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.

Sounds like he did a good thing by preventing the distribution of apple shite and stopping iPads getting into the hands of obnoxious Gen Z children. Have to disagree with Steve Jobs on this one.

Did you have to quote the whole post ... just for one sentence!

What line of work are you in @SpoonBaloon

What do you do ? How do you earn your money

DH leaves home at 5.30 am and commutes and hour and a half. Starts about 7am. He might have had calls in the night if he’s on meetings with Australia. Works all day- non stop meetings, phone calls, PA brings food / drinks in. Leaves around 7.30pm and gets home for 9ish. As soon as he’s back he checks his phone And emails and replies back whilst eating tea. Goes to bed and repeat

this is a silly question. You might as well ask what anybody's job consists of if its not a job that you know about.

I think your numbers are off. You talk about people earning c.150k but then mention high flyers playing golf all day.

If you are earning around 150k the likelihood is you’re an employee who has built a career and moved their way up the pole. They’ll be managing a few teams but will also be one of a number of teams being managers by someone else, who then answers to C suite.

This means they’ll actually still be connected to the work they’re doing. They’ll be sat around colleagues and will still very much be “desk based”. These are likely those who are under the most pressure in the company.

The long lunches and dinners and golf club stereotype will be C suite level. In most companies these will be earning at least 450k per year. I think it’s these people you’re interested in. There’s less pressure on these because they can stay afloat and move on after three years to another well paid job.

There are hard workers and grifters at every level. Many of those at the 150k level will have been lucky enough to be privately educated, get into a Big 4 and will have stayed there a few years. This doesn’t indicate talent.

I think they are largely paid for responsibility and expertise at that stage tbh. I’m not going to divulge actual earnings, but my director/board member dh mostly liaises, manages and networks - he spends most of his day speaking to people. He also makes decisions that involve many millions of £.

How on earth am I a troll?

I work in the insurance industry. Why?

I actually spoke into it and it wrote up
my bullet points and thoughts cos if you actually read it you can see it’s not generic!

PPS our CEO is on c£1.2million.

Work very, very hard. Take major decisions. Cope with enormous pressure.
Just how naive can you be, OP?

A good friend of mine earns more than £150k. He spends his working life sitting in a comfy chair looking at some small screens & looking out of the window. At 36,000 ft.

He is a senior training captain who flies Airbus A350 aircraft across the world, and trains junior pilots to do the same. But the actual flying is the easy bit (most of the time). The challenging part is that as captain he is legally, morally & contractually responsible & accountable for the safety of the aircraft and for the lives of the 350+ people on board. That responsibility is what keeps him awake at night, and that’s what he gets paid the big money to do.

I earn multiples of the figure posted in the OP.

I’m a single mum of 5-year old twins, but have to fit in work as a priority around them.
I’ll frequently have meetings at 6am with Japan and Singapore. Then a break to wake up the kids and bring them to school. Then back to work (WFH 100% of the time). I’ve a nanny for the afternoons, so I’m in meetings with the US until about 7pm/7:30. Often have meetings at 9pm/10pm after the kids are in bed.
Loads of decision making, frequently without all the necessary input information. Risk-taking based on the outcomes of the decisions. Constant worry about job security. Zero time for me (definitely no golf!) Not good for physical or mental health.

But luckily, very little travel, no networking events, no weekend work (unless called for a major incident), flexibility with my daily schedule to attend any kids events (school play, etc).

in our capatalist market, people get paid for the value they bring.

there really aren’t any cushy numbers.

a family member (in banking) recently seemed to have an easy wfh job £160k a year. Log in, have a cup of tea, hop onto a meeting and nod his head a lot.

I was like this is amazing. I work like a donkey in the NHS.

He was like nah I’m waiting to be made redundant. And then he was. It’s pretty ruthless nowadays.

I just thought your comment about cosplaying was quite dismissive of the contributions on this thread.
Apologies if this was not your intent.

Wow, 300k?

I know quite a few people earning that amount that rarely work over 40 hours a week and veey littke travel also.

Yes, there's a lot of responsibility and every hour of it is busy, very few are stressed because they have the experience and skill set required.

Golf and lunches? Your are confusing them with GP partners and NHS consultants who work privately.

This is basically my job too.

This is such an interesting thread! Thank you everyone who has provided insights about their day. I've never been (and wouldn't want to be) in one of these roles so it's fascinating to read about it.

I'm a self employed gardener. People usually look incredulous that I'm happy outside in all weathers. I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Husband earns £100k+ depending on bonus. I am a professional and earn 1/2 or sometimes 1/3 what he does and I definitely work longer hours than him. I am at my desk all day doing technical work and dealing with people and working on projects but I’m in the public sector. He is private. He spends 80% of his time either on the phone to customers / suppliers or his boss. He is really really good at thinking on his feet, at making very high pressure decisions at short notice on the basis that he is informed and experienced. He’s good at managing relationships and people and smoothing over difficult situations. Crucially he is confident - his last 2 jobs have been created on the basis of him identifying a risk / gap or opportunity and suggesting his company tailors his role to fit it. Then he asks for a salary he wants. The people who pay him like the fact that he takes problems away from them, or stops the problems occurring.

The OP asked a very specific question and what has followed is pages and pages of corporate bingo. It’s like an episode of The Apprentice.

“I work 12 hour days and go to lots of meetings” or “I make difficult decisions!”. “Sometimes I phone Australia.”

The actually useful contributions are few and far between. So yes, I was being dismissive.

Threads about careers on Mumsnet always bring out the fantasists who think it’s still 1986.

They WORK