Wanted: IT manager for UK government agency – £60k How much is an IT manager worth? Well, if you're working for a government agency, the answer seems to be about £60k (about $81k), according to a new vacancy being advertised. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) is an Executive Agency of Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), tasked with …
I work in a different discipline, and I'm a civil servant. I'd earn about 50% more and additionally have performance related pay around 15-20% of salary in the private sector. It's common in most public sector roles.
The "fault" here is that people in the UK want public services like Denmark with taxes like Chad, and the political classes play to that gallery. Decades of government spending beyond its means has resulted in a vast pile of debt that consumes over £1 in 12 of public spending so that (as Ms Reeves is finding out) there's zero headroom to make any changes.
I lived in the until I was 19, I left to live elsewhere, I have returned to the UK on average once every four years over quite a long period now and as such have seen the demise of the UK.
It has gone downhill to a level of being almost unrecognisable. You land in Heathrow and head into London, no one is a native English speaker.
You head up to Glasgow and the high streets are boarded up, the train stations are full of homeless people.
There are far more high end Range Rovers but it seems that there are also far more people on benefits.
Obesity is extremely prevalant.
TV is a complete shitfest of TV reality, propoganda and general drivel.
The Brits have lost pride in their country, unless of course you are one of the lucky ones in a Range Rover.
Its definately gone down hill and from what I have seen with the last, latest and next bunch of politicians , its not going anywhwre else very soon.
And no, it wasnt always like that.
"You land in Heathrow and head into London, no one is a native English speaker"
In so far as this contains a truth (it's certainly not "no one"), it's more a function of London's ability to attract citizens from around the world than a specific mark of decline.
Your other points have some validity, and I'm genuinely interested in your ideas (as an external observer) to improve matters.
It's the standard foreign-government funded propaganda bot nonsense.
It's quite clear that you havent been there.
I spoke with six people between the airport zntil the reception desk. Varying from varius Indian, Pakistan, Sub saharan Africans to Polish ,eastern Europeans and it was obvious to anyone that none of them were native English speakers.
What this means is that the culture is changing and that I no longer recognize my own country of birth.
I would truly like to read what those that don't agree have to say.
I agree about Glasgow etc. - I was there in Jan and it was an absolute slum. I don't recognise the city I was born in and grew up in - empty shops and roads that look like the surface of the moon. At one point driving around at night I could not even make out the road markings with car headlights they were so worn out at a major junction on the M8. Glasgow City Centre has been destroyed by the anti-car sentiment of the Council and is now a city where historic buildings have a sudden tendency to catch fire so student accommodation blocks can be built which is a nice money earner.
Range Rovers must be really cheap to lease in the UK also I've never seen so many despite living in an Australian State which is awash with mining money and disposable income [my office is next to a long term storage lot which is rammed with "offroad" caravans at 50,000 quid a pop; we don't have Pikeys here yet so if you buy a caravan you have a good chance of actually getting to use it rather than providing free accommodation to your local traveller site one night].
"But what we get are taxes like Denmark...."
Please share what your understanding is of Danish tax rates - including direct, indirect and "other" taxes - car registration tax is a biggy, so please don't miss that out.
Having been offered a role in Denmark (before UK left the EU) I've got a decent idea of rates and allowances. Based on actual calculations, it was very clear that the UK didn't have the same rates of taxation as Denmark - the effective highest marginal rate of tax I'd pay in the UK was 20% lower (and kicked in later) than in Denmark at the same salary level.
UK tax take has increased over the past years with fiscal drag etc, etc, but we've got a way to go to catch up on tax with the Danes.
According to the IMF, government spending in Denmark as a proportion of GDP is approaching 47%, in UK is just over 44%, whilst Chad, by comparison, is 18%.
So UK and Denmark are certainly in the same ballpark. Although an extra 3% of UK GDP would make a world of difference to many public services.
As for results: on the scale of Denmark to Chad, I think UK much more closely resembles Denmark.
IMF figures for government revenue as a %age of GDP in 2023 are listed as 38.21% for UK and 50.14% for Denmark, so that's also an interesting figure as it likely matches tax take better (spending doesn't have to equate to income whilst people are willing to lend to you).
Supporting that point is that IMF have 3% of GDP being spent on public debt interest payments in the UK whilst it's less than a quarter of that %age (0.66%) for the same period for Denmark. UK GDP to debt ratio is ~100% and the Danes' is just under 30%.
So they get taxed more heavily, spend less paying interest on public debt and more on services, all whilst paying down public debt.
"the effective highest marginal rate of tax"
Is always the headline figure. The real meat is in looking at where the lower thresholds kick in and in particular the threshold where people start paying income tax _at all_, along with looking at the cost of compliance/cost of collection
When New Zealand simplified their income tax structure in the 1980s, taxes paid went down, actual net revenue went up (lower costs of collection) and people were happier about paying the lower figures even though 90% of all exemptions and allowances were abolished. A couple of years later they made 1/3 of the entire Revenue/Customs department redundant because things were working so well
What I liked about it at the time was my tax return went from 30 pages to 6 and I only needed to partially fill in 3 of them
40 years later the complexity has returned thanks to decades of centre right governments making loopholes for their mates and the rich again pay less tax in real terms (frequently in absolute terms too) than the average wage slave
Did you discount the risk premium of not being made redundant, add in the employers pension contribution, the insurance cost of six months sick pay at 100%, then six months at 50%, six weeks leave? What about the stress of real accountability and delivering customer driven requirements?
While job security is good, as already said, it's not absolute - and if you are with a decent size outfit, the real risk is quite low. Against that, as a CS you are the whim of the next incoming government deciding that the CS is too large and directing from on high that 10% of you are to be culled.
As for the rest, there are many organisations offering similar terms. Leaving only the CS pension as the real perk - but that's been watered down over the years and is not as gold plated as it used to be (definitely not what the Daily Wail would have you believe), but that is also "jam tomorrow" when many are struggling to buy bread today.
Note that Uk Government is a minimum wage employer. In the MoD there are now FOUR grades on minimum wage - two industrial, two non-industrial. It must be "interesting" getting the annual pay rise, then come April getting another one to bring you up to the new minimum wage - thankfully I'm not that far down the pecking order. OK, they've fudged things so that AOs (administrative officers) get a non-contractual, non-consolidated, "temporary" allowance to make their pay slightly higher than the AAs (administrative assistants) they manage - but that's only because AOs were realising they might as well look for a demotion to AA and get the same (minimum wage) pay for less responsibility, leading to a lot of unfilled posts. The way things are heading, EOs (executive officers) will soon be in the same boat.
There's a reason the treasury refuses to allow civil servants to have a pay review body - it's a lot harder to pay below inflation increases (if any at all) year after year if an independent pay body keeps recommending higher.
Why would they need to pay civil servants, when it's far more helpful to have a pocket full of parliamentarians? The Tories readily sold out to any Russian with money for at least the past fifteen years, and the left of the Labour party are no better, where they still think that Russia is communist and somehow an ally.
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Public sector usually has job skill scoring which determines the salary banding. And often without management responsibility the scores are kept low. It's one of the main reasons professional/expert jobs are so poorly paid as although they may be desirable skills in the job market the restrictive scoring system marks them down if you aren't running a department as well.
Most public sector bodies are finding way around this with various additional top ups (might be a band 3 at £38k but with a £10k top up for skill shortage thing) but they don't always choose to add them or are allow to add them.
Reminds me of when I worked in the UK public sector. They had a pay review when the coalition was elected. The way they did it was to ask a recruitment agency what the cheapest developer would be paid at market rates - so a junior developer straight out of college. They then decided that I was massively overpaid, despite being a senior developer who had architected all the systems as well as having many admin and DBS responsibilities due to a lack of staff. It was explained I'd receive no pay rise until inflation had effectively reduced the value of my salary. I quit, and they took ages to replace me, but my successor lasted three months as they didn't have the necessary experience. The next person took the job, then demanded to work remotely from Spain having presumably guessed they were desperate!
"And often without management responsibility"
This was my experience. The career grade, whatever that meant, was PSO. In practice it meant that the first in the expanding lab got that having all these other people under hiim. The reality was that several others were doing the same job. The same extremely responsible job, investigating cases and giving evidence that coul clear someone or put them in jail. As next longest there I was stuck ar SSO until I gave notice at which point PSO was magically offered without any of the usual formalities. I don't think even SPSO would have swung it at that point.
If the compensation for the chief monkey is GBP60k and being the civil service all the under monkeys must be earning less than that, and most considerably less I imagine. Well, Hamlet is never going to be written at that rate.
But seriously attracting the young into STEM when those salaries are the carrot I dread to think of the stick.
Self employed trades appear to pull in more than GBP70k pa and as a skilled migrant to AU can do a great deal better (with nicer weather and properly cold beer.)
"being the civil service all the under monkeys must be earning less than that".
Not true. There might be a line management hierarchy of tasking and performance management, but not of pay. When I was a civil service line manager, I was managing several people at higher pay and seniority than me, some of them were at grades far higher then I am likely to ever reach. And it's still the same there, for technical projects too. A project lead can quite easily be a lower grade than people working under them. It's all about the skills for the task.
At this moment in time I wouldn't advise anyone to go to university, let alone do a STEM course. What's the point of getting up to £100k in debt if you're going to be fighting for barista jobs when you graduate & every good job is being offshored to India or south Africa?
Become a plumber or doctor. And if you become a doctor, get out the country ASAP to earn triple somewhere else.
The only way I can help the future generations in IT is refusing to train offshore or consultancy staff. I'll train internal staff only.
But again, if you're never going to own a home, wages are on the inevitable decline to minimum wage, even for technical roles (saw a 2nd line sec engineer job advertised requiring cissp at £28k), why bother doing anything but the minimum, going on as many holidays as you can afford & not having kids. Watch the entire house of cards collapse.
And even MOD jobs requiring DV clearance are crap. Rates at 50% what they used to be. Based in shitty towns in the middle of nowhere with 100% in the office. Why would anyone do that?
As to civil service pensions, what's the point of a great pension if you can't afford to have fun in your 20s & 30s or but a house or have kids
No jobs as a Doctor.
My daughter has just passed her last exams to be a GP - aged nearly 30!
£86,000 debt when she left University after 6 years (5 Medicine, 1 MSc Nutrition, as that's where many of the ills lie).
Everybody is banging on about the difficulty in seeing a Doctor and want more appointments to be available.
However, the Surgeries are not receiving any money from the government (or previous) to pay the wages of more Doctors.
My daughter is looking at the prospect of being an unemployed Doctor, just like many of last years graduates still are, in GP or other specialties. And we wonder why they move abroad!
When you can't get an appointment it is due to the funding crisis stopping Surgeries from employing more GPs.
Good on her wanting to become a GP.
My brother was in his mid 40s before he was deemed to be sufficiently experienced to sit the required exams to then be in a position to be offered a permanent registrar's post in pathology. It seemed the system only allowed progression and promotion as and when people left the profession. The regular changing of jobs (think 6 months Oxford followed by 6 months Dundee style of job location change) made it very difficult maintaining any real social life or a family.
White collar jobs are the ones most at risk and have been for decades
When was the last time you saw a room full of ledger clerks?
A lot of legal stuff is just rote, with reference to someone experienced if an anomaly is detected. Sooner or later there are going to be a lot of redundant conveyancing solicitors, etc
Bits are cheaper than robots, etc
They never get it on the competitive rates - it's not like it's a decent pension anymore to compensate you heading into a local/regional/country level authority back stabbing, non-accountable civil servant/manager snake pit (I speak from experience).
I've been out 8 years now. Pay went up 20% instantly.
You need to look at this fine details here. If the 28.97% goes into an invested fund like a private pension then fine. What may happen is that at retirement age you get a fund which is just the sum of all those contributions without the income an invested fund would have had. I've no idea what the Civil Service does now with but my experience of the days of final salary-based pensions I wouldn't be surprised if that's the way it works.
In those days you accrued 1/80th of a year's salary for every year worked so a graduate entering at age 21 and retiring at the standard age of 60 would be a year short of retiring on half pay. When I went into private industry ir was 1/60th so the equivalent would have been a year short of retiring at 2/3s final pay. What was more the Civil Service was "non-contributory" in that the pay was set less than the notional equivalent private sector pay by the amount that would have been contributed. That means that the final salary on which the half pay was based was less by that offset.
The civil service pension scheme is no longer final salary and hasn't been for quite a while. If anything, mathematically it works out now like a weighted average salary scheme.
As for the 28.97% employer contribution (or whatever it is), that's not an actual contribution into a pension fund on your behalf. It's a value that someone somewhere has worked out as being what you would have to pay from your salary into a private pension fund to get the same benefits at retirement. Since investments can go down as well as up, this calculation obviously isn't exact and contains a degree of fudging. Also, it's a calculation performed by the employer so might contain a degree of bias.
IMHO, the civil service pension is good because it's guaranteed and risk free. There is no chance that your contributions will surge and outstrip inflation, but also no chance they will crash and burn either.
It's usually career average pension now. Has been for best part of 20yr. The Daily Mail etc still like to crow about golden plated civil service pensions but they've been gone for a long time now outside of Westminster or Holyrood.
It might be still better than many private company pensions but if you're earning double the money of your old job at the council you can put away more for yourself that you'd ever get from your civil service pension on the crap pay scale.
Indeed, the Alpha scheme which is the only one anyone has been allowed to join for some years is just that - career average.
As said, each year you get a proportion of your salary added to what you'll get in pension - so the more you earn, the faster it goes up. Also each year, there's an uplift to the value to cater for inflation. So the more you earn, and the longer you are in, the more you get at the end of it. In a lot of ways it fairer than final salary - with final salary, if you manage a big boost in the last few years you get disproportionately more than you've earned, or if you pay stagnates (or even drops) you lose out. And if you take full or partial early retirement you get hit a lot harder in Alpha than people did under the old Classic scheme - I won't be able to afford partial early retirement like some of my older colleagues.
But that headline grabbing "employer contribution" is entirely imaginary - and that's where part of the problem lies. Just like National Insurance, it's a big Ponzi scheme that would be illegal if it weren't the government running it. When I get to retire (in [redacted, but down to digits on one hand now] years and [redacted] days, but I'm not counting) there won't be some pot of money funding my pension like my other private sector ones - it'll be those who are still working (some of whom haven't even got to working age yet) who will be paying it through their taxes. Like other areas of life, governments around the world (it's not just a UK issue) are seeing that as time goes on there'll be less people working and having to pay for more people who are retired - and that's what's driving retirement ages up, but politically that can't be done as fast as the beancounters are warning it has to be done.
And on that, reflect that only a generation or two ago, as a man you were statistically doing reasonably well to even reach 65. That retirement age has only gone up a few years (I get to go at 67, I believe it's 68 for anyone younger) and you are a bit unlucky if you don't live to at least a few years past that.
In the civil service, that pension is often described as justification for the lower starting salary. That security of the pension might be very attractive if you are considering a lifetime job there, but of next to no interest of you are only planning a five year stint.
And on the mention of "life", the current civil service pension age is 68 years, it'll probably change up again in a few years.
I wouldn't quite go that far, but I don't understand why they haven't moved closer to the private sector in terms of increasing the base salary to something more attractive, and dropped the pension contribution to something more standard.
I've never had an employer contribute more than 4% to my pension, but I'm paid much better than a civil servant so I'm not bothered - I'd rather have the cash today and be able to decide what to do with it - like pay off my mortgage, than have far less cash and the promise of a better retirement.
"I wouldn't quite go that far, but I don't understand why they haven't moved closer to the private sector in terms of increasing the base salary to something more attractive, and dropped the pension contribution to something more standard."
Because the CS pension employer "contributions" are unfunded, so no money changes hands, and they don't need to take that out of taxation. If they increased the salaries, that is real cash and has to be funded from tax. Say you halved the value of CS pension contributions, and put up salary by an average of £10k. The treasury would see no real benefit on the pension front for decades, but would instantly have to find an extra £5 billion a year out of tax revenues.
You are aware, in todays market you need to be contributing circa 25% to your pension to stand a reasonable chance of receiving a pension broadly equivalent to the 40/60 final salary pension.
I suspect decades of politicians with blind belief in pseudo-economic mumbo-jumbo concerning government expenditure and employee wages has prevented wages increasing to be more in line with the private sector.
I don't see a benefit in reducing the public sector pension contribution, on the contrary I see many benefits in increasing the statutory minimum pension contribution from 3% for employers to at least 12% (UK private sector average) and more realistically to 28%.
Depends on the job. "IT manager" in the public sector is often a fairly junior role. Would not be shocked to see the public sector advertise "IT manager" at £27-35k tbh.
This isn't in the same league as the "Head of infosec" that was advertised the other year for £55k. TBH £60 doesn't sound all that bad at all relatively speaking.
Reading the little bit of description you've got there, when I was in public sector we'd have called that an "IT Team leader" but then the organisation I worked for coveted the "manager" word. "Team leader" would get about £45k now I guess.
No one in a minor public sector organisation gets big bucks other than the heads of service and the exec teams. Professional roles are generally very poorly rewarded. If you're in the public sector you really want to be at the bottom as they generally pay well for unskilled/entry level jobs, (living wage + decent pension), or at the top (face in paper, take the money and retire) but not in the middle whioch is poorly paid and very stressful.
True. The "strategy" / "executive" tier seems to get a LOT more than the "skilled" / "hands-on" roles. Except Cisco Certified people. They HAVE to get a competitive salary - it's a walk out, walk in situation as far as I understand it. Although I may be wrong nowadays of course - willing to be corrected if I am.
It's cultural they worship the alter of managment, the more bodies you manage the more you are worth. I don't recall any practical skill or qualification being valued. Being cisco certified would just mean you were 'infrastructure' and you'd go on whatever grade that was. But managment consultant types could come in on big wages, never figured out how they got that passed the unions.
I don't know what that part of Kent is like. But I wonder if it is a commuter town and so potentially the job is attractive to someone (in their 50s) living locally wishing to forgo the daily commute etc. although
the job description doesn't seem to be selling the position to this demographic.
Doubt it. Someone tried that at the agency I worked for - a contract to her boyfriend's company and another to a mate. She only avoided court by accepting a ban on being a director or ever working in the public sector ever again. Ultimately she had to move abroad to find another job.
It happens but I've never heard of it on big things. Big IT procurements are the stuff of nighmares in the public sector and there will be multiple people running the show to stop the suppliers having any chance to sue if they lose out.
Fraud I've actually see was usually at the building contract level, so housing repairs, small road repairs etc. Usually small enough not to rasie too many eyebrows. But sometimes it does. Big investigation at Edinburgh a few years ago, I believe some people spent some time at her majesties pleasure over it.
You assume there aren't whole teams dedicated to actively searching for that sort of stuff ?
We have to complete annual anti-fraud training, and complete an annual declaration of interests that could create a conflict of interest. OK, both are tick box exercises - but it means that you either declare your interests, or are in deep manure when you get caught. And people do get caught out - often through stupidity, remember the "turns up in a Ferrari one morning" scene from Superman III ?
What is interesting is when the likes of Crapita et al signs a contract with one of the government agencies, when these roles move to their domain they start hitting another 30-40% more basic salary and a typical pension contribution circa 5-10%. These roles are all charged back to the government , is it because it's tax payers money , they don't advertise high rates of salary , so the tax payers thinks they are all paid low but the pension makes up for it. Also there's probably stats on how many die before they even get to pensionable age which might be in the govenments favour.
I've seen the pricing....the Govt is being advertised roles by consultancies and it manager is 1100 or 1700 +VAT/day.
So with all of these civil servants that will be fired and replaced by consultants will see ACTUAL costs double. And the firms bitch they can't get people, so will get Indians in at just above minimum wage + rent with 5 of these guys per house.
We're LITERALLY burning money while destroying any chance of good employment for anyone.
To put this 60k into context...a London bus driver wages top out at a potential £55k, without needing to do the degree or the multitude of professional courses
Public sector wages are a joke & as such are driving down private sector jobs too.Sunak is 100% complicit in this. Opening up the visa route so that Infosys could make more money .
If you look at the jobs going at the moment in the market, the rates have LITERALLY halved. All of this money wandering off to India, south Africa etc. With the loss of well paying jobs like IT, you can forget about a funded NHS.
Public sector? Damn, I'm in the market for work, and I see plenty of jobs in the private sector in the US paying $15-20/hr for Level 3 tech, same company pays +$100,000 for the director. I can make $15-20/hr for slinging pizzas at a relative's restaurant. It's a fsckedup world and getting worse. I really fear for my kid and his future.
The third sector (charities) is similar.
Managing the whole IT infrastructure for an organisation with a multi-million pound turnover (including being effectively permanently on call out of working hours) pays less than a role managing a couple of cafes - because the cafes have lots of part-time staff, and number of staff managed scores higher than pretty much everything else!
I've had a blazing row with a local charity (I'm their Finance director) - they are paying both low wages and statutory minimum pension contributions and the management and Trustees think it is okay to "campaign" about exploitation of the "black community" in the wider world, whilst at the same time paying exploitative wages to their staff - largely drawn from "the black community" because "we're a charity". The Trustees failing to see the reason they have no money is because they incorrectly cost people's time and so don't put sufficient monies in their funding bids. As from April 2025 they are looking at a 20% funding shortfall, of their own making...
Pretty much the standard for universities too
Back when I worked in the public service there was a long tradition of "Featherbedding" - managers trying to accumulate as many staff under them as possible in order to qualify for a higher pay grade. It's a highly corrosive practice that results in mountains of bullshit jobs
Sorry, but the pension for that job is much better than you're going to get in virtually any private sector role these days.
60k and a generous pension? Versus 80k and 5% contributions into your pension pot?
You'd be surprised how much better off the former will be in retirement.
When people get into the 40-45+ age bracket and start panicking about how small their pension pots are - all of a sudden these roles start to look quite attactive!
Look further above for the fuller explaination. You don't actually get that pension money paid into 'your' pot. You pay to join a pension scheme with career average payout usually, also depending on number of years of service.
It's not awful certainly but if you can earn a lot more in the private sector you can buy a better persion of your own.
"IF" you get the pension. It is already a problem to find the money and when the debt bubble finally bursts anything could happen. For example look at assets such as property or gold over a couple of decades and you can see what is happening to money. It doesn't matter what the government say inflation is, there is a reality. Most worrying is that it would be very convenient for people to live shorter lives, ideal if they can die at the point they no longer pay tax.
Paying salaries below market rate just doesn't work, very few people stay and experience gained walks out the door. Those getting experience elsewhere wont be queuing up for less. I've met some very good ex gov workers but they are the ones that left. I'm sure a few good ones stayed but not enough.
"Most worrying is that it would be very convenient for people to live shorter lives"
The bigger worry that most are steadfastly ignoring is the worldwide demographics bomb that western countries are only staving off with increased immigration
Whilst right whingers keep moaning about immigrants, the harsh reality is that developed countries would already have fallen apart without them. What's been happening in Japan over the last 25 years and is beginning to happen in China now, will hit the recently developed countries particularly hard as their birthrates have plummeted to "western" levels at a near linear relationship to personal wealth levels, vs the more gradual decline in the more established camps (the "Global North")
Wars used to be a way of disposing of surplus population of young males. What do you do when there are more 80yo women than 8yo girls? (This is already the case in Russia)
£6000 is peanuts as a London allowance. £60,000 for a manager?? That's just above engineer starter salary. Take the tax off and look at today's house, food, car, fuel prices. Where is all the money going? There was a brief period when any half decent job would allow a 3 bed semi with one of a couple at home looking after the kids. Do all women want to work until the point they have to make a last chance decision on children, then abandon them to return to work? Women's Lib was supposed to be about choice not forced labour.
Something has gone very wrong.
"There was a brief period when any half decent job would allow..."
You can thank the myth of Full Employment for that.
It's been a myth since the late 19th century and all sorts of schemes have been tried to perpetuate it, including excluding married women from the workforce, eliminating child labour and sweatshops, reducing working hours, minimum wage legislation and now the ever increasing spiral of qualifications requirements aimed at keeping people "employed" in education whilst running up huge debts
The reason two parents have to work is the same one that we demonise the unemployed - there's a near religious conviction that "idleness" is evil (never mind that running a household and bringing up kids is a full time occupation) and the unemployed are that way by their own fault
That's the true evil of neoliberal/calvanist thinking as exemplified by the likes of Thatcher. As with Brexit and other religious beliefs, all evidence to the contrary can be handwaved away if it doesn't fit the belief
Yes, I'm an advocate for universal basic income. Yes I'm an advocate for higher taxation on the wealthy - it actually drives innovation and research because such things can be used to offset taxes.
The wealth gap between rich and poor is now the highest it's ever been in human history and history shows that when the gap is eventually perceived to be excessive the kickback is....ugly. It was memories of that ugliness that allowed the creation of welfare systems in the 19th century. One of the reasons the USA is a bastion of the old ways is that it missed out on the 18th century European "ugliness"
UK Gov is going to protect its entire military network against "enemy action" with "the best talent".
Reality check : the best talent it can afford.
Which is apparently less than what a McDonalds senior manager gets paid.
The guy who ensures how hamburger patties are served.
I'm sure that will end well . . .
I always thought McDonalds was a good litmus test for salaries or even going out on your own. Always worth asking the question, would I make more or less in McDonalds and surprisingly the answer is often I'd be better off flipping burgers. And if you are hiring and someone has management experience in McDonalds, they have been very well trained and I have yet to have a bad hire from a resume with McDonalds experience, as long as it's more than a year.
I have mates that did time flipping burgers at McDs. One now runs his own cafe business based directly off the skills and qualifications he got at McDs (genuinely ended up as restaurant manager after starting right at the bottom), another is a partner in an account firm. Both speak very highly of their time at McDs and the company in general.
Things are changing, Aldi pay well and seem to be giving good training to staff with management potential.
My niece has also got good training at Costa (it was a job that helped to fund her Uni. days) and is now being encouraged (by the Costa franchise she is currently with) to embark on further Institute of Management accredited training courses (ie. courses that teach stuff that is useful to supervisors and middle managers rather than MBAs).
There always seems to be plenty of money when ministers want to give some to 3rd world solar cell deployments or war or large IT companies. One almost suspects some of it comes back to them somehow. I'm sure those lucrative commercial roles or the extraordinary money received for speaking or working for global NGOs is just chance. After all who wouldn't pay millions for a speech from an ex PM or cabinet minister that's why some soon become multi-millionaires.
"One almost suspects some of it comes back to them somehow"
Or their constituents.
Virtually ALL Foreign Aid projects are predicated on most (if not all) of the money being spent in the donating country. It's turned into a way of subsidising local industry without being overt
In the name of more information is better, here is the last salary update I received for Canada (Jan 2025). To convert that into pounds and account for cost of living etc. I'd suggest using the Big Mac price converter. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/big-mac-index-by-country which appears to be convert CAD to GBP and minus 10% ..ish to get an equivalent UK salary so 100K cad salary approx. 48.5K GBP or put another way that 60K salary GBP is the same as a 120K salary in Canada. Which is about normal in Canada too. A heavy duty mechanic makes about 55 CAD an hour for reference but typically makes money in OT and if they fly in and out all accommodation and food is covered as part of the contract.
All figures are expressed in thousand Canadian dollars and as annual gross salaries (Note Toronto will be about 15% to 20% higher than these)
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Job Title National
BI/Data Warehouse Architect 120-160
BI Manager 100-130 Database Manager 110-130
Information Manager 100-120
Database Administrator 85-105
Database Developer 90-110
ETL Developer 100-120
BI Developer 90-110
Performance Analyst 70-90
BI Analyst 80-95
CLOUD
Job Title National Enterprise Architect 140-200
Solution Architect 120-140
Cloud Engineer- AWS/Azure/Google 110-130
CYBER SECURITY
Information Systems Leadership
Job Title National
Chief Information Security Officer 180-220
VP, Information Security 165-200
Director, Information Security 130-150
Identity & Access Management
Job Title National Architect 125-145
Senior Engineer 115-135
Engineer 100-120
Governance, Risk & Compliance Leadership
Job Title National
VP, Governance, Risk & Compliance 180-200
Director, Governance, Risk & Compliance 165-185
Manager, Governance, Risk & Compliance 130-150
Governance Risk & Compliance
Job Title National
Senior GRC Consultant 110-130
GRC Consultant 90-110
Compliance Coordinator/Analyst 70-90
Data Security Consultant 80-100
Security Operations Leadership
Job Title National
VP, Security Operations Center 180-210
Director, Security Operations Center 165-185
Manager, Security Operations Center 130-150
Security Operations
Job Title National
Senior Engineer 110-130
Network Security Architect 120-140
Senior Network Security Engineer 110-130
Network Security Engineer 100-120
Engineer 100-120
Security Administrator 75-95
Application Security/Cloud Security
Job Title National
Cloud Security Architect 120-150
Cloud Security Engineer 100-120
Senior Application Security Engineer 100-120
Application Security Engineer 90-110
Incident Response
Job Title National
Reverse Engineer 130-150
Manager, Incident Response 110-130
Digital Forensics Analyst 85-105
Malware Analyst 80-100
Penetration Testing/Red Team
Job Title National
Principal Penetration Tester 130-150
Senior Penetration Tester 110-130
DevSecOps
Job Title National
DevSecOps Architect 130-150
Senior DevSecOps Engineer 110-140
DevSecOps Engineer 100-120
Architecture
Job Title National
Enterprise Security Architect 140-160
Solutions Architect 120-140
DATA & ADVANCED ANALYTICS
Job Title National
Data Architect 130-150
Lead Data Scientist 120-130
Data Scientist 100-120
Data Analyst 80-90
Lead Data Engineer 110-130
Data Engineer 90-110
Data Manager 130-140
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Job Title National
Data Scientist-Python 110-130
Data Scientist-R 110-130
Big Data Engineer-Hadoop 110-130
Machine Learning/Deep Learning Engineer 110-130
SALESFORCE
Job Title National
Salesforce Developer 100-120
Salesforce Business Analyst 90-110
Salesforce Administrators 80-90
Salesforce Functional Consultant 100-110
Salesforce Technical Consultant 100-110
Salesforce Platform manager 110-130
Salesforce Solution Architect 120-130
Salesforce Technical Architect 130-140
Salesforce Project Manager 110-130
INFRASTRUCTURE
Job Title National
Infrastructure Architect 120-130
Solution Architect 110-130
Service Delivery Manager 110-130
Network Engineer 100-120
Network Administrator 80-100
Systems Administrator 80-100
Helpdesk/Service Desk Analyst 60-70
LEADERSHIP
Job Title National
CIO TSX 60 380-400
CIO TSX 300 230-250
CIO SME 200-220
CTO TSX 60 260-270
CTO TSX 300 200-220
CTO SME 200-220 I
T Director TSX 60 270-290
IT Director TSX 300 200-220
IT Director SME 150-180
Development Director 160-180
Chief Information Security Officer 170-180
Head of IT Security 170-180
Head of IT 140-160
Head of Development 150-160
Head of Infrastructure 140-150
Head of Service Delivery 130-150
Head of Business Intelligence 150-160
Business Architect 130-150
Enterprise Architect 160-180
Technical Architect 130-150
Development Manager 130-150
PROJECTS & CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Job Title National
Program Director 140-150
Head of PMO 140-150
Portfolio/Program Manager 120-130
Project Manager 110-130
Change Manager 110-130
Business Analyst 90-110
Business Systems Analyst 90-110
Scrum Master 90-110
Agile Coach 90-110
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Job Title National
Software Architect 130-150
Technical Lead - C#/ASP.net 120-130
Technical Lead - Java 120-130
Technical Lead - Mobile 120-130
Mobile Developer – iOS/Android 100-120
Backend Developer – Java 100-120
Back-end Developer - .Net 100-120
Backend Developer – LAMP/PHP/Drupal/WordPress/Joomla 100-120
Backend Developer – Ruby 100-120
Back-end Developer - C/C++ 100-120
Front End Developer 100-120
Full stack Developer -Java 100-120
Full stack Developer -.NET 100-120
SharePoint Developer 100-120
DevOps 100-120
Release Manager 100-130
TELECOMS
Job Title National
IP & Ethernet Engineer 90-110
Network Deployment & Support Engineer 90-100
PDH/SDH Transmission Design Engineer 90-100
NOC/NMC Support Engineer 80-100
Provisioning Engineer 80-100
Voice & Contact Centre Engineer 80-100
Network Capacity Planning Engineer 100-110
RAN/RF Engineers 90-110
Mobile Network Architect 120-130
OSS/BSS Solutions Architect 120-130
Product Manager 100-120
TESTING
Job Title National
Test Manager 100-120
Test Lead 90-100
Manual QA Analyst 70-90
Automated QA Analyst 80-100
Performance QA Analyst 70-90
Who says that El Reg doesn't do levity any more?
If this is true " like all modern government departments, .... its dedicated staff can carry out their duties ..." then we only have old gov't departments.
TBF I did briefly work for the public sector myself, I applied for a permie job which I didn't get but ended up going back to that role as temp'. The poor sod they hired had received far too little training and disappeared on some variety of leave of absence. The hours were fantastic, I left on time every day etc and, hard to believe as it was 1994 not 1894, we had a tea lady with a trolley!
Before leaving government service, some of my colleagues and myself looked at getting a transfer to London, slightly higher pay, London weighting... a few extra sheckels for our time.
Then we found out that we'd have to live within X miles of the London base to make sure we were available at all times. if needed (rarely)
And of course we then looked at London property prices.....
The government still carried on advertising the London jobs for ages... but senior tech on 10k(as it was) plus 1k for London vs 13K for going to private industry left us with no choice. but then , even as now, if you're a technical type person then in many senior civil servants eyes, you're worthless working class scum(unless the shit has hit the fan and they need some war winning tech designed by a be-spectacled backroom boffin to be built and put into service ASAP)
And they wonder why government struggles with IT. Yet to my knowledge the senior civil servants who run the departments get paid well. This is the problem with the system of stuffy, arrogant, over confident bureaucrats running government. If they recognised the importance of the juniors they might be paying less overall in a decade after they've sorted all the legacy and mad demands of the bureaucrats. Yeah, I know it'll never happen because the focus is on maintaining the established management order and gravy train not on serving the citizens and reducing their tax bill.
Doubly so when you consider we have universal healthcare paid out of our taxes - which are about the same as what you pay in federal taxes towards medicare, then have to obtain medical insurance on top
Medical bankruptcies are unique to the USA - it's the undisputed world leader in that area
The problem we are seeing now is enforced minimum wages for non skilled workers is impacting the salaries of time served skilled workers and managers. in the public sector we havent had a pay rise in two years and I am a qualified and time served IT manager with over thirty years experience.
So when the floor cleaner on minimum wage gets 4-5% payrise a year their wages are moving at an alarming rate towards fully skilled personnel with time and investment in learning over the years.
We are seeing our worth eroded whilst companies are forced to pay non skilled more than they can afford.
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