British government mocked for advertising head of cyber role with £57K salary
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I get paid well for the UK - but I could triple or even quadruple my salary in the US/Australia. Combined with relatively high taxes (my marginal tax rate is 60%) - it isn't a great value proposition for many professionals, and despite the luxuries (healthcare, gun control) - almost everyone I know is eyeing the exit.
"almost everyone I know is eyeing the exit".. sorry, but are everyone looking to move to US/Australia? Because to Europe, the salaries are much lower than on UK, and frankly, US (specially because of healthcare, gun control, and street violence) is becoming less and less attractive, despite the amount of salary. Actually US is looking like South America: You try to earn as much as you can, not because you want, but to be able to live a safer life.
If the US looks like South America you've fallen into a media trap. You are being sold something untrue but packaged perfectly so everyone gets paid. Where in America would you get pick pocked like south america? Disney World? The mean streets of Akron Ohio? Nonsense..
Violence is not a concern for the overwhelming majority of Americans in their daily lives.
EDIT: not that ANYONE should have to worry about violence in their daily lives; one just saying the US isn’t what you see in the movies or on 24x7 news.
London: 9.000.000 people
That is, London is the size of New York. Just the fact that you are comparing Boston with London kind of proves my point.
I don't think I've ever felt threatened in London, and I've been drunk in iffy neighborhoods at 3am _a lot_. What made it feel threatening to you?
Still, the USA does feel eerily similar to my native country (Brazil), I've lived in Brazil, the USA and Sweden, it's pretty clear how Brazil got modeled after the American way of life. You do have to work, a lot, otherwise you'll be replaced (just like in the USA); your status do matter, bigger house, bigger car, etc. (just like in the USA); you do need to earn a decent/higher wage if you want to live a comfortable and safe life (just like in the USA).
So yes, life in the USA is much closer to South America than to Europe.
In California/NY they will tax you like a European but in Florida they won't tax your income at all
After emigrating to central Europe I have to disagree. The salary in the UK is relative to the location so London for example is stupidly expensive to live in, so instead you commute an hour or so and still pay fairly high rent.
High salaries are in the major cities, but they carry extremely high cost of living, without necessarily high standard.
The salaries are actually closer than you might think once you look around of course, and the cost of living is almost always significantly less. So from my own experience overall I'm significantly in the green.
> Actually US is looking like South America: You try to earn as much as you can, not because you want, but to be able to live a safer life.
South America isn't all as bad as you hear on the news. You seem to have these sweeping ideas. Things usually aren't that black and white though.
It might not be but as someone who's natively from Brazil I can say: it's pretty fucking rough, even more when I compare to my life in Europe/Sweden.
Whenever I visit I do need to turn on my alertness to surroundings up to 11, I do need to close the car windows when I stop on a red light in a city, I do need to care about two guys riding a motorcycle and coming to the general vicinity of myself or the vehicle I'm in.
Lived there for some 25 years of my life, got mugged with a gun 5 times, got mugged with a knife twice.
It doesn't happen everyday but violent is so common that you are on a constant state of anxiety and alertness, it's pretty stressful to live your day-to-day like that.
I also lived in the USA for a while and while you don't get the same anxiety as in South America I still felt much more stressed in the USA than I've ever been anywhere in Europe.
I'm originally from São Paulo's metro area, lived in the city most of my adult life in Brazil as well, and I wouldn't say it's "way safer". It does feel safer in a way, in some neighbourhoods but in the end it's just a variation of the ever-present dangers of Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is much more intertwined with hills and favelas in between nicer areas of the city, requires you to know how to behave/where to go.
I grew up in a rougher area (not a favela though), I'm not from a wealthy background and in a sense that helped with some street-smartness to live there and know what to avoid.
I'm German, but i was born there. Spent 20 years there and visit constantly (and love) different countries there like Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. I know my Turf pretty well.
Also quality of life in [redacted] is so so much better than it was in the UK. Comparing the last 5 years here vs our 5 last years in the UK and it is shocking how different and better our life is.
Sure [redacted] has its problems (just look at the protests right now) but I wouldn't leave unless it was for a really big chunk of change. [redacted] is freakin' awesome.
Oh also the healthcare is fucking incredible. I've had a few issues recently and every time I've needed to see my doctor it is same day and when referred to see a specialist it is always within a week. I had an MRI last week and a follow up yesterday to check some other things. Saw the consultant 15 minutes after the scan. Got the all clear. No waiting around thinking the worst. Absolutely amazing service and wanna know how much it cost me? €5 for parking last week and €3.70 for parking this week.
Do you mind expanding on this? Particularly the less obvious things that you didn’t notice until you’d spent some time living there.
* Food options/freshness * Culture affordable * Pace of life generally calmer (but I know only UK cities not countryside life so YMMV) * Working hours lower * More human public services * Quality of housing - UK housing stock is abysmal especially if you are renting * Maternity/general employee protections
There are also downsides, like probably lower tech take-up and flexibility with some big corps being quite hierarchical and the school system somewhat old fashioned (on the other hand not as segregated and struggling as UK system)
We lived in London ([redacted]) and just outside ([redacted]) before we moved. We moved to the outskirts of [redacted] (we're a 10 minute drive from the nearest metro station). Takes 20 minutes to drive into the centre (Bellecour). About 10 minutes to drive to Tete D'or park just to give you some idea of distances.
Life in [redacted] is just so much more relaxed and happy. It is the little things like when I take my son to school here all the parents stop and chat and laugh and talk about what they did that weekend. In the UK it always felt like everyone was in a rush and/or bad mood. Rushing off to some other activity or moaning how they're running late because they were caught up at work.
Everyone here has a very hard cut point with work. I don't think I've actually heard someone complain about being late because of work. Traffic yes but never work. Everyone takes a solid 2 hour lunch break where we sit out in the sun (the weather is a plus obviously). Chat. Read. Play Pétanque.
The same is true after work. For example just yesterday the weather is warm so after I got back from having my MRI I bumped into my neighbour on his way home from work. He asked how I was doing so I gave him the update all is good and he was like that's great come play with us! And we spent the next hour chatting about MRIs with the kids, explaining how they work and I showed them the MRI of my brain I had on my laptop from last week haha :D
I know that is nothing unique to being in [redacted] and it could just as well happen in the UK but my point here is it never happened in the UK. Whereas that is just my normal evening. Neighbours chat and socialise and we pop round each others for goûter (a small snack) randomly.
I am sure I could have the same anywhere including the UK but given I lived in a similar kind of place (outskirts of a big city) it is just interesting to me how different the people and lifestyle are.
When I visit family back in the UK it feels odd to me. A lot of negativity. A lot of misery. I went last August and chatting with my parents neighbours (whom I have been friends with for a decade) were just so so negative. Moaning constantly, grumpy. I even said to my mother at the time "wtf is up with Zoe?" and she said "oh she's just had enough of all the crap". To be fair this was when Liz Truss just tanked the economy in record time and was then replaced with Sunak.
I realise [redacted] is not all roses and butterflies obviously. They have real problems too and perhaps I just lucked out with my place in [redacted] but my wife is happy and my son is happy (and bilingual which is a huge win and something I am super happy about). We live in a place 2.5x as our place in [redacted] for €300 month less. Have excellent healthcare, great weather, wonderful food, a beautiful park to relax in just 10 minutes away (Tete D'or).
Life is pretty damn good and that is before all the financial benefits we had moving here which are another story.
Edit: forgive any glaring typos. I wrote this very quickly as I am heading out of the door, usually I would proof read something this long as I won't be able to edit it later! If something seems very wrong I will try to correct it with a later reply :)
Sure I met lots of happy people too but what stood out to me was how many people were unhappy. Even the happy people I hung around with soon (within an hour or so) turned into grumps and then the flood gates opened once one person got bitching about "the state of the UK" they all started.
I lived in the UK since birth so 30+ years by the time I left. I don't ever remember people being so negative. Utility bills, shitty schools, awful local services, everything costing more and being shittier quality. It almost felt like everyone was in a sort of mild state of countrywide depression. Not quite sure how to put it but perhaps some kind of negative feedback loop of misery is just compounding in the general populations psyche? That might sound a bit over the top but I don't really know how else to describe it as an "inside outsider" that I am.
The move to [redacted] has obviously been great for us. We moved in 2018 as I've mentioned, long story show once the vote to leave the EU won we decided to leave while we could. It took us two years of planning to make it happen and in a huge strike of luck my wife was made redundant (due to Brexit!) just a few weeks before she was going to hand in her notice having been contacted about a job here in [redacted]. So we left with a nice big cash lump sum, plus a fantastic signing bonus for my wife and a very generous relocation lump sum. In just a few weeks we went from very little savings to over £200k cash that we used to pay of all debts (including mortgage) and left the UK with zero debt and a nice chunk of cash most of which is now invested with some accessible for emergencies.
Sadly a few "friends" from the UK who were quite pro Brexit saw us as "fools" for leaving and when we met up they didn't try to hide the fact they thought we were "traitors" (literally what they called us at one point) as we "profited from Brexit but don't agree with it and fucked off". They basically feel it is people like me and my family that are the 'reason' Brexit is a failure?! Their arguments make little to no sense obviously but it was quite sad to hear someone I used to enjoy hanging out with call me an asshole for "making loads of money while the country went to shit". Obviously nothing to do with Covid, Boris, a decade of Tory rule, all the vote Leave lies, etc. Trying to have a discussion with them was like trying to explain multithreading programming to a piece of wood but oh well I tried. I suspect his negative attitude towards me is more to due with his own issues and he found an easy target with me having moved to a country he hates. Certainly felt like he had a lot of build up anger and he let it all out when I popped round to say hi!
So yeah lots of great things but also some emotionally difficult things come with moving country although I feel mine are more specific to the whole Brexit situation that wouldn't be an issue usually.
In the US every time I walked into town I'd get a nice chat with a stranger, people were very open to talking. British people regard this with suspicion and it's really common to hear them say it's all fake after a visit. I carry that insular 'stoic' cynicism from growing up there and I dislike it within myself. I'm so glad I moved. Also the money.
What you said is true, but the job market is fucked over here as well, its just the tech sectors going nuts. People with degrees in anything other than IT end up as servers, while people with those degrees get called weekly by recruiters. Same as anywhere else really, I got a 25% raise by hopping jobs for a year.
Anecdotal only. I don't know many eyeing the exit. Not everybody is so money focused.
So I'm not sure empty salary-chasing is as empty as you make it seem. Sometimes salary chasing is just trying to keep up with inflation in order to make sure your family maintains a decent standard of living.
Unless I completely misunderstood your post, in which case disregard everything I said.
My response was to a post about money.
Wrt quality of life, I can definitely see that as an argument for leaving the UK (though obviously less useful than staying to try and change it), but you only have to look at international quality of life indexes to see that social happiness is pretty much inversely related to materialist excess within the developed nations.
But this is a recurring theme to the point where I think it's not so much that the opportunity is there (non-English speaking countries are also high on the list of places British people want to emigrate) but a cultural idea where there seems to be that mild level of discontent that in the UK is expressed by talking about (but rarely following through) on moving to Australia in particular as a kind of hyperbole. It's a bit of a favourite of mine to explore, as it's such an weird peculiarity of British culture.
As a result, UK media as well as political groups all know that if they want a reliable way of writing a "the UK is going to hell" article, all they need to do is do a survey on people wanting to leave.
Because if you can't get more than about half of the population to say they're at least pondering leaving the UK, you're doing something very wrong and/or people are unusually happy.
Some examples:
2023: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11768729/Half-want-...
2022: https://hrnews.co.uk/two-thirds-of-british-workers-dream-of-...
2022: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/people-...
I think this one was what first made me aware of this phenomenon:
2012: https://www.aol.co.uk/2012/04/15/almost-half-of-brits-want-t...
Slightly off topic but it's almost comical that `gun control` is considered a luxury.
I'm on N times the UK national median wage in London and still have anxiety about being able to afford kids, pay my mortgage, and retire at a half decent age. I see American firms offering 50-100% more pay for the same or less demanding roles.
The highest official tax bracket is 45%[0], which comes into effect once you earn over £150,000.
The "higher" rate bracket is from ~£50,000 to £150,000, HOWEVER:
Once you reach £100,000, your tax-free personal allowance is reduced by £1 for every £2 you earn, so that bottom section of your earnings enter into the 20% bracket when they were 0% previously, so effectively you're marginally taxed 60% (40% + 20%) on your earnings between £100,000 and £125,140.
Between £125,140 and £150,000 you're back at 40%! Anything over £150,000 is taxed at 45%.
Also, if you're (un)fortunate enough to be a parent with young children and you benefit from tax-free child care[1] (to which pretty much everyone is entitled), the second you earn a penny over £100,000 (after pension deductions, but before tax etc) you lose the ~£2000 per child annual benefit.
Effectively this means that if any one parent in a household gets a pay rise from £100,000 to £100,000.01 (ignoring the pensions contributions for a moment), they are actually ~£2000 per child worse off. These people are therefore better off earning £100,000 than £100,000 + (£2000*N) where N is the number of children at tax-free childcare age, until their children age out of the benefit.
In case that's not enough; the moment you earned that extra 1p over £100,000, you're now obligated to start filing tax returns, even if you're a PAYE employee never having done so before [2].
[0] https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates [1] https://www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare [2] https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates/income-over-100000
I moved into the 100k bracket 3 years ago, and have just hit 125k this Jan. I am the sole earner in our house, wife can't work and have a 12 year old boy.
And I've been trying (and failing) to work out why it seems like more than 40% of my earnings are taken as tax.
And why I need to do tax returns as I've always been PAYE with no other income sources.
I joined the workforce the year after final salary pensions were shutdown. My slightly older peers are all on track for early retirement. I will never be able to retire.
I considered contracting just as IR35 was introduced. My slightly older peers who - literally - got rich and paid no taxes enjoy much better lifestyle than me.
So this makes sense, that as I claw my way to higher income, it's taken away by the system.
All the while having record house prices, plummeted pension performance and now cost of living/inflation.
What a horrible game.
Doesn’t look like the individual has access to budget or autonomy to make significant purchases (I.e no good path for backhanders from vendors or consultancies)
headline feels sensationalist
From the job description it looks like it's a liaison role between the Treasury and other security teams. Likely turning security policy to procedures and disseminating.
The problem‘s don‘t stop there. I currently work a government job until I can start my PhD, so I know what it‘s like. Office Job workers joke about „attractive addons“ like free lunches on friday, a well stocked coffee machine, a nice looking office or a foosball table in the office. I say you don‘t know you‘re missing something until it‘s no longer there.
The German Government tends to offer nothing like this. My office is a gray block of concrete. I‘ve asked for some pictures and some greenery in the form of plants, which was denied. My office chair sucks compared to what I‘m used to, my desk looks like it came straight out of offices in the DDR. There are no free drinks in the office, no fruits or interesting lunch talks.
It‘s bleak.
More than 11 weeks, not counting the 4/5 national holidays (depending on the year).
I'm building a treasury right now, but once my house is paid, I'm going back to this kind of job.
Your hypothesis just does not match the data.
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
(Government Digital Service being an exception, great work to those working there and reading this!)
The government was mocked for a "tone deaf" campaign to hire from a diverse workforce and re-skill in Cyber. So when a "senior" job was advertised in Cyber, the urge to mock brewed up as seen on social media.
It is not new that government jobs bear modest salaries, nor that the inflated titles that are given to employees are not a fair reflection of the duties that they hold.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/politics/article/50747/1/a-brie...
https://www.diyphotography.net/photographer-speaks-up-after-...
Meh, ppl comparing heads of state costs with the rest of us has always struck me as incredibly reductive and point-scoring mentality. Executive functions need to get a bigger budget than the normies (or in this case, the security "immune system"). I don't value private jets for much of anything, but maybe shuttling heads of state (as ppl in charge of our collective society, not just shareholder value) in a secure and efficient manner is one of those places?
I'd venture to guess we'll eventually discover an almost information theoretic grounding for such things. Brains do consume 20% of the human energy budget, after all ;)
Obviously being a bit handwavey here. Not in favour of corruption or getting wealthy. But the costs of the executive function don't seem served by such simple comparisons * shrug *
Rough calculation (probably wrong):
40 years of pensionable pay with an average of let’s say 65k. Divided by 80. Equals pension income of £32k yearly between retirement and death, inflation protected.
To buy an equivalent annuity would cost about £1 million. So it’s like saving an extra £25k per year over 40 years. (Although, I suppose you have the option to grow that more through investment.)
So this salary is probably competitive with an 80k private sector total comp package?
[1]: https://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/your-pension/ma...
Seems the current scheme lets you buy/stack, each year, a recurring annual pension worth 2.35% of your current salary (pays out every year after retirement). So with a salary of 57k, you would pay something like 4k this year to secure £1340 (inflation linked) every year of retirement.
That’s insanely good value if you don’t have so many years left. I suppose if you have 20 years left, and you get an extra 10k private sector salary, and invest that for retirement, then it maybe breaks even with 7% compounding growth, but even then you have to contend with inflation and market risk. I think the fair value is more like an extra 20-30k salary.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/11m6isp/median_hou...
Must be some standard public pay scales
What they lack in official wages, they more than make up with by using criminal loopholes and sailing close to the wind, like any nation proud of its pirated seafaring heritage, its where the saying cross someone's palm with silver comes from, also known as Danegeld.