Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

infosec.exchange

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 245 posts

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

#201

Post by philjohn »

tyingq wrote: post #138
dubcanada wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of > £55k as being equivalent to $100k in the US Is not? I don't see any argument for that not being correct. Everything you said about costs, sounds that exact same as $100k in the US. Unless you live in North Dakota, chances are you are paying pretty close to the same percentages for rent/foot in a larger city such as San Fran or Chicago. Not exactly sure what zone 5 is, but a rough search gave me $2500 f…

UK payroll taxes are also probably a larger percentage.

But that covers your healthcare. No copays, deductibles, flat rate for all prescriptions of £9.50 per item (or £10.40 a month for 10 months for a prepayment certificate that covers as many items as needed).

Insurance is also less, both contents and car insurance. Utilities a lot lower (fast internet for £30 a month, sim only contract with 50GB of 5G data for £15 a month).

There is this strange idea that the UK is super expensive, and whilst not cheap, a lot of things are decidedly cheaper in the UK than they are in the US.

Also student loans - universities are capped at £9250 per year, so you've not got hundreds of thousands in student loan debt to pay off either.

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

#202

Post by JonChesterfield »

midasuni wrote: post #36
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.

100k in the U.K. assuming no student loans to repay would be £66,777 net. Most things I purchase have no tax - food, housing, train fares. The oil for this winter heating cost £1500 plus £75 vat.

Food, housing and train fares are all taxed?

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

#203

Post by hhmc »

airpoint wrote: post #191
nivenkos wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Incredible salary in the UK != incredible salary in London

You are gated from almost nothing in London on £140K -- the only meaningful exception would be buying a house in a central location

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

#204

Post by hhmc »

NullPrefix wrote: post #47
eckesicle wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

How much of the budget was mortgage? Because with mortgage you can sell the expensive house afterwards.

Not the part of the mortgage that's accumulated interest -- which is going to be considerable at current rates.

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

#205

Post by grumpy_coder »

petesergeant wrote: post #199
newsclues wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 work…

PM has two parents who are doctors, which is far, far from poor, but not really generational wealth. He did marry into money, though. Neither of the last two came from illustrious backgrounds.

This is a heavily massaged story built for a life long politician. (One hole in the story is only giving I think his mothers family background. There was clearly ~500k to buy a pharmacy early after 'penniless' immigration)

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

#206

Post by vidarh »

airpoint wrote: post #184
vidarh wrote: post #148

Earlier 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.

In addition to my other reply, what's your source for the crime rate?

This [1] and this [2] suggests Croydon is about halfway down the borough list per capita, with matched better what I remember from looking at Met numbers in the past. Croydon is the second most populous London borough, so in absolute number of crimes it is usually high up the list, but per capita it's for a long time been pretty much middle of the road, again pulled up by the poorer parts of the borough (particularly, as far as I remember, the Northernmost parts most urban parts, and estates like Addington and Fieldway.

[1] https://www.finder.com/uk/london-crime-statistics#london-cri...

[2] https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/most-violent...

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

#207

Post by _8j50 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #125
_8j50 wrote: post #68

I have had NASA tell me the max pay for a security engineer is $40k. I had to question if perhaps the job was for a security guard at one of their sites or something.

I mean, it's fucking NASA. I'd probably work there for free just to be able to say I'd done it. "Oh, you got a lot of RSUs for your social media click-tracking? That's nice. I helped bullseye an asteroid 9.6 million km away, potentially saving every life on Earth. But yeah, that new infinite scroll is cool, too."

If it was the NSA I'd agree with you but NASA?? Their not famous for their infosec lol, I prefer actual wages.

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

#208

Post by unmole »

makingstuffs wrote: post #194
unmole wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being almost entirely facetious but for ~600 GBP one could fly to India, get excellent dental treatment and fly back.

I literally did this.

Ha! From your surname I'm assuming you have some ties to India?

There are companies that specialise in medical tourism but I wonder how feasible it would be for an individual who was completely unfamiliar with India.

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

#210

Post by Nextgrid »

philjohn wrote: post #201
tyingq wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK payroll taxes are also probably a larger percentage.

But that covers your healthcare. No copays, deductibles, flat rate for all prescriptions of £9.50 per item (or £10.40 a month for 10 months for a prepayment certificate that covers as many items as needed). Insurance is also less, both contents and car insurance. Utilities a lot lower (fast internet for £30 a month, sim only contract with 50GB of 5G data for £15 a month). There is this strange idea that the UK is sup…

> But that covers your healthcare. No copays, deductibles, flat rate for all prescriptions of £9.50 per item (or £10.40 a month for 10 months for a prepayment certificate that covers as many items as needed).

Which has now collapsed so in practice you need to go private if you need any kind of decent, timely care. And it never covered dentistry from what I’ve heard.

In practice you end up paying twice - once in taxes for the dysfunctional health service you can’t actually use, and a second time in the form of either insurance or out of pocket to go private when you do need healthcare.

Post reply on HN