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 tell you exactly as I’m not the one doing it. Meetings. Managing. Decisions - about clients, about staff, about budgets, the direction of the firm, motivating young lawyers, working with outreach programs (he was associated with a Social Mobility charity). My DH earned £500k. Lawyer and managing partner of a firm with 750 lawyers (a number earned more than him), associates and support staff. He left home about 7.30 and got home about 8pm (45 min commute). Travelled a lot - one year he was away 120 nights. This was usually visiting other offices around the world representing his office. One five day trip could include Tokyo, Sydney, back via Chicago. Once went to NY for lunch with a client - out in the morning, had lunch, overnight flight back, straight to the office from the airport. Lunches were working lunches or else he ate nothing. We never took a holiday that he didn’t have to spend several hours on conference calls. No golf, but he was at the gym doors at 6am six days a week to swim. Very stressful, though he loved it. It killed him in the end - massive heart attack at 51.

I don't earn that much but for my area of the country I'm well north of the 90th centile earnings wise.

I spend my time finding and fixing errors, or preventing errors happening or preventing problems arising. That involves talking to people, finding out what they are doing/have been doing, assessing it against the framework and then adjusting processes so it follows the framework. The frameworks are thousands of pages long and have lots of complexity and the things we do are very unusual so often don't fit into them neatly. Failures can end up with fines in some circumstances or our CEO getting sacked as a worst case scenario.

On the preventing side it involves seeing what they are planning to do, and then working out how that fits with the regulations and how we can facilitate it/adapt it/minimise risk from it/minimise ongoing manual work arising from it. It also involves giving them enough of a lay person's understanding of what the risky/complex things/red flags are that mean they should call me in the future.

I also then have to explain this stuff in a way that is understandable to people who aren't experts in the field, either for them to make a decision, or to be suitably briefed, or to explain why they can't do what they want to do. I have to provide training to other qualified professionals. I sit on national steering groups to make sure potential issues with framework changes are dealt with up front rather than having to try and fix them retrospectively.

Edit post: plus the usual staff management stuff, plus responsibility for the people reporting in to me and the areas they manage and therefore understanding the work they do enough to be content they are doing it right.

Plus dealing with external stakeholders to convince them we are doing our jobs appropriately and that they don't need to intervene.

Rubbish

Typical day may include many meetings, reading reports and strategies.
Dealing with regulators, shareholders etc.
Corporate level PR- journalist meetings.
Presenting at Town Halls/staff conferences etc.
After work maybe networking dinners, awards ceremonies etc but it’s still work.

That's a good earning for a Prof. Mine is prof and head of research centre and not quite as much. I have heard that those coming in as profs from institutions can negotiate higher salaries than those being internally recruited even to named chairs.

Mine earnt about £250k 8 years ago. He wrote code, discussed code, presented code, taught code and fixed code. He’s worked 15 hours a day and came home and wrote more code. In the end he died from a heart attack brought on by stress.

I usually 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

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22egh3ok4cP0T7UZRmP6TMLErZYWMN-l&si=K5W8Ka9Essoj9gcp there is a podcast called Diary of a CEO which would help you gain the insight you’re looking for.

My brother probably earns similar but in New Zealand.

he was a journalist and is now in PR.

he described his job as trying to stop the minister saying anything too stupid and clearing up the shit when the minister inevitably opened his mouth and did say something stupid.

i suspect this involved a lot of lunches with various journalists and it definitely involved a certain amount of persuasion on his part. The boy was born with charm.

Many, many meetings plus constant phone calls. Responding to questions via email (requests for technical or process advice). I do all actual 'work' - writing Board papers etc. in the evening after my kids are in bed. Delegating tasks to team, dealing with personnel matters. Planning months ahead so no deadlines get missed. Most weeks there will be some epic shit show which details everything anyway. Generally carrying the weight of knowing the buck stops with you and therefore considering if there's anything you've missed/should be looking at next. And of course frantically searching for another job with better work/life balance!

I wish it was, trust me. It’s a very niche role with next to no oversight.

VP in our company work far too much. Even on their holidays they reply to emails and attend meetings. They work crazy hours and have a lot of pressure.

They attend meetings, look at company acquisitions, resources and how to best run projects etc.

I don’t envy them at all, for the amount of hours they work it’s not worth it imo

You get two types of people though - those who work to live and those who live to work

dh is the latter - he thrives off his job tbh and would probably do it for free!

whereas I don’t mind my job and enjoy the fact it’s mentally challenging but I only do it for the salary really!!

Agree. My dad was a sales director for a major global corporation during that time. He will tell you himself he was very busy playing golf, wining and dining and travelling around the world. He was paid handsomely for this 'work' too.

I've got one 'em Ball and Cups things, like in the photo here.

It's bigly difficult and focuses my brain and keeps me on my toes. Everybody here in the WH (White House) says I am reel good.

DH was a partner in city law firm earning a package over 150k. He dealt with fewer cases than more junior staff, but they were exceptionally complex. He worked really, really hard and his stress levels were hard to cope with.

He lane-switched a few years into a job that pays around a sixth of his previous salary, but I'm relieved and happy for him that he did.

I am a CEO of a startup.

A usual week is about 70 hours. The work is incredibly hands on for me.

Business planning and strategy - constantly evaluating the plans and making changes.

Financial - scrutinising p&l, cashflow, expense and budget management, supplier engagement and negotiation. Overseeing taxation. Foreign exchange.

HR - hiring, JD's, firing (luckily not often)

Sales & Marketing - content development, campaign oversight, forecasts, getting involved with high value clients to nurture and develop peer relationships. I am extremely hands-on as our industry is regulated so our content is our IP and I have to ensure I lead by example.

Thought leadership and industry engagement (conferences, certifications etc).

I am a bit like a conductor and need to enable cohesion in the team - so lots of meetings.

Risk management - managing the operational risk register. More meetings, when required

Reporting and governance (financial, environmental, social and governance).

We are small so I double as the Head of Ops & Impact.

In the past 3 years I have had 2 working lunches and rarely leave the office - certainly not for golf or anything like that.

I don't get paid much (it's my business) but I imagine I would get paid £150-£180k on the open market. I am working to an exit / equity raise.

There seems to be some kind of weird need on here to compare higher earners with lower earners as higher earners do nothing all day.

If you speak to high earners, they tell you that they get paid for their experience, the ability to make decisions using complex inputs and risks, being on call all times, the ability to think. Essentially carrying the mental load for the decisions which impact a great deal of outcomes and results. They don’t get paid for physical exertion.

It’s no use comparing to someone on hourly paid or low salary work.

All that plus it’s not all day. It’s all day, night, weekends, during holidays. There’s no switching off.

eta: I’m not talking about 150k job but a c- suite position.

there’s a lot of dealing with difficult people and as someone else said, from one shit show to another constantly.

I'm not a 150k earner but I know what our CEO does. Meetings, meetings more meetings and smoothing over issues which need him to be involved.
But the conversations are high stakes and high money.

A lot of meetings, stress, papers to justify decisions and decisions that they are later down the line held accountable for….no golf and the only lunch is at the desk in the 3 mins between one shit show and the next

80 hour plus weeks, calls and meetings ALL day. Issues, stat planning and union meetings mostly. Weekends catching up on emails.
Manufacturing.

Agree about being on call - I don't get to go on holiday without my laptop. Just been away and only had weekends where I could 100% disconnect. It's tough.

And you would need to be prepared (have read most of the paperwork) for every single meeting. The people who get to these roles have an immense capacity to hoist in information, and retain it short term, and make responses to equally clever people who have also read the briefing notes, who are there with a different agenda.

I used to write corporate annual reports and most of the big chiefs I met were incredibly impressive in their command of everything happening in huge companies. Most CEOs I met were awesomely on top of their job, and I used to write 12 or 15 big company reports each year in the 1990s. When I say big companies, we are talking S&P 500 or FTSE100.