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.

In my experience living with a high earner (approx 150k incl bonus) he is
paid that much after years of working his way up the ladder and gaining skills and expertise which make him a subject expert. His hours aren’t too bad, they are intense but weekends aren’t required and evenings are occasional. What is required is the ability to constantly fix problems, review budgets, turn presentations round in a hour, review others work, fix their problems, own it when things go wrong, make quick
judgement calls, makE constant high level
strategic decisions in a casual way as if he’s talking about the weather. and talk to the other big boss people about important things. It’s all very brilliant and skilful and we don’t take for granted his high salary as know it could be gone at any time.
he then has to come down after doing that all day and parent small children without a break. If he had more free time to decompress he would definitely be less stressed

Yes but doing What exactly? That is what OP is asking.

I work from home mostly so I'll give you roughly how my day looks:

• log on, check email. If anything that's really important comes up then I immediately deal with it. Example, when Russia invade Ukraine I needed to decide what we do with our global marketing and ads campaigns. I quickly decided to stop all ones in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus so had to write summary of what I wanted and why and then send to all the areas that actually deal with the specifics print ads, social media, Web ads etc). Sometimes (like when the Queen died) I'll take advice from people who know more about whatever area and then make a decision based on their advice. (With the stuff in Hong Kong right now, same thing.)
• if nothing urgent, then just work through in order that I want to before first meetings
• meetings for me are usually online and usually 30mins. I can be in meetings from 9am-6pm on bad days (even longer on really bad ones). That often means no breaks for lunch just running off to the loo and showing up late for the next meeting and drinking soup in a mug while in a meeting (or sneaking a sandwich while off camera if I'm desperate). Meetings can be anything from talking about proper plans and strategy to dealing with problems (people, office politics, broken systems, budget, resourcing). I'm paid a lot because I'm good at what I do: I know a lot, I read a lot to keep up to date and I'm really good at solving problems with that knowledge... and making people feel less stressed about the change
• if I don't have meetings or have some gaps I'll check overall where we are for our goals (financial and deliverables). If there's something that isn't where it should be I'll spend more time on that... and often set more meetings. Oh, and create power points to sell whatever strategy or success is happening.
• end the day with checking final emails for urgent stuff

Rinse and repeat

One of my BIL’s is a corporate officer, not the CEO but one of the leadership team. He makes decisions that are worth millions to the company- that level of responsibility would frighten the life out of me!

Let's not kid. Most salary taxed. I am heavily taxed in Scotland to pay for lazy gits. Let's start a thread about them. "Thats not my... money" each lay about can give a glimpse of their day.

Reading briefings, and thinking....... then deciding. It looks idle to a person who is told what to do all day everyday.

This.

Also, the reality doesn't look glamorous for films

Holy shit that’s wild. I earn more than that and have absolutely nowhere near that responsibility.

9am watch old Jezza K episodes while eating coco pops.
10am wake kids up from lie in. Little sure not at school today. Having a mental health day.
11am check money paid in from benefits. Book holiday. All inclusive 5* turkey.
1230 argue with ex about taking kids at weekend. Hot date to plan for and lots of free wine.
3pm go on Facebook and check in at hospital or tell people road accident.
5pm sit down to another bowl of cocopops before a McDonald's dinner.
7pm take lots of pics with filters and post on fb. Filters surely hide ugliness. Right?

You’re a teacher and you don’t understand what a head teacher does all day. Are you serious, OP?

In my industry that's not CEO type salary- more like 3 levels below (varies depending on role)

At that level there's a huge mix of roles.

• some people are exceptionally busy, constantly attending meetings and talking to people to gather info, make recommendations, keep their teams producing whatever their specific output is. They have wide communication circles and their job is to coordinate across different areas and teams to make things happen.
• others are more focused on leading teams/departments, but have less upward and outward communication (so they mostly report to their direct manager and speak to their direct reports)
• some are technical SMEs, their job is less about managing and more about specialist knowledge and skills
• others are in more fire fighting roles, so will have quieter periods but are the person called on when shit hits fan.
• product managers sit around this territory, they liaise with clients and internal folk like sales, work out what needs to be built, get it agreed, spec it, work with technical teams to get it built, tested and out the door.

Almost all of these have strong technical/specialist skills in whatever their area is.

The more seniors - C suites especially- do spend an enormous time in meetings getting information thrown at them and being asked to make decisions. A huge amount of their value is in reading people - working out who they can rely on, who produces good analysis, who has a good strategic mind, etc as they cannot physically do the work themselves.

I earn £140-£160k.

Endless meetings and problem solving. Making decisions, fast, all day long. Writing presentations. PowerPoint is my daily foe. I do not play golf. I’m at my desk from 7.30am most days, work through lunch and normally finish at about 7pm, though can work longer. I worked today from 9am til 1pm.

The work is fine. It’s the responsibility and the pressure. I have full on decision fatigue by the end of the day and my husband learned very quickly not to ask me what I want for dinner, bless him. No more decisions. You pick.

Whenever I've sat near senior managers at places I've worked, I always got the impression that they didn't do a great deal, most of the time.
The head of finance at my last job spent most of her days jewellery shopping online and looking for holiday cottage destinations for her and her partner. She'd also enjoy wisecracking and gossiping with anyone who passed through our department.
But when there was a crisis, she would snap to attention and with a cool head, successfully steer us away from whatever calamity it was, and some of them scared the heck out of me.
I assume it was that that got her a massive salary!

I mean i earn just the bottom of what you specified op.

Typical day:

• 7am - call with asia before work. There's been a fuck up, a regulatory filing has been missed, ive got to decide if we make a voluntary disclosure to a goverment body which will risk losing a commercial license, leave it & risk a huge fine, pay a lot to file it late & definitely pay a smaller fine. I've also got to identify process/IT changes to ensure it can't happen again.
• 8.45 get to the office. I've had at least 100 emails over night - for the second half of the US day & all of the Asian one. Most of them are asking my opinion on difficult technical areas, or want an answer to a problem, or are complaining about something. I read quickly, but can't get through them all so I have to know what/who to prioritise.
• 9.15 budget meeting. Ive got to save 20% of a £5m department budget. Its a budget that already got reduced last year and I'm supposed to magically get the same work done with less. I defend and negotiate to get an extra 500k for my department, but have to agree to take on responsibility for two people who's line manager is off with stress.

• 9.45 - more of the emails. Another 26 came in while i was in the budget meeting. One is a resignation from a junior member of staff. We couldn't afford to promote him so he's got a better paid job elsewhere. I get HR on the phone fast about getting recruitment started and write a job spec in about 6 minutes.

• 10am: department meeting. My staff give me updates on problems with an IT roll out, they want more money to fix it. There's some good news, a project has been completed and gone really well - i give the project team some great feedback.
• 10.30: write report for board. Ive got a board meeting about a serious issue next week. I'll write a report which will be read by them in advance then I'll be grilled on it. The report needs to be a precise balance - enough detail, not too much, explaining some technical issues in a way a non expert can understand. The report asks the board to review and approve a decision with huge financial cost and its important that its worded correctly.
• 11.30 HR meeting about a colleague who's due to return from mat leave and has requested flexible hours that will be really difficult for us to make work.
• 12.00. There were sandwiches left over from an external event and one of the administrators knows my diary is jammed and has left some on my desk. I eat while continuing to deal with the email pile - another 46 have come in.
• 12.15: Strategy working group : a call with two other leaders to develop the cross functional strategy for the third and fourth quarter. We've got incredibly difficult targets so we've got to come up with something creative/different.

• 12.45 - HR ring back about recruitment for the guy who resigned, arguing about the pay. I dig out some industry reports and recent job posts to support it and send across.
• 13.00 - call with lawyers about the fuck up in asia. A junior is on with me, after it i get her to go and research something that's been discussed.
• 13.30 - meeting with US team. They need to update me on several projects that have hit stage gates where they need decisions from me.
• 14.30 - a rare potentially nicer bit of the day I've been invited by a key stakeholder of mine to attend an event to represent the company, near the office. It turns out to be awful, a horrendous (expensive) sales pitch. As I'd been asked to speak on a panel I'd spent timd preparing. It's been a waste of 1.5 hours of my time.

-16.00 another 35 emails have come in. One is from someone who's heard that joe bloggs is leaving for better pay, and wants more money. I know they are probably underpaid and my team can't manage the workload if i lose another person. Its another call to HR.

• 16.15 my boss comes past. He's heard about the fuck up in asia and wants an explanation and to know what we are doing about it.
• 16.30 - i join an industry wide network meeting that discusses government policy in our area. I pass back some information from it to my team.
• 17.00 - my team have been running calculations for a project. I spend 30 mins reviewing & checking them, and going back with questions/changes.

17.30 - i dash out as its my day to collect DC.

19.30 - back online to clear a few more emails.
20.00 - teams call with US counterpart. His budget is also being cut - can my team absorb work from his? No! He is a difficult guy to handle and its a stressful call, I'm left feeling bruised.
20.30 - I read through what I've drafted on my board meeting report. I'm missing some data, so I draft an email to one of my staff asking them to prepare it. I set the email on a timer to send at 9am as I don't like emailing my staff in the evenings.

This middle paragraph describes exactly why my partner gets paid so much (and why I couldn’t do what he does in a million years, takes a special skillset and nerves of steel)

Why don't you tells us what you do all day. We can then decide if its worth us working so hard so you can benefit from the tax payer

I know a few people who probably earn in that area.

Tbh to me their lives look like unrelenting misery. But presumably there is something in it for them, beyond the money which they don’t have any time to spend. I’m guessing it can be satisfying to be in the room where the big decisions are made.

One is CEO of a regulatory body. She is in meetings when she isn’t travelling, making decisions. We have a social event once a month which she gets to about half the time.

I don’t know that they work four times harder than me (healthcare worker). Probably twice as hard. And I think the decisions I make affect a whole life at a time in very important ways. But I do know the decisions they make affect huge numbers of people, more immediately.

The work is fine. It’s the responsibility and the pressure. I have full on decision fatigue by the end of the day and my husband learned very quickly not to ask me what I want for dinner, bless him. No more decisions. You pick.

This really hits the nail on the head for me

Mainly meetings & phone calls.
Fund-raising for multimillion pound infrastructure projects. Political lobbying.
Firefighting & crisis management.
Making strategic decisions about the future of the business.
Meeting investors. Lawyers. Bankers.
Hiring & firing.

It's way more interesting than punching a till or stacking shelves!

You’re a teacher and you’re asking this questions? Jesus.

Hard to have much sympathy for them. They're hardly wondering where their next meal is coming from like many people.

Yeah
With the big fan you pensions, job for lives
Joke

No, most teachers don't know anything beyond school, which is why they fail to open kid's eyes to the opportunities beyond what they see in their small home towns. They think what jobs are available in Callington not the ones in California. Small town thinking.