Can't pay more
Well, they can't pay any more can they? As they'd then have to pay that person's manager more, and *their* manager more. Where does it end?!
Given the importance of the Treasury department's function to Britain, Reg readers might expect the Head of Cyber Security vacancy currently being advertised would come with a salary that reflects its criticality. They'd be sorely disappointed: the starting salary for the right candidate is £50,550 (c. $62,500), which many …
The joys of public sector pay scales and exactly that - we can't be seen to have somebody paid more than their boss (despite the fact that as I've argued until I'm blue in the face the scoring for grades means there's technically no reason why this can't happen).
It also highlights that at this moment in time with certain specialisms within IT paying out like a casino the public sector just can't compete on salaries. My area has had job vacancies repeatedly advertised but we're shooting way below market rate so we barely even get applicants, never mind good ones - so we hire in contractors getting paid very well instead. *shrug*
As a counterpoint Renfrewshire Council in Scotland have a Security and Governance Manager job up right now - £56-59k.
But tbh I don't really know any qualified security guy who would even look at a salary like that for a job that is likely going to be one to drive you into an early grave whilst ministers use you as a blamehound for their failings.
I think the latter part of your post is a key point here.
You know full well that in such a role, if anything went wrong you would be the person scapegoated as the root of the problem. That's one of the reasons you pay people in high risk roles more - high risk? High reward. Such a failure and loss of the job at the Treasury would effectively be the end of your career.
"Such a failure and loss of the job at the Treasury would effectively be the end of your career."
If the Treasury gets pwned, the possible material losses could be 9-figures plus plus. The loss of confidence alone would be a gigantic economic blow. Far FAR more than paying a decent salary to the right person to prevent it
Yes, you'd be a scapegoat, but you probably wouldn't get fired, after all no-one gets fired in the public sector. Plus the lovely golden pension you'd get if you stuck it out until retirement age. When I was much younger, there was no way I'd have looked at a public sector job, but my life-long-public-sector-worker neighbour has just retired with a golden pension that provides more money than he knows what to do with, which makes me think maybe I should've gone down that route?
> my life-long-public-sector-worker neighbour has just retired with a golden pension
The key in that phrase is life-long. The civil service doesn't enrol employees on a Defined Benefits pension scheme any more, as far as I know. At one time not all that long ago, if one had a DB pension for all of a 40 year career, then one would retire on 40/60ths of one's final salary.
wasn't long ago when they'd give people promotions shortly before retirement to boost their pension.
the worst was when in my branch of home office in the mid 2000's people where getting the promotions, then retiring, then coming back as contractors 3 to 6 months later on huge day rates c£500 and more.
Cake and eating it, all with Blair & co's blessing.
Ground my gears especially when they removed my staff & wouldn't match my pay to others in an agency we merged with because i had no staff. The other way to look at it was i was doing the job of 6 people in the other agency on less than a junior staff member in the other agency.
I loved my job but saw that no one other than my boss & immediate colleagues valued my work, senior management couldn't care less so i left.
Been leaving crappy paid jobs for a while now but have quadrupled my pay since 2007, effectively contractor rates on a permy contract ;)
Like Crapita? That being the Crapita who only this morning had what could well be a cyberattack
One of the sad things about The Americanised Register these days is that you now have to read about stories like this in the mainstream press...
I am sure Russia or another rouge state will happily top up the wage by another £50k.
But reality is that, these jobs are likely posted this way so that nobody with necessary qualification applies and then CS can apply to fill the role with a worker from one of the well known big consultancies, where consultancy will get paid £xxxx per day to fill the role.
That's how grifting works in public sector.
Unqualified people won’t get the job. Whoever said a contractor will get it is bang on.
I think the wage expectations of people on here are hilarious. Complaining about high risk , high reward. Nurses, police, military, security services…THAT’S risk. A basement dweller being scapegoated by an arsehole politician is an inconvenience. Guess what…all of those jobs are paid well below the “pathetic “ salary on offer here.
The whole UK Government approach to IT is wrong.
I have a friend, he's a contractor, he's very good. He does a lot of work for UK Gov, for which he charges a huge day rate.
This seems common amongst IT in government, we seem to be supported mainly by well paid contractors. People who are generally motivated by money, and will leave if a more lucrative opportunity presents itself; taking all their accumulated knowledge with them. (There's nothing wrong with this, this is what contractors do).
Personally I think the UK needs it's own IT department, the government should build a department for IT, staff it with competent well paid professionals. This could then be used as the source of staff for government IT projects. The DWP needs a new system developing then it contracts it out to the internal IT department.
That way you'll get a department staffed with competent professionals, who should enjoy the variety of work they end up doing, but will also not walk out at the end of each project taking all their tax payer funded experience with them.
After a few years you're going to have a department with the necessary skills, and more importantly, experience and systems knowledge to deliver decent IT to the British public.
It'll never happen though, no one would want to risk having to actually hire someone properly. Plus it probably comes out of capex rather than opex or some other accounting bullshit that seems to matter to people.
Ahh well, like Professor Farnsworth said 'A man can dream... a man can dream'
Well, arguably, that is what some of the large consultancies do: they have Government practices, which have staff who work on these projects long term and their knowledge has the chance to be reused on other projects. They do have some very good people, with masses of relevant experience. Effectively they are the government IT dept.
But, of course, they charge much, *much* higher rates than anyone actually working in the Civil Service can be paid.
"they charge much, *much* higher rates than anyone actually working in the Civil Service can be paid"
Yep, and its a wonder they get away with it!! Imagine if a few private companies between them hired all the nurses and doctors in UK, paid them slightly more than government rate, and then contracted them out to local NHS trusts at double that rate. But to the consultancy-led Tory* government , that's a far better outcome than simply paying the nurses and doctors a proper salary, because it shovels money into their mates pockets, who shovel it back into theirs'.
Not saying Labour hasn't done or won't do the same, but orders of magnitude difference of scale.
That's already happening to an extent.
There was an article on the radio about it a few days ago, medical agencies have seen their profits skyrocket.
Think they said that the staff they hire out are often more interested in the flexibility compared to the actual money although of course they aren't turning down the bump.
I can well believe it, when daughter was born only reason wife was able to go back to nursing full time, 12 hour night shifts on a rota, was because the nursery was able to be flexible.
Our nursery were quite happy to work with her rota as long as they got a note of shifts at least 2 weeks ahead.
All the other ones were "you can have complete flexibility, you can have whatever days you want as long as they are the same days every week" so we'd have ended up having to put her in 5 days a week.
I can understand why the others weren't able to do be so flexible but it makes life very hard for parents on rotas.
Well, arguably, that is what some of the large consultancies do[...] Effectively they are the government IT dept.
...but at contractor rates.
Because enterprising people have realised the government needs an IT department and seen an opportunity to make money. Don't really have a problem with this, that's what businesses do. But it does rather take morals out of the equation, for example I have heard an acquaintance boast that their firm loves NHS contracts as they can take (and bill for) twice the time because the bill will never get queried.
If you're not promoting growth in a given sector, just providing a cash cow for others that have seen the public need, then a better use of taxpayers money would be to just hire direct. I suspect it's a political problem though.
But, of course, they charge much, *much* higher rates than anyone actually working in the Civil Service can be paid.
So we'll just continue with this as the status quo. :(
Unless you are a contractor and directly employed by the Civil Service, in which case name your price. I've worked for outsourcers, I've worked on Government contracts, the work is easy, dealing with the plonkers and politics is HARD, juggling with a complete lack of long term strategy and an understanding of the impact of decisions - in this I offer the decision to turn off 3G networks so that Jimmy can get 6G somewhere close to a mast and get his fill of high bandwidth crapware...
The papers today are full of issues caused by parking payment machines having to be decommissioned because 3G is going - no mention of the resources and costs to create a network suitable for emergency services use, we don't need no 6G, we need a working network EVERYWHERE, for EVERYTHING, especially Emergency Services...
Come to think of it, when the country is covered in ******* turbines, there will be plenty of high places on which to mount a mast, frequency UP, transmission range down... maybe we should stick to morse code over long wave.
I work on a thing that's important to the country. It inhabits a grey zone between what's public and what's a private company But I (like so many people there) am working for one of several consultancies whose staff wander the place. I would've thought that with something like this, getting good people and retaining knowledge would be critical.Instead I run into obstacles about which key thing is being run by which outsourcerer and what they are willing to tell me. It works because the people there (including those working for various outsourcerers) generally give a damn.
It can't be cost-effective though. I wonder what MBA type was behind this.
The problem with pay in the public sector is that they can't separate out "management skills" from "specalist/technical skills".
i.e. You can only get paid a certain amount before you have to become management.
The pay band looks like it's at the top of the technical scale before you pivot to managerial.
Then they (management) wonder why they can't employ any half-decent specalist/technical staff and so resort to contractors & consultants - which we all know cost way more than properly paid staff.
Disclaimer: I still work in the public sector.
I suspect that unionisation has something to do with this. Highly paid experts doing a job where they have responsibility commensurate with their salaries are hardly likely to be candidates for union membership. So any scheme to pay the going rate for expert permies is likely to cause all sorts of union ructions quite apart from managers who have their noses put out of joint.
So the already pathetically low salary will be docked if the appointee chooses not to use public transport?
I love the concept. Maybe it could be docked it further if they choose to bring their own sandwiches for lunch?
I think we're far more likely to expect that anything IT related done by the government will be a farcical disaster. This yearly salary is similar to some of the daily rates they hand out to contract agencies for useless work. It's also similar to the daily rates ex-ministers have been asking for jobs on the side recently. And the many responsibilities listed should be about 10 different jobs if they were to be done properly.
I'd be expecting the head of security at the treasury to come from GCHQ or MI5, not LinkedIn, but sadly this story shows just how degraded government thinking has become about the running of government itself.
“I'd be expecting the head of security at the treasury to come from GCHQ or MI5,”
They may do…but jobs need to be advertised to get the widest candidate pool. The salary will be supplemented with a non pensionable allowance which may be substantial.
To those bitching about the salary…what do you think people in MI5 and GCHQ are on? Hint. Civil service pay scales.
I used to work for a UK government ministry and the guy in charge of a very important system came to visit us. A lovely bloke. Beforehand we had been told by a very hierarchy minded manager that he was a 'Band A' grade and we should mind our Ps and Qs. I told him that when we were alone, and he rolled his eyes and said 'they had to give me that grade to make me stay - I'm no different from you'. A band A was on around 50k at the time.
It may be that the Civil Service doesn't want anyone from outside the club getting the role and upsetting the apple cart. Making the job unattractive to the right candidates leaves the way open for one of the First Division brigade to walk into the job and continue to deliver piss poor performance.
The job isn't what it appears to be. The advert makes it look like it's for the head of cyber security at HM treasury, an organisation with "1001-5000 employees". But looking at the advert more closely, it's not THE head, but A head, within a team of 40 and leading a team of just 2 "cyber analysts". That £50-£57k salary seems more reasonable now.
So clearly not head of the whole of HM treasury cyber security, unless HMG think that a team of two people is enough resource for a 1001+ person organisation looking after something as trivial as the whole of the UK's finances.
Only three types of people will take this job;
1. Retired IT person that is board and wants to get out of the house.
2. Underqualified person that will use it as a stepping stone for 6 months while trying not to get fired.
3. A criminal that will be creating and selling back doors, that won't be outed for years.
Oh wait, there is option 4, use a human service program for an offended group, and give them a job they have no skills for so they can tell the world they are doing good - while really setting up the person, position and tech to fail. nope, this is option 2.
More likely is that retired person might actually know enough shit and care little enough about their career that they actually do the job properly. You know, flagging up bad practice, making recommendations, and generally being a pain in the butt for their managers.
OK, yes, the vast majority of LinkedIn is posts are about "look at my achievement in getting certified in painting with Crayons" and making successful toilet training sound like having just won the Nobel Prize but essentially having my profile being identical to my CV with all the right buzzwords most certainly worked for me.
I just checked and since 2011(!) every single job I've had (both perm and contract) were through recruiters finding me through LI. Maybe one exception, too long ago to quite remember. YMMV.
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I am surprised that no one mentioned peanuts and monkeys?
A few extra simians would pad out the UK circus. Not many primates would be interested given the last organ grinder is long gone.
The AU Publics Service (APS) has defined the problem but I suspect has assigned it to Ms Sweet Fanny to action
https://www.apsc.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/workforce-information/aps-hierarchy-and-classification-review
Curious. Would the applicant need to be an Equity member?
I love this.
the majority of the people on here are all espousing how they would change the system of the the Civil Service.
You know nothing!! (with the exception of the enlightened person who said there should be one HMG dept to cover this)
This is for a Grade 7 role in a very small section where the post holder will have a lot of authority. I agree this is the wrong grade and the pay is very low.
It should be one grade higher for a section this size. But even then, that pay would only go up by £10k
But here is the thing you lot are missing.
Who pays the CS salaries?
Let me give you a hint - you lot do.
To pay the 430k CSers (and contractors) the money they get, it comes from the HMRC - the people you are all supposed to pay your taxes to. (If you pay tax - contractors railing against IR35)
So, want to give the CSers a pay rise? Pay more tax!
Anyone want to give up another 10% of their salary to help the CS get a bigger pay rise?
No? I thought not.
Until you have worked in the CS, until you have realised that the salary you get is just enough to live on and you still stay because you believe you are a servant to the country's needs, I would suggest you back the fk out of telling us how we are doing a shit job and pay more tax so we can do a better job.
Because more money in the coffers would get us more people, more ways of making things better and probably less criticism.
Yes, the CS has its flaws and some of the decisions made are just mind-bogglingly maddening, but you look at the person that is sat next to you in your office, and you realise that together you and them can make a difference to someone.
Whether it be to rehabilitate an offender, or to pay a pension or to even provide support to some old dear in a draughty home who needs an extra £10 to pay her heating.
You lot are probably all of the people who clapped the nurses during pandemic and extolled their virtues and then pilloried them when they had the temerity to ask for more money because they need food banks at hospitals to just feed their kids and went out on strike.
Headline - unless you have walked in the shoes of a CSer, or a nurse or a soldier or any other public servant, you are not qualified to comment on how business is conducted. Because these people are keeping you safe and alive.
To quote/paraphrase the great Col. Nathan Jessup
"You are a group of people who rise and sleep under the blanket of the very societal supports that we provide and then question the manner in which we provide it.
I would rather that you just said "thank you" and went on your way. "
Either that - or pay more tax