7 ms·

I can't speak to the poverty side, but anecdotally my colleagues and I work in a high-tech profession and our salaries are hardly competitive. I'm earning less

• balderdash 3y ago
  Considering that 33k is exactly the median wage in the UK, and google says the average starting computer science salary in the UK is 44k, I’d hazard that there seems to be some relevant information missing from your story
• siquick 3y ago
  I had been considering moving back home after 10 years of living in Australia so started researching wages for Engineering roles and the salaries were so low, with the cost of living nowhere near balancing out against the low salaries. I’d expect a big boost in wages since they left Europe due to a loss of available employable market but it seems the opposite.
  • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >I’d expect a big boost in wages since they left Europe due to a loss of available employable market but it seems the opposite. Salaries have spiked, immediately after brexit, but have stagnated because no new investments are gonna happen in a country that's separated from the EU single market, so all new big tech has decided to expand instead to Amsterdam, Dublin and Berlin.
    • ilikerashers 3y ago
      London is still the best in the EU for tech salaries. They’re just flat and have been so for the last year. 33k is pretty low for cyber security but there is this: https://metro.co.uk/2023/03/30/hm-treasury-listed-head-of-cyber-security-job-with-measly-salary-18529270/amp/ https://metro.co.uk/2023/03/30/hm-treasury-listed-head-of-cy...
      • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >London is still the best in the EU for tech salaries. At the top end, yes, but there's also the long tail of very poor paying tech jobs relative to how expensive it is compared to continental Europe.
      • ffhhttt 3y ago
        Zurich and Switzerland in general is probably better. It’s just a much smaller market.
        • orwin 3y ago
          Up voting this isn't enough. London can pay well, better than everywhere in Europe even, at the right company and with good negociating power. If a UK firm contact you, you're set and have us-level salaries (upward 200k 8 years ago in medtech). If you're just going back to europe for a routine job however, you should first check Switzerland (then Netherlands. They also have the most interesting jobs if you're a low-level guy)
          • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
            >upward 200k 8 years ago in medtech Which UK companies paid 200k 8 years ago?
            • orwin 3y ago
              I'm not the one who got hired (sadly), but the person who got the offer was a nodejs developer who wrote some random promise libraries (he was really good at optimizing calls, both real-time and async, and knew js better than anybody I've met since), and I think I remember he talked about a private clinic or something (private monitoring?). He ended up being tech lead at an online bank for less money.
  • SenAnder 3y ago
    > I’d expect a big boost in wages since they left Europe due to a loss of available employable market Despite Brexit having arguably been driven by immigration concerns, immigration to the UK has increased since that vote, and reached a record of 606k in 2022 [1]. It has been increasing since 1995, and in 2015 13.2% of the UK population was foreign-born [2] - so not counting children of immigrants. [1] Britain’s record-high immigration — in charts - https://www.ft.com/content/cb9120d8-0595-49d9-8f66-92b95acbae17 https://www.ft.com/content/cb9120d8-0595-49d9-8f66-92b95acba... - unpaywalled: https://archive.ph/Wqalm https://archive.ph/Wqalm [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/immigration-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/imm...
• retrac98 3y ago
  This seems very low for the job, even for the UK.
  • dboreham 3y ago
    Agree. It was a reasonable salary 25 years ago.
• api 3y ago
  I ask this all the time: how can real estate costs in particular be so high with these wages? SF gets all the press for having loony real estate costs but vs wages it’s actually not the worst. The craziest places are those with $1-2M starter homes and low pay. How can a market even exist?
  • Jochim 3y ago
    Landlords and foreign investors.
  • throwawaysleep 3y ago
    My theory is the change in cultural demographics. European/North American parents find it weird to help their kids buy housing. In Chinese culture, that is very much the norm. My Indian friend will get his down payment from his parents. So people don't need to buy housing with their own resources in many cases. It can also include the resource of two more people, or even 6 more people (grandparents chip in).
    • isaacremuant 3y ago
      > European/North American parents find it weird to help their kids buy housing. This is absolutely not true. I don't know where you're taking this from.
      • ecshafer 3y ago
        Coming from a working class / poor background it absolutely is true. Until I graduated and working in a wealthy area with upper middle class background people, I had never heard of anyone having their parents pay for their house. This is really split based on how Wealthy your background is.
        • Arrath 3y ago
          While not straight up buying a house for their children, in my experience (middle class, PNW) it is, while not common, not unheard of for parents to assist their kids in buying a house, be it by providing some/most of the downpayment, or co-signing on the home loan.
• ak_111 3y ago
  If you are on 33K doing cyber then you must be in an area where houses are cheaper than normal. If you are in London, then as you acknowledged you are doing it real wrong and you should be upping your job search game. Your main point stands though - tech jobs pay much worse than they do in the states. The only two competitive uk tech jobs I seen are DeepMind and hedge fund (not even investnent banks are competitive)
  • mtsr 3y ago
    Competitive salaries with the US isn’t really a thing in countries with socialized healthcare, welfare, etc. With these institutions in place life looks qualitatively different at any salary. Problems start when these institutions get systematically dismantled and salaries don’t change to make up for them.
    • ak_111 3y ago
      Competitive tech salaries in the US will almost certainly come with competitive health insurance and other benefits.
    • meinmissoula 3y ago
      It looks like you've been misled about the US. The US welfare budget is mind-bogglingly large, over a Trillion dollars per year. Yes, Trillion with a T. Healthcare costs can be very important for Americans working in low-wage positions, but are essentially irrelevant for tech workers. Here's how healthcare costs impact my life on an hours-worked basis: Monthly health insurance premium: 20 minutes of my wage per month Office visit at a primary care doctor: 12 minutes of my wage Office visit at a specialist: 15 minutes of my wage Maximum amount I can possibly pay in a year (eg, if I get in a car accident and spend months in intensive care): 20 hours of my wage To be clear, the American who is driving Uber full-time or cooking food at McDonalds would have a drastically worse situation, and their costs might be multiple hours worked to see a doctor or multiple weeks of wages to cover a catastrophic hospitalization. But on a tech salary, healthcare is trivially covered.
      • 3y ago
• krona 3y ago
  I can't speak to your circumstances but even graduate engineers in the East/south-east of England wouldn't get out of bed for <£50k. Maybe you need to move.
• isaacremuant 3y ago
  33k is criminal, mate. You may be dealing with stuff and not want to "switch" right now but, find a short/mid term plan to switch because, even though UK is not US in terms of salary, it's also not Spain. The cost of living is very high not to have something that feels at least moderate. You and your mates don't work in a "high tech profession" typical if they're being scammed with those salary ranges. That's not normal. Now, the UK is definitely going to shit in terms of social contract and taxes, fueling wars and corrupt bureocracy instead of betterment of society, but that doesn't change the fact that the salary you have should not be such.
• cyanydeez 3y ago
  Failing is putting it lightly. Conservative governance is the opposite of supporting people as individuals and worse as population. They're going backwards as a social politik
• hankchinaski 3y ago
  If you are not actively looking for a better paid job you should. That salary for cyber anywhere in the UK is grossly underpaid.
• rahimnathwani 3y ago
  A few thoughts that I hope are helpful: - remove irrelevant non-tech jobs from your CV and LinkedIn, even if they were long stints - I don't know the market for cybersecurity engineers, but I guess that it might be too narrow of a niche in a small country - don't just 'keep an eye out': actively look for jobs; also consider that some US companies are willing to hire remote in the UK - given you already have some python experience and a strong mathematical background, my suggestion would be to learn as much as possible about software engineering and data science, and consider building a career in one of those fields; most people can't study stats due to weak math foundations, but you don't have that problem - if you don't think a remote job is a good fit for you, consider moving to London - surround yourself with smart, hardworking people
  • ggm 3y ago
    > - if you don't think a remote job is a good fit for you, consider moving to London This is a recipe for potential disaster: London cost of living, especially housing, is out of league against the rest of the UK. It is however true that its where the ICT sector is, and joins Fintech and other market segments. Reading is also worth thinking about for ICT, or Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge but none of these are good housing markets. GBP33k is right on the median salary for the UK. That should of course NOT be poverty line living. It speaks volumes for the crisis in the UK economy that the cost of rent, heating has gone through the roof, and that this is no longer a comfortable paypoint. It's not nothing, but its value in real terms has dropped significantly. People on 33k should be able to save money and have a safety net. From speaking to family who live in the UK (I emigrated 35 years ago) many of them don't have this buffer. It's scary.
  • Pingk 3y ago
    Thanks for the advice! I've considered data science and even did an internship at a startup in Toronto, but I didn't find the work as enjoyable. >surround yourself with smart, hardworking people This is honestly the #1 reason I haven't moved yet, I've never worked anywhere with so many knowledgeable people willing to share their experience. I can't go into details but the learning opportunities I've had this year have been way beyond what I could get somewhere else. While some people might think I'm making a mistake, I'm willing to take the monetary inconvenience for a bit longer if I can use that knowledge wherever I go next.
• alephnerd 3y ago
  I work in the cybersecurity industry and work closely with our London office. What are your qualifications and experience? Also are you based in Greater London?
  • Pingk 3y ago
    I've got a Masters in Physics and taught myself cybersecurity to make the career change. I've got CompTIA Security+ and Network+ and I'm working towards RHCSA. I'm the primary engineer creating/delivering a SIEM solution for my employer so there're some details I can't share publicly but pm me if this meets your criteria? Based in Yorkshire but open to relocation/hybrid/WFH depending on the role.
    • alephnerd 3y ago
      Sadly it doesn't fit our criteria, but this does explain the £33k package. A lot of the kind of skills you've mentioned have become very commodified, and being based in North England is limiting your career as most buyers are located within Greater London. I'd recommend 1. Moving to Greater London - most of the companies that have the budget are located there 2. Skill towards cloud and containers skills (eg. CKA for Kubernetes, AWS Solution Architect, Azure Solution Architect). Most large companies have active 3-5 year roadmaps to move core apps to the cloud, especially within Europe. It will also help you move laterally into DevOps/SRE of Platform SWE roles. 3. Implementation roles don't pay well in Europe. It's better to work as a Sales Engineer or a Professional Services Consultant for a (usually) American or Israeli vendor (eg. Splunk, AWS, IBM, Checkpoint, etc). This will require some experience but if you have 2+ YoE and are willing to move to Southern England, you can break £55k+ for sure
      • Pingk 3y ago
        Thanks for the advice! CKA is definitely on my short-term roadmap, the SIEM I'm working on uses Kubernetes and I'll be working towards an AWS implementation so those certs will be available to me too.
      • tonyedgecombe 3y ago
• gremlinsinc 3y ago
  I'm a senior fullstack dev (php, js, react, vue, python, etc). I mostly consult and do freelance work as it works better for my ADHD, but my best years I do 70-90k, my worst years <20k (covid+depression+anxiety destroyed my motivation in 2021). I can definitely relate. I had a good year last year, and have been client-less since June and having to borrow for rent. At least our rent is lower than SF (1600), but still not easy to come by. Also, I'm in Utah, not UK as article talks about.
• CommanderData 3y ago
  What is your take home after income tax, NI, pension, loans etc?