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?

@DameCeliaodd comment. The title of this thread is what jobs pay £200k plus. I have given details of a job that pays that. No reason why a woman couldn’t do this job, in fact I’d say if they had the skills they’d be prioritised, as it is such a male dominated industry and they are actively trying to get more balance

@Jaffalemons that makes sense. The ones I know are engineers and mathematicians by initial degree, and are certainly not full of bluster.

I have two daughters considering careers involving maths, possibly in actuarial or data science. One of our insurance friends was enthusiastic about insurance as an industry for them, and they are definitely going to try to get some experience to find out what careers there are and if it is for them (and then there is the third daughter who has recently decided she wants to enter the clergy, which is a whole new set of questions…)

£150k - lawyer. I’m only 5 years qualified though, as I retrained (had previously worked circa 15 years in a similar field/industry). So essentially 4 - 6 yrs training plus 5 years qualified (1 year law conversion but I did mine part time over 2 years, ditto for the LPC, then 2 years as a trainee). At my level and in my field (v corporate, city firm) I could work even longer hours in a US firm and earn more than double what I’m on, but working all the hours god sends doesn’t appeal to me. So, I work very hard, I enjoy the work, I like having a ‘very good’ salary, but I know what my limits as it were are, I know where my boundaries and values are, some semblance of work life balance is important to me, so this is where I am.

You are using abbreviations that mean nothing to most people. You appear to be talking about stocks and shares, yea by partner dabbles and has been for a good ten years I'd say avs he's built up his pot but it isn't a £200k a year paid salary, it's one pot of money that can go up or can go down. It's a long term thing to build up a pot from shares and you have to have the money to put in. For people on £30 or £40k a year it doesn't work because they won't have that much disposable cash to put into investments especially if they've got kids to raise. This wasn't a post about a rich person wanting to get richer, it's somebody wanting an unrealistically high salary.

Tech sales. My OH and his friends are on about £100-150k plus commission. Job security is awful though. They all seem to have just fallen into that line of work, but you do have to work your way up to that level.

Whatever, it's still not relevant to the OP, they are all jobs that require a lot of years of skills, experience, major liability and responsibility and usually impactful to work life balance. I know from my experience of redundancy in recent years that the jobs market is tough and people are not interested in people that have nothing that relevant to offer and just fancied a career change. Not that many in the UK earn that kind of money! The OP doesn't even say what her current salary is from what I've read and that's an important factor,.she could be a shop supervisor on £30k a year for all we know and that will not easily be exchanged for a £200kna year job.

That isn’t always the case in my experience.

I earn 200k and WFH. I now work fewer hours than at any point during my career. I never work evenings, weekends or holidays and even manage to do the school run every day.

The long hours, office based commitment and travel came earlier on in my career while I was progressing to my current position.

Much of my work is now relatively easy and dare I say it boring as I’m often recycling the same thing over and over again. I have no desire to progress any further and will happily stay in my current role for maybe 10 years and then retire.

It's an unstable way to work, most of these people could be completely lying about what they earn and if they are earning those kinds of sums of money per stream the taxes will be monumental on it. It's also the putting yourself out there and potentially inviting some very unpleasant and unwanted attention.

Just to add on to my comment. Work-life balance seems good at every company he’s worked at- some days it’ll be a few calls scheduled and he goes and does things with the kids outside of the house. He’s been doing this for 7ish years. Has a business undergrad degree.

I also have a school friend in tech sales, she’s been doing that for maybe 3 years, similar salary. Again, she just fell into it. Makes 3x what I do.

In comparison I’ve spent 8 years qualifying as a solicitor (including uni, working at a firm for experience, and training contract applications before starting my TC) to qualify into legal aid work and earn peanuts. Such is life.

Calm down! What people are trying to state is that not many roles will pay that sort of money and it would take something very high up and pressurised! When clearly very few people know anyone on that kind of money, they are having to guess what kind of work because as I said most jobs earn nowhere near that! If you know a CEO and know what they earn, please feel to post that calmly because you aren't declaring how you know we are wrong!

You are misunderstanding what the pp is referring to. They don’t mean investing your personal money in stocks and shares and getting a return on it.

They mean after a point your compensation (pay) becomes heavily influenced by company performance and being given shares (different language to describe different types) within your package (which often you’d lose if you leave). You then get extra money based on company profit / if it’s sold etc.

These are often designed to incentivise long term commitment to the company - and the rewards can then be very large.

In listed companies this will form shares you can sell after X time usually, in private companies it will probably form being given equity (again this can be structured in different ways). So you start taking a % of the profits rather than a salary.

Because very few people know people on that kind of money and can only surmise that has to be a job of high experience and high responsibility to earn that money, people need to get over being so butt hurt over an innocent statement which was just to try and emphasize that it's a rare salary that comes with high asks.

That’s great. I’ve also worked in higher paid roles and found them boring. I’ve earned so little in the last 10 years that I haven’t had to pay any tax and I’ve never been happier.

the profession I’m in now as I’m nearing 60 is a job that I could do forever and is far from boring.

the PP is not talking about investments into shares. She talks about shares of a company awarded as a part of compensation package which can be very lucrative because the share price can increase massively. Thats standard in big tech and mid tech for everyone , not just top management.
best upside is joining a startup or scale up who will then go public. If they are successful you are up for megabucks. Think
people who joined Amazon or Google in the early days.
at the same time it’s also very risky.

but even those who joined Amazon before say 2014 when they were already public would now see their share price double (if they kept them).

obviously it is all taxed both as income and then with CGT but still.

You are obviously somebody that lives amongst highly wealthy people and I guess you probably live somewhere very affluent down south which naturally over inflated earnings compared to you north! It's not easy money to earn and not often earned outside of very affluent society. It's gas lightning and a bit insulting to say it's easily earned and most households could earn £400k per couple if they wanted to. Most high earning jobs will not let you work normal hours and sit at home with family chilling out.

That’s not quite what people in this thread who earn this kind of money are saying though

The problem is that the post was made using abbreviations and jargon that means nothing to most people. It's also not that relevant because the OP is unlikely to walk into a job at a company like that.

Well - it’s actually not an uncommon kind of ‘package’ for people at all levels in tech firms. It’s a big incentive to get the best talent there.

And - to get >£200k (and as shown in the data set shared early on in the thread) - some form of ownership is a big factor in incomes over this level.

You can google these terms and understand what they mean. And they are right in that it’s key in how people are earning really really large amounts - through these kinds of schemes, it’s not typically a predictable PAYE kind of job.

The amount they earn might vary wildly year to year.

It’s obviously not EASY, it requires qualifications, experience and being very good in your chosen field. And it’s obviously not a 9-5 job that you clock off from. At the same time it’s not only CEO jobs, or jobs with 60-70 hour weeks with no holiday. And if more people knew about that and allowed themselves to be ambiguous, they could potentially increase their earning power too.

i hate the reverse snobbery and small minded mentality. People can and should dream big.
Earning well gives back to society in form of taxes and allows many of high earners retire Early and focus on their hobbies or low paid hobby jobs, or volunteer

Who do you know that earns that kind of money and what is it they do and the expectations of them? Some of you are horrifically gas lighting people into thinking it's a salary that anyone can earn easily! I'd like to further my health and safety career as im on 31k and worth a lot more but jobs to earn more expect me to be on motorways driving around the country all week to cover sites nationwide, sit in hotels all week and probably having to work late on a laptop to get the paperwork done that I can't do whilst on the road - yet so many on here claim that £200k is a normal wage that you don't have to do much to earn! Funny how nobody else's life mirrors that of the people that post these things!

she's not talking about money people put into stocks and shares, she's talking about people getting paid in shares of the company they work for. Awards of shares can be worth millions over a career. The are part of peoples pay package and common once you get to (title snobbery) director level (i.e not a legal director). Get beyond a certain point and share incentive plans are common. The stock market goes up and the value you've already been paid shoots up, double win as the tax levels are lower than 'pay' in the cash sense.

200k is not an unrealistically high salary, it's just not your understanding of the world.

Why are you so negative?
the OP said that she’s in program or project management, that could actually be very relevant for tech. There are lots of non tech people there who run projects having multiple tech and non tech teams working together

I make this money and I know multiple people who do. We are not gaslighting anyone.
you are very negative for someone who knows nothing about these jobs.
are you jealous or insecure?
if you allow yourself to think that you can
attain very high salary then maybe you will… maybe not 200K but you certainly have options.
im serious, there are health and safety jobs in tech and oil and gas.
Amazon is very competitive but they have delivery networks, drones, groceries, and satellites. There is a lot of health safety requirements…
even for their online stores

heck there even would be health and safety in banks.

im serious. You don’t have to be angry about it. Chat to chatGPT, list your skills and experience and ask what career paths you can get in high paying industries, and set working towards it. And yeah most people put in the hours in the beginning of their career but it’s not like that all the time

I always think it's interesting on these threads how many people seem to know the salaries of everyone around them. I suspect they don't actually and it's mainly guesswork.

I have a very good idea of salaries since I'm a lawyer and see contracts/settlement agreements/compensation calculations all the time for a wide range of jobs. I mainly advise senior executives and companies. But if I didn't do this job I'm not sure my guesses would be particularly accurate. Most people make assumptions based on lifestyle and that can be wildly inaccurate since lots of people have outside help from parents/inheritances/trusts etc and lots of people have large mortgages and high levels of general borrowing.I see lots of senior execs at large well known companies earning c £150-£175k

@Diamondpearl123 asked for insight into roles that pay £200k, and how people achieving that salary built their careers. She has set a goal and is willing to retrain and start building, and was looking for examples, presumably to help narrow down options to the best fit for her skills, current experience and wider life goals.
It's perfectly reasonable to take from this thread that £200k salaries (and higher) are absolutely achievable in a number of sectors, or by starting a business. That doesn't necessarily mean specific academic qualifications, although something like Law can be a good route into both private practice and corporate roles that are very well paid indeed.
Of course these are not the norm because most people earn far less. But that doesn't mean they are out of reach for those with the aptitude, ambition and luck to reach them. They do exist; the top 1% is hundreds of thousands of people.

We often hear that youngsters in independent schools or from well-off families have advantages in the form of networks and role models to help them see what to aim for. OP is using the MN community as a virtual network- good on her, that's really smart. Let's not pull her down by suggesting the goals she is exploring are unachievable because (irrespective of OP and her career) they aren't.