It’s worth pointing out that this is a higher salary than most doctors make (below consultant level) in the UK.
UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
181–190 of 245 posts
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
£100k in the UK a top 10% wage for the country, but the wages in the UK are massively skewed towards London and the South East. As for the tax, we have progressive taxation in the UK. Earning £100k, you'd pay 0% on the first 12.5k, 25% on the next 70k or so, and 45% on the last 27.5k (numbers are from memory so they might be a little off). High wage earners are not giving up half their income in tax. That'd be silly.
Your numbers are way off. It's: Basic rate of 20% on earnings between £12,571 and £50,270. Higher Rate of 40% on earnings between £50,271 and £125,139. Additional Rate of 45% on earnings from £125,140. (this is from the tax year starting next week, it used to be £150k instead of £125k) You also gradually lose your tax-free allowance if you make over £100k so there's a weird dead zone in which your marginal rate is so…
The problem is most people simply aren't rich enough. The effective tax rate of our current, and richest, prime minister was only 22%. I'm on the low end of the higher rate bracket and already pay more than that, before counting NI/loans.
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why do you do it? Or are there factors at play besides the money?
1. I'm working with an amazing team. Experience has taught me that there's no amount of money worth working with a bad one.
2. I have a disabled spouse and the public sector has offered quite a bit of flexibility around this (e.g. work from home pre-COVID).
3. Everything is customer focused. No dark patterns or data collection. Everything is open source.
4. Work I can believe in. I've worked on everything from drug delivery to environmentally safe fire exstinguishers to solar tech. Comparatively, the last private sector job I interviewed with would have mostly served was building b2b middleware for crypto firms.
5. Variety. I get to touch a huge range of tech, so the job never gets boring. Among the tasks on my annual review for next year, I'm touching 3D rendering, parsers, GPU computing (not CUDA - can't guarantee the users have an NVIDIA card), computational chemistry, and transitioning our GUI code to a declarative framework. I declared myself a C++ developer, but I once had a single day where I had to edit code in eight different languages (C++, Python, Racket, Tcl, Labview, IDL Wave, Mathematica, Labtalk) and I've worked with at least as many more in production.
6. The pay isn't that big of a difference. My last job offer in the private sector was £50k, but there were enough caveats that it would have worked out about the same in the end.
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but then you live in Croydon.
I've lived in Croydon for 20 years, after living multiple other places in London. While it has some real shitholes, it also has plenty of great places. Most of Croydons reputation is down to places most people who live in Croydon never see. The 1100/month flats I saw were in calm, green, solidly middle class areas with walking distance to several large parks, shops, and great transport links.
Most of Croydons reputation is down to crime rate mate. Overall third highest in London and especially significant and growing in the violence against the person category.
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#185This 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…
I’ve had the misfortune to work with Accenture acting on behalf of the UK government. They’ve somehow managed to stretch a software project 2 years past delivery date, bleeding the UK taxpayer dry the whole time. At no point have these people shown even a shred of professionalism or competence. All the while I’m not even sure the boffins at Whitehall even realise they’re being robbed blind. But to be fair, if it wasn…
How often is it the case that some official in government has an interest in Accenture, or whatever company, and it is in their interest for that company to win contracts, and then simply stretch those contracts out as long as possible, while the interested official continues their influence in retaining the contract? Or perhaps I'm overly cynical.
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you entire IT team is 40, it's plausible to assume that the entire security team is these 2 analysts and their sought-after boss. Even if it's "a" head, why would anyone qualified for leading an infosec team be interested?
For the same reason that anyone works in the civil service. It's a very restrained pace of life, you literally have to count your hours and take time off to ensure you don't work more than 37.5 hours a week, there's flexibility to work from home and your working hours, the pension and the benefits are fantastic. If you live to work then this job isn't for you, but it's quite a nice job if you're not that invested in…
> If you live to work then this job isn't for you, but it's quite a nice job if you're not that invested in it.
Seems like that would attract bullshitters who deliver the minimum they can get away with, and given it's the government and there will be no (skilled) oversight, they will get away with it and the mediocrity feedback loop continues.
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've lived in Croydon for 20 years, after living multiple other places in London. While it has some real shitholes, it also has plenty of great places. Most of Croydons reputation is down to places most people who live in Croydon never see. The 1100/month flats I saw were in calm, green, solidly middle class areas with walking distance to several large parks, shops, and great transport links.
Most of Croydons reputation is down to crime rate mate. Overall third highest in London and especially significant and growing in the violence against the person category.
And again: Mostly in areas most people in Croydon don't frequent. Croydon is large, and ranges from leafy suburbs with private roads and mansions to run down estates.
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without knowing the details, not really. That's more for people in Parliament these days, not the Civil Service. £55k in London is junior management level pay in the London, if that. Unless this is a case of give an incredible title for a junior member of staff to make it sounds attractive, then this is reallllly low pay for that type of job. Embarassingly low. Kind of, "I have no idea what a Head of Cyber Security"…
As others said, it is a junior role -- "a head", not "the head" that will (from a job description) manage a 2-person team in a 40-person org pretty far removed from leadership.
Probably need to be a bit clearer on their titles then. Head of Cyber Security sounds overarching and very senior off the bat.
Bit like a few experiences I've seen where the person is, for example, "Director of Sales" intead of "Sales Director".
The former meaning nothing in UK legal entity law. The latter assuming directorial and/or ownership.
I guess the naming of roles has been the subject to this nonsense since the year dot though, so ...
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uk - Britain is ceaselessly proud of it's NHS, and 10 years ago it was fine. I wiuld call in as a student complaining about a running nose and would get an appointment withing a day or two. In the past few years it fell off a cliff. Recently I called in about a serious infection and got told there are no appointment left this month. At all. It was the 2nd of March. Thr only way to get treatlent is to go to the accide…
Where are you based? I'm in central London and - whilst I agree it has been and could be better - have had no problem getting an appointment. Most of it is app based now, right? I'll message in the morning or the night before, a doctor will video call within 48 hours (usually, but often same day) and will ask me to come in if I need to. Otherwise they'll just prescribe after the call and send the prescription to my l…
> they'll just prescribe after the call and send the prescription to my local pharmacy.
Yes, exactly this is all they do now basically, nothing else.
Not sure which app you're using but I've been with Babylon Health for years and it went downhill very much lately.
Before the pandemic I was able to get a call consult within 3-4hrs and book an in-person appt for next day easily.
These days can't get a callback earlier than 2-3 days and bookings for in-person unavailable for WEEKS!
Re: UK Treasury trying to find a Head of Cyber Security for £55k
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a way for elites to maintain control. Much like unpaid internships, the paths and positions of power are made unattractive to intelligent and hardworking people who lack generational wealth to work for free or far less than market value, especially when cost of living is so high.
Have you met many civil servants in the UK? Generational wealth isn’t a term I’d associated with them
I'm Canadian, but there is a difference between civil servants and the management.
I'm guessing that it's the same.
Your frontline civil servants aren't the wealthy ones, they are working a job. It's their bosses and directors, who control the budgets, and can decided who get's the juicy private contracts.
Isn't the PM from a very wealthy family? That's the sort of thing I am talking about, not the civil servant working at the DMV (or it's equivalent) counter.