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’m a lawyer and earn around £400k.

The big picture is that I am required to advise clients on highly complex matters at lightning speed, in the knowledge that it will cost them millions (sometimes tens or hundreds or millions) if I or my team are wrong. The advice and solutions we put in place require huge amounts of technical knowledge, detailed research, analysis of large volumes of data, extremely high quality drafting and near perfect error control. Clients can often treat us like shit because they think that is only fair given our hourly rate.

I start my day answering emails at 6.30am and that runs through until I sleep. I work most weekends. New things come in all the time and the learning curve is very steep.

I have multiple calls and meetings per day and am called into urgent unscheduled meetings at the drop of the hat - eg can you join a board meeting in 1 hour on a matter you haven’t dealt with before to advise the client on a decision which is business critical.

I manage a team of 30 who interrupt me through the day and require my sign off for their decisions and advice (also on complex issues). The buck stops with me. I deal with the team’s unreasonable and unhappy clients when issues are escalated to me. I have other additional management and risk-related roles within the firm on top.

I am required to market the firm and bring in millions of pounds worth of business. I am constantly in (subtle) sales mode. Most encounters with professionals or work contacts are tainted by the thought about whether I can persuade this person to give me work.

I have never played golf. I often miss lunch and other meals. Client lunches are tricky affairs: lengthy sales pitches which eat into the time I have available to do the actual work. I’d rather have an al desko.

There is no off switch. The money comes with a huge amount of responsibility and stress.

Wanna swap?

So, mine uses a specialised expertise garnered over a 35 year career to advise his company and governments that they contract with. This involves writing and commissioning reports, verifying those reports, presenting the knowledge contained therein. He meets with the senior ministers and heads of state from all over the world, including our own. He is a director of more that 30 international subsidiaries of his company so reviews operations, legal and financial issues and the documentation concerned therein. His company employs 80-100,000 people around the world and he is jointly responsible for their safety (complex and dangerous industry), their careers and in keeping the company operational and profitable so that those employees remain in work and the families who depend on them are supported. He works a 10-11 hour day as standard, but is on call 24/7 as it’s a global company and has not had a holiday in years that did not involve him taking time out from family to attend to business matters. He does sometimes go to the rugby or Wimbledon on corporate entertainment, usually on a Saturday though which pees him off as he’d rather be at home with his nearly adult kids and the dogs.

He feels lucky to do the work he does, though, because he is bloody well paid and it enables him to nurture the talent and careers of those new to his company or industry, to see the innovations they can make that may change the world one day. However, he knows what he does is not as valuable as a surgeon, nurse or research scientist, for example.

My dh had to retire because a combination of the pressure and the hours needed would have driven him insane if he stayed on. Spreadsheets, accounts , planning , dealing with difficult clients, negotiating suppliers and transport, personnel issues all added up, couldn’t take a holiday completely as needed to do the banking. He did seem to have incredibly high sudoku averages though 😁

Planning, making efficiency changes, analysing data to identify what changes will save on costs, determining when/how to switch systems without disrupting the business, working within margins to ensure the business is able to pay its staff, bills, rent and energy costs Etc.
There’s more, but it’s a bit different than teaching to a curriculum - it’s more (financially) rewarding, but not necessarily more fulfilling - depending on who you work for!

Just going to add… it involves meetings, meetings and more meetings. Travel all over the world to have MORE meetings. Often with security guards because many places they operate in are not exactly holiday destinations and employees have been killed. There are conference calls and zoom meetings. Like PP above his working day generally starts by 7am (after a 40-60min commute depending on which office) and he is rarely home before 730. He continues to field emails and texts all evening and at weekends and may have to take meetings in the middle of the night to accommodate teams in other time zones and high ranking ministers in other countries that he’d rather not piss off.

This is the £500,000 question! Every day is different, I really can’t predict what each day looks like. If I’m doing my job well, no one notices. If I make a mistake, it costs the company millions as well as reputational damage. Some days I might be able to take a long lunch, other days I might not be finished before midnight.
With jobs like these you can’t walk into them
immediately after graduating, it’s only after years and years of working in lower level
jobs that you have the experience to be able to make decisions at this level.

edit to add: I am never off duty, I always have my phone on me and take my laptop on ‘holiday’. I even took calls in hospital after delivering my child by caesarean. Totally my choice, but the point I’m making is that jobs at this level are 24/7.

I really don't understand your question. It reeks of "i don't know what they're doing so they must be doing nothing". Im not a CEO but am a high earner. Various different roles. I work all the time. I've just logged off after working for the last 5/6 hours. Not sure i can explain what exactly I was doing or frankly why its any of your business. I am paid well for what I do but am very highly trained (basic medical training, additional post grad training and qualifications, decades of experience and ongoing training and courses). Your OP is a little insulting tbh.

CEOs (and other senior leadership for their area of responsibility) are constantly deciding: do we do THIS or THAT. All wrapped in the constant question of what can I ignore and what do have to spend my time on? Because they can’t do everything but getting it wrong is catastrophic.

Which actions are going to make us the most money in the short term, which is going to add to our longer term success?

Where can we make major cuts in costs in the coming years? What will need to do to make that happen? What partnerships will strategically increase our brand? How do we turn that into profit?

What threatens us? Is our manufacturing in China at risk from the trade war between the US has instigated? Or other political machinations? Are our trade secrets being leaked? How do we protect our selves? Is out R&D coming up with stuff that will see us into the next decade? If not how the fuck do we ensure they do? Do we need to fete experts from our competitors? Or build more talent in-house? Have we hedged against major increases in prices in our essential commodities? Is political unrest likely to lead to difficulties in delivering our product? Or disrupt the markets we sell to? Can we hedge against that? Do we lower investment because of the risk? What new markets are we best placed to exploit? What are the risks of doing so and is it worth it? How do we convince the banks we are still a good risk and they shouldn’t pull our loans? How do I convince the board my vision is the right one for the company? Are my senior teams doing their jobs well or do I need to shore up/replace any of them?

They are rarely doing the research themselves, more likely reading a lot of information provided by others, assimilating it and using their experience to decide whose plan to go with, likely with some modifications they suggest (or ask for chances). The most “original” work they do will be in relationships with the board, strategic partnerships, media and politicians. And being able to articulate the problems their industry and their company faces to regulators. They are basically sales people.

I think it’s pretty shocking you have no idea what your head of school does. To be a professional and have no professional interest in what support is required to create the environment you work in is pretty poor.

The higher up you go and the more you earn the more it’s about making decisions rather than doing the day to day work. So everyone’s getting on with whatever jobs they’re doing (dependent on the kind of business, obviously!) and when they come to a point they need input / can’t continue alone, they refer up to their manager for a decision. The more complex and high risk the decision, the further those managers have to go up as the more cover you need. Eventually only the person in charge of the whole thing can make the hardest decisions as ultimately the buck stops with them. That’s why they’re paid the big bucks - to make the big decisions and shoulder the biggest risks. If they get it wrong there are major consequences so they can’t make mistakes, hence the salary that reflects that pressure and expertise. If the lower workers make mistakes they should be small ones that are easily weathered. That’s the principle.

Which means in reality, yes, often a lot of meetings! But those meetings could be pretty bloody intense and high pressure! Also the higher up you are the more autonomy you tend to have with your work as no one is telling you what to do - you don’t need the supervision. So your day might be quite changable and unpredictable and even sometimes not always busy - but then flat out and battle stations with little notice.

I’ve done training in setting salaries by evaluating jobs and autonomy, risk, expertise are all factors in salary. Work to strictly defined parameters using skills most people have that are easily trained or picked up (e.g. stacking shelves) - long experience or education not required - and with little operational risk due to close management = low salary. Setting goals for the whole company and making decisions based on long experience / extensive knowledge or training and education (e.g. law or medicine or electrics or IT perhaps) and with no one to refer to when things go wrong = high salary.

DH is on around £100,000pa in the charity sector. I don't 100% know what he does all day - lots of meetings, managing people and firefighting problems. He's had to travel abroad for extended periods.

Mostly, I know that each time he's moved upwards in various charities, he's become more stressed. Sleeps less, bit more snappy with the kids, more forgetful. He rarely seems to work 9-5. Often he'll come down for dinner and then go straight back to work or work straight through without lunch. Recently someone at his work, at a similar level to him, had a heart attack and passed away in his 50s. I worry about him a lot.

I hope it is a goady made up thread otherwise the person posting is responsible for shaping young minds on a daily basis and the fact she can't imagine what someone in a high paid job does and is asking the question is, quite frankly, terrifying.

It's just part of the ongoing narrrative that high earners do fuck all for their money and deserve to be slated.

We need to encourage women especially to earn more. Not witter on about golf and lunches.🙄Earning money is not a crime.

This is a good point - I know 2 very high earners (£200k + occasional obscene bonuses) who both plan to retire early. Not because they fancy it, but because they can’t sustain their work-life balance beyond 50

Thanks to all the informative answers- you have helped a lot. I have a better mental image now. (Someone said they had been a PA in the 80s/90s and this may be where the golf/lunch impression came from. My mental image very out of date.)

for those who think I’m knocking high earners, I’m not. But I’ve never been one and never likely to be one, nor know anyone who is, and so these jobs are as remote as the moon to me in terms of visualising what they do. It’s not like ‘author’ or ‘surgeon’ or ‘racehorse trainer’ where I have some idea of what their activities might look like. ‘CEO’ as a job title (also COO, CFO, etc) doesn’t really give much away.

someone said I ought to know what headteachers do, and that’s fair. I used to know because I could see them doing it! I could imagine what their job entailed and I could also see the steps towards it, deputy HT, head of department and so on.
Then I had a break from working in education, and now going back in the landscape is very much altered with MATs and even CEOs of colleges, who are much less visible, their work is less visible, and often they’re not even teachers by qualification/ work history, so while I can see what the HT of one school does, I’m less sure about the positions above them (where they exist) or how to get myself into such a position, if I should want to (I don’t).

Hopefully this reassures those who thought it was a salary-bashing thread, and thanks those who took the time to explain an answer to the question 🙂

I used to say I'm not paid for what I do, I'm paid for what I'm able to do!

Into work for 9, emails, meetings, leave the office at 4.20, home for the kids. No evening kr weekend work, WFH 3 days a week. Love it.

All the OP had to do was read a few CEO or senior management job ads online ... But no, e teacher admits to gross ignorance and a fair degree of prejudice. If a high earner asked the same of teachers, do they just play with paper and glue all day?, they would be roasted. I work in the investment industry and make decisions that can impact people's pensions. I feel that responsibility. My renumeration is part compensation for taking that responsibility, but it also relates to my accrued knowledge and skills etc but also to the fact that when required I will work through the night, cancel weekend plans and even holidays. It does make me wonder about the intellectual ability and integrity of this teacher.

I work to directors who earn that and more. They do spend a lot of their day to day time in meetings and writing emails (as do I!). The big thing is they have to make calls that may impact multi million pound investment decisons or impact millions of customers. So many of those meetings are about taking advice and evidence from people at my level in order to help them make those decisions.

There is also a lot of reporting and accountability to Boards and politicians.

As someone said
youre not paid for what you do, you’re paid for all the knowledge, skills, and experience that means you can make big decisions well.

Glad you feel better informed @WearyCat. It matters a lot that teachers understand the range of possibilities and the scope ahead for the young minds they are shaping.

I used to be an executive coach working with senior leaders in global firms. People earning over a million a year.

They basically make decisions but those decisions are based on information provided by the people below them. So absolutely endless meetings, presentations, conferences.

During the banking crisis for example decisions had to be made immediately so the huge wealth of historical data had to be understood and interpreted.

Sometimes the work is also the minutiae of managing difficult relationships.

You ve just described mu husband job. Whe he is done with this one it will be his last one and will focus on sitting boards.

he is exhausted now and dont think he could do another one.

It’s hard to be specific without giving out the kind of information you shouldn’t give out on a public forum about your workplace but I’ll try.

If I take tomorrow as an example.
9am - catch up with my UK based team to make sure everyone had their priorities for the week and there are no blockers to any projects, if there are I’ll help with escalations and re-prioritising
10am - Project A steering committee - reviewing progress, Risks, Actions, Issues & Dependencies
10:30am - Asked for some guidance about Data Retention and deletion mechanisms for a specific technical product, so having a call with the product team to discuss the requirements
11:30am - very very very large opportunity that could bring in enough revenue over a 5 year contract term to quadruple the global company revenue. Call to; assess the requirements, make decisions about what products and services we’ll bid, how much we can afford to invest in anticipation that we might win it to put us in a good position, what changes would be needed to company structure etc
1pm - Project B - Security gate - discussion on recently completed and upcoming changes, possible security implication of the change, risk assessment and business justifications, rollback strategies if it goes tits up, agreeing verification checks and reviewing outcomes of those done so far.
2pm - Headcount review with HR. Discuss any open positions, any upcoming recruitment, any new positions that need role descriptions/benchmarking/budget approval
2.45pm - catch up with my US based team to make sure everyone had their priorities for the week and there are no blockers to any projects, if there are I’ll help with escalations and re-prioritising
3.30pm - Leadership team meeting, feed up to the Exec on what my team is doing. Wins, challenges, decisions needed.
5pm - Kick off call for another bid/opportunity. Briefing from the proposals/sales team on what the opportunity is, whether there are any requirements we don’t currently meet, what level of detail is required from the response, where they need support because they don’t have canned responses they can use or the opportunity requires a more bespoke solution. Resource allocation.
5.30pm - Call with CyberEssentials auditor to receive feedback on audit submission, learn if there are any identified non-conformities that we need to address before certification can be issued.
9pm - call with Third Party consultancy we’ve engaged to do an assessment and Technical leads from across the company, update on status of the engagement, interim findings, next steps and ensure they have access to everything they need to proceed.

And somehow in between all of that I need to do the work I pick up in each meeting and prepare for the next lot on Tuesday.

this yes and usually quickly too.

Dh is a commercial property developer earning on average 1m gross a year. It’s a sociable life as he meets colleagues at golf, business lunches etc. He does have an office in London but is now based at home. He closed a deal whilst in the bath the other morning!

He has big backers and every deal he does is a risk. He makes it look easy but it’s anything but that. He plans his own day though, and his family always takes priority over business.