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UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

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Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

#71

Post by nelsonic »

ilovefood wrote: post #51

Could it simply be, that these types of jobs (high rank, low pay) are reserved to wealthy people? It might be so that the only ones that can apply are people for which the salary is a mere formality - it's just listed because it might be mandatory for the paperwork. Kind of similar to how artificially high housing cost is some sort of gatekeeping/community control and not actually reflecting demand in some places...…

Not a “wealthy” person, but rather someone from a a large tech/outsourcing co that will get massive contracts and thus the “revolving door” of “public private partnerships” continues …

Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

#73

Post by rprospero »

mkl95 wrote: post #62

I haven't dabbled too much in the UK market, but I recall interviewing for a low 6 figure position a while ago. Is the gap between public and private jobs that big?

C++ Dev in the UK public sector here. I make 40k a year and so does my boss. I think my boss’s boss might make 50k, or that might only be his boss.

Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

#75

Post by baazaa »

This is a problem across the civil service, although not as stark as this example usually.

The cult of the generalist has long meant that specific skills are considered almost worthless. Instead of the civil service being an assemblage of people with different skill-sets, it instead consists chiefly of administrators with no more skills than a high-school graduate (although they do have tertiary degrees). Jobs which require actual skill are then farmed out to contractors by these 'generalists'.

The problem is baked into the pay structure, which tends to be based on seniority and how many people you manage rather than skill. You can't just up salaries across the board because then you'd be paying all the unskilled 'generalists' far too much.

They need to completely reorient the civil service away from the notion of generalists, because they're not true generalists. If someone can't code in this day and age they're not a generalist. And if they have no other specialist skill-set besides (say law or accounting) then they shouldn't even be considered professionals. What we have today is a civil service made of pseudo-professionals who in fact do exactly the same sort of work once done by much cheaper clerical staff.

Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

#77

Post by reedf1 »

This has caused a bit of a stir because the UK hasn't quite understood the relative weakness of wage growth for the last 10 years. The culturally understood milestones of "high pay" 30/50k have also not increased with inflation.

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.

Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

#78

Post by greggsy »

soVeryTired wrote: post #64
zouhair wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno if it's for a rich person but most likely they want to give it to someone they know and they just have to legally post it publicly before that. And putting such low salary insures no one with good credentials will ever take it.

It's civil service. There's basically no negotiating on pay - they certainly won't pay an internal candidate more.

They are able to prepare individual arrangements for the 'right' candidate. The secretary of each ministry typically has delegation to increase starting salary and issue 'special bonuses', and there should be an oversight committee.

The inverted commas don't suggest misuse or abuse, just that it's completely different in every case.

Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

#79

Post by nivenkos »

eckesicle wrote: post #29
sb618 wrote: post #18

A bit of a detraction from the link but can anyone who's lived for a significant amount of time in both the UK and the US confirm that £100k is equivalent to $200k? It seems fairly unlikely to me as UK tax and NI would be around 50% plus everything you purchase has 20% VAT. Sure medical insurance in the US is insane but surely that doesn't quite cover it.

I worked at Coinbase making 140k GBP in base compensation. My SF based colleagues with the same job title were making 250k USD (so 202k GBP). We sat down one day and compared our household budgets line by line and in the end we estimated that 'money left over' for equivalent house, medical and kids education my American colleagues were slightly better off, but maybe only by 5-10k USD per year. Anecdatally ...

140k is an incredible salary in the UK though, like top 0.1% at least.

It's also hard to compare things 1:1 - since the NHS is "free" (via taxation), but it doesn't cover dentistry at all really whereas equivalent good US health insurances will do.

Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k

#80

Post by shubb »

notahacker wrote: post #19
gambiting wrote: post #2

The thing I don't get about it is that not all UK public services are like this. I know as a fact that senior programmers with the NHS make 70-80k. A project lead can get close to 100k. No idea what the Treasury is thinking here.

This one was discussed recently, and it was pointed out that from the bullet points of the listing it appears to be an inflated title for a mostly administrative role liaising with the govt's actual cybersecurity professionals and training a couple of apprentices. Plus of course, they may already have an internal candidate and simply advertise it for policy requirements, with a view to only considering applicants if…

Civil service requires line reports for certain pay bands so they may well have hired the apprentices to justify this fat salary for the individual contributor.

The job will likely be filled by a candidate from elsewhere in the CS e.g. ex police on thierv way to a date cheque in the private sector. I imagine this would make a very good stepping stone to a senior cyber job in financial services.

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