What jobs do people have that pay £200k+?

[Diamondpearl123]

I am thinking about making a career change to earn more (aiming for £200k +) but would like to understand what types of roles I should aim for and whether they are realistic for me. Grateful to understand people’s experiences and hopefully start a good discussion. Some questions below. Thank you

• What is your job?
• What is your salary?
• How many years into your career are you?
• What are the key qualifications/experience for the role?
• What hours do you work?

I was making a bit under 200K and recently put 200K as a specific target and Im set to achieve it at my next job I’m starting shortly. With all bonuses and shares it should be just over it (prob around 220k, depending on share prices).

Im an in-house lawyer in big tech.
Im a senior individual contributor so dont have a team.
have over 20 years experience.
trained outside the UK so don’t have the Russell Group / Oxbridge angle but I trained in top university in my country and worked in magic circle law firms (Big Law) in M&A (so several years working at all hours and literally sleeping under my desk sometimes).

currently my hours can be long but flexible, I can be catching up on work at 10 pm or being on a call with the US; but at least I can do school run/bedtime before. I don’t truly switch off at holidays but I don’t usually work on weekends anymore. WFH 2 days.

but there are people with 10-15 years experience in my type of role and higher than me, I had a bit of career twists in the middle, and had kids, and did go after senior roles with teams early enough and frankly didn’t know how to position myself better.

my advice is to go to a higher paid sector (people named several) and learn to play the corporate game to get promotions and pay rises. Key is visibility and alignment with the goals of the company/leadership rather than just hard work. Hard work is important though, it’s rare to be paid very well in 9-5 job that you can forget about it when you leave the office (kudos for those who managed it though, cheapeau)

btw OP, read blog or substack by Ethan Evans, former Amazon VP, he’s excellent in training people how to play the corporate game and maximise their earnings well.

Also Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg, of course she’s privileged but she has a point that women but not men are expected to take foot off the gas once they have kids and she encourages women not to. It’s okay to want more.

That’s actually not true. Big tech and fintech on the contrary is not dominated by Oxbridge and Russell Group unlike law or investment banking. It’s has a huge number of people from all kinds of countries so it’s just not a thing.
Founders of US tech companies may be a different thing but even then it’s rather US universities like Stanford. UK founders are more diverse

Inventing something that Dragons Den like you can make big money.

Someone my son was friends with his father drew cartoons for advertising on telly. He made a lot of money. Jeremy Clarkson mother came up with Paddington Bear.

It doesn't have to be salaried.

Yes to picking the right sector. I know someone that started as a junior PA in a property firm, progressed fast because she's good, and now in a specialised role earning £90k. The firm has also paid for her training along the way. I know that's not £200k but she wouldn't be on that now if she'd been in a sector with fewer well paid opportunities.

Similarly a cousin did coding/development. He went to work for banks and various financial institutions and now earns £300k+ at a hedge fund, even though he's not a finance person as such.

HR here so I’ve seen the salaries of many over the years

Sadly those who retrain are unlikely to be the high earners. Those who seem the most successful leave uni into a great job and just are lucky to progress quickly.

I’d look for future skills such as AI and cyber. I’d also say some trades earn well but generally those who are business savvy as well.

lol..taking the exception as the rule is never a wise deduction. The actual facts are 7% of UK population are privately educated, but 39% of the top jobs are allocated to this group:

- Judiciary: 65% of senior judges attended private schools.
- Business: 68% of FTSE 100 CEOs/chairs were privately educated.
- Military: 63% of armed forces generals attended private schools.
- Civil Service: 47% of permanent secretaries came from independent schools
- Media: 32% of top actors and 44% of newspaper columnists are from private school

Good that you've done well, but you are the exception. Just a fact.

Solicitor (partner in a non-City law firm). 20 years into this career (I did something else briefly before, followed by 5 years SAHM before retraining). I have flexibility to leave work early a couple of days a week to pick up DC from school but I also travel a lot for work and usually work evenings and on the weekend as required by work demands. It’s not a career that I can do well in leaving the office and being “off the clock” every day at 5pm, but within the world of being a partner in a law firm, it’s quite flexible. I do what has to be done, when it has to be done, irrespective of the hour. Just about to settle down to a few hours’ work for a client who needs something by tomorrow morning, for example.

I trained as a lawyer as a single mum of 2 very young children and that saying about how the you of 5/10/20 years ago would have envied what the you of today has, is true. I struggled as a trainee solicitor on £20k with 2 kids - it was a lot less than I had as income post-divorce from those kids’ dad when he had to pay spousal maintenance (as well as child maintenance) while I had no job. I could have remained with no job and stayed where I was indefinitely. But as time passed, he lost his job and I never saw a penny from him in CM again (kids were 10 and 12 at the time), my career developed and I’m very glad I kept working, especially as I married again and had a third child, and am now divorced again raising that child as a single parent again. Not how I wanted or expected life to turn out, but having a solid career at least takes some of the panic out of it.

I work in dentistry. I’m a dental therapist. 3yr degree, NHS bursary so didn’t cost me anything. I make £30-£60ph in the north east, down south it’s much more. I’m self employed so can take as many hols whenever I want. I only work 2 days, if I was to work 6 days I could probably pull £100k I’d be interested to know what jobs bring in double that.

It’s well recognised that High Court judges earn a pittance compared to what they could earn in private practice at the point in their careers they have the experience required to become a judge. Lawyers make this move either because they’ve already made enough money and now want the status of being a HC judge (usually with ambitions to get onto the appellate bench) or - far more rarely - because they have some sense of “wanting to give back”.

Pocket paid, yes I agree with what you have written.
However that, wasn’t my point. Maybe I didn’t get it across very well.

Of course State educated top Barristers etc. are the exception but the route to getting to this level of income where we are comfortable was through the vehicle of starting my own business.

Trying to compete to be at a top law firm etc. with a background like mine would be remarkable, I was discouraged from my ambitions at school, what I do is not remarkable, I just do it the best.

My advice to the original poster was find a niche and build a business alongside your career. I wasn’t trying to boast about where I am from vs. where I came from.

I will say I’m amazed every day at the difference in my children’s outlooks and lack of intimidation in situations because they “know” they are equals in the room. That you can’t buy and I guess only a few can fake it til they make it!

I came to UK without any contacts and built my career to this pay in 10 years, starting at 44k. And I am not the only one who has done it, I know several mums who are doing it, working flexibly, available for school drop offs and pick ups and have done financially very well for themselves. I work in the field of Audit for a financial services firm in London. Its boring and perfect at the same time. Anyone with attention to detail can get into this field. While some auditors in my team have professional certification, I don't have one but that has not stopped me from getting to where I am. There are other similar fields where you can make similar sums of money. In London, if you are working for a multinational company, 200k is not unsual for a mid career professional (starting pay is much lower). Good on you to try and increase your pay and secure your future, OP. I encourage you to explore different teams in your current company and try and figure out which are the high paying ones. Then openly discuss your interest with your manager, as part of your career discussion. If your manager does not support this type of discussion, network within the company and express your interest to potential hiring managers in other teams and explain what value you bring to the table. If you don't ask for it, you won't get it. Keep the dialogue open. If they discuss a problem, offer to solve it or mentor someone in their team who needs to solve it. If you are consistent with this approach, opportunities will follow. When they do, boldly negotiate. You deserve to be paid for the value you bring to the table. To add that I went to an average school and I was not particularly academic. xx

I’m senior hr in a global us bank. 30 yrs experience and 500k tcomp. Work 50-70 hours a week. Global team of 100+. High pressure and stress. degree in unrelated field.

Lots of great replies on here. 200k has become a new threshold. Certainly the same as 100k when I was at university about 30 years ago.

Two ways to be above it?

1. Be in a role where you directly bring in several times that into the business (examples here of law and investment banking)
2. Be running a division, eg CIO, CPO, CTO

I’d recommend speaking to an executive coach and buying a short evaluation session from them to give you a better idea of if/how you get there. (No, I’m not one. Yes, I’ve used one).

Oh yawn!! Another MN braggy post 🙄 google it

I earn £150k ++ (in a good year) in senior leadership in a tech firm (no tech role). It’s take 25years to work my way up to that. I may have reached my ceiling but I’m hoping not as still in my 40’s.

But Google doesn't tell people the nuance of how to achieve this. And Google isn't always accurate and gives a large scope for salary, e.g., "CEO - £50-300k." CEO in what? And how did they get there?

Some people have no ambition to earn more money. That's fine, but why call someone who has made choices to optimize their earnings and educate other women about it "braggy"?

My husband is in IT at an investment bank. Earns £220k basic has a masters and about 20 years experience. Manages a large global team/budget. Works from about 8am to 7 most days and is under a lot of pressure to deliver on certain projects, reduce spend etc. doesn’t particularly love it but is used to the pressure. He’s mid 40s.

Pharmaceutical industry senior level pays well. I left the medical industry to retrain in clinical nutrition and I earn quarter of what I would do if I'd stayed in my previous company or similar. But I had horrendous years of testosterone fuelled alpha male bosses who climbed on my back to get up the ladder and when I had a chance to take voluntary redundancy I quit and retrained. Never regret the decision, but I do regret not having the courage to call out the bullying

My husband has been on this for over 10 years. He’s of head of engineering in a tech company. Over 25 years experience in tech.

Being a member of the royal family, oh wait, they don't actually do anything, they just get trillions of pounds in benefits.

How did you get to this? Im a project manager and aiming to move to programme management but going to be stuck around £60k..
Though I am in the public sector rather than engineering or IT..

A third way to be above it - set up your own company using your expertise. That offers the great salary but with the flexibility and work life balance that a lot of highly paid roles may not allow.

I agree. Lots of pharma and allied roles pay very well.

Recruitment for financial services. I do contingency recruitment - no degree, no quals. I work a lot. Til midnight probably four times a month and I am never “off” but I try not to send emails or do much over the weekend but I will check my emails if I get up to pee in the night and start thinking about how to action requests then and there.

I have contemporaries who are headhunters who do a lot less work than me and get £300k odd but their pay structure is different. I have a base salary of £80k and monthly commission and haven’t earned less than £200k for a decade. Never more than £240k though. £202k my lowest.

They have a base of £150k or thereabouts and their bonuses paid in two tranches. This is better for retention. More cold calling in the early years but less work now.

ETA - the headhunters absolutely have degrees. Mostly Oxbridge but some Russell Group. Contingency recruitment is sink or swim. If you have the personality you can do it but not that easy if you have children.

Don't try teaching! I have a first class honours degree and still struggle to make more than 30k a year. My husband earns a bit more but has to put up with behaviour you wouldn't believe and it's tsking its toll on his health. Teachers are very underpaid. Often working 60 to 70 hours a week in very stressful conditions.