam every day, that’s true. You have to work things out because no one else can.

and it’s pressure

I don’t, if I’d chosen to have DC, I wouldn’t have the career I do.
I will admit to being utterly horrified at child care costs though.

My husband is a CFO. Not a lunch or golf in sight. He works solidly all day. Meetings, operations decisions, budgeting, forecasting, data analysis, monthly spending reviews. In bad times he is in a 8am morning meeting every day, on call all weekend, on emails every evening and at his laptop til midnight. His head is on the block all day every day.

Meetings and making the decisions. Reading the room. Making personal connections with important people.

that high up, you don’t do the grunt work, you are the one who stay yes or no.

I’m a lawyer. I don’t earn that but the partners do. In my area they spend a lot of time supervising work. So they might read several reports in a day written by other lawyers and have various conversations with lawyers about particularly difficult issues. They have to spot any errors in a very short time and often make risk based judgments on points of law e.g does the client qualify for tax relief on a particular transaction and is there a better but legal way to do it?

The other main thing they do is communicate with clients and prospective clients. They often deal with the “harder” conversations e.g telling the client they shouldn’t do something because it’s tax avoidance, discussing our fees etc., occasionally telling them that something has gone wrong. Also communicating with lawyers acting for other parties, again often dealing with the more contentious points.

This is alongside constant other requests- to approve branding materials, holiday requests, bills issued to clients, file opening, attending or giving training or networking events etc.

I think what can be stressful about it is the number of decisions you’re making in such a short time. If you make a mistake or miss something it could literally cost the client millions and the firm would be negligent. There is more potential work than could possibly done so you have to be very good at prioritising and striking a balance between winning new work, managing your team and doing the work you’ve got. You never know what your day will be like and are very rarely dealing with anything routine.

Write code, go to meetings, get things through regulatory committees. Occasionally stand my ground and prevent even more senior people from violating data protection law because they don’t pay attention during endless training.

im also supposed to find time to mentor junior staff and make sure they are on track to eventually do my job in 20 years.

Surely you know what a headteacher does? High up roles do similar things - policy, strategic planning, meetings, dealing with employees…

fwiw my husband earns a lot more than £150k and he doesn’t manage anyone! He isn’t ’high Up’ as he works for a very small finance firm.

My DH worked in IT support when we first met on £40k and he'd usually fix problems really quickly then watch films and game! He's worked up to a higher earner managers role now and has meetings upon meetings, big projects to work on and a ton of travel. When he goes long haul it's knackering and he misses weekends with me and the kids to travel. He also has a Monday night meeting 9-10.30pm every week- it's a busy and stressful sacrifice

My ExH earns more than that.

he builds mathematical models of financial products and implements them in various computer programming languages.

he’s got a degree in computer science and has significantly upskilled in maths since leaving university. The combination of being able to understand the maths and actually implement it in code is rare.

there’s a lot of ex-mathematicians and physicists in finance.

It depends on the job, obviously. I'm around about there in a role in sport. There's lots of meetings, negotiations, strategizing, forward planning, budgeting, partnership work, relationship building, reporting, QC... Communication is massive. Emails, calls, messages, constantly.

I'm not a golf woman, but I've got some videogames in my office if I ever get ten minutes for lunch 😅

I unusual tell my kids I do two things at work: problem solving and decision making.

I have on average 10-15 meetings per day, and my work involves staying close to the markets and customers so I can make decisions on strategy, product strategy, pricing, regulation, HR issues etc etc. The list really is endless

I travel to different offices, I meet clients in their offices (and never for golf) and I get on stage and speak at events or to journalists. Long days, always 10hrs minimum