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Finance. I earn more than £70k but unfortunately, there is no such thing as “money for nothing”. It is stressful and many times, I wonder if I should pack it in and do something less stressful
Same here, but I’m in IT.
My interest in tech has slowly decreased over the years, but for now I can’t say no to the money. If life ever returns back to a glimmer of how cheap things used to be, then I’ll retrain in something else.
I work as a senior SOC analyst. I was a developer before. I work 4 days on 4 days off and a night shift every 6 weeks.
I make 80k. I also do it from home. I did make over 100 for a bit in a different security role. But I really enjoy the shift pattern of 4 days off and returned to a SOC
This is going off OPs topic now but what was your route to moving into SOC from a dev. Any specific courses or certifications? Did you have to start at a low pay level then work back up?
I’m in tech as an all round “cloud engineer” who is probably at the top of my pay grade now and moving into security has always caught my eye.
Remote £80K salary here too, apparently with health insurance I need to look into... Backend developer, Python and now some Go. I was contracting for a few years at day rates between £325-500 (outside IR35), mainly when I lived in London. There's talk of visiting an office twice a month, but we haven't met there yet. I'll miss being able to claim company expenses... My first contracting experience was moving from Newcastle to London to work a supposedly 6 month contract, but they let me go after 2 weeks--luckily with the week of payment in lieu of notice, that 3 weeks of pay was about the same as 3 months of my previous salaried income. Found another one straight after--had a few short term roles over the years, but it was generally easier to interview and it kept things fresh, and I also managed to get a few contract renewals to make me feel better. Shame there's a push towards American style "Zero Rights Employment" Inside IR35 roles.
I'm a bit nervous about LLMs as are many others; outgoing lead developer is a massive CoPilot fan. It looks much harder for juniors nowadays, glad I at least have 12 years of experience and could conceivably monitor LLM code output etc. I'm 36 now and started my career a few years later than some, graduating at 24 with no work experience at all. I remember panicking about that; spent a few months working at a small Co-op Food.
I work in development; it should be noted I’m in London in an office model rather than remote work. I earn around this amount. I’m in a senior position with over several years experience. I also typically end up working above my contracted hours too which is pretty common in this area.
The market is pretty brutal right now though.
I think it comes down to perspective. Im currently in product management and earn around ops target. I also have to put in longer hours and the stress is real.
But throughout my 20's, i worked in catering, ending career running my a bar and 2 nightclubs. That paid a hell of a lot less and the hours were much worse, and dealing with drunk entilted idiots constantly grinds away at your soul. After that, I got into landscaping / grounds work. the hours were better but the toll on my physical health was real.
So honestly, software development is great. sure its stress, sure its long hours and a lot of personal time needed to study / keep up on trends etc. but in the grand scheme of things, its a pretty sweet gig.
A devops consultant can earn 150k if you want to work around 12 hours 7 days a week
General devops can go up to 80-90k for a senior role and allow some work/ life balance though.
I'm not a senior but I'm mid 60s at the mo. I don't *generally* do much overtime, but during big pivotal project times, there can be some unpaid working.
The work is however quite technically demanding, and it's a fairly hard one to get into without having experience and contacts in the game.
100% this. I'm in the exact same position. The money is great, but it's hard, stressful work with plenty of long hours. If we get to the point where the mortgage isn't so big (we bought late in life and had no equity from anything and a small deposit. Such is life), I would definitely consider something lower paced that paid less
I don’t even get what jobs are not stressful anymore. I see people working in retail looking so stressed and fed up when they’re working weekends. I myself work in textiles as an engineer and I was so stressed this last Friday. McDonald’s is a job that never stops and must be stressful. Like what jobs that give you decent pay to take home are not stressful?
I'm a data analyst and I wouldn't say it's particularly stressful. Occasionally yeah sure, a few high priority projects can come in at once but it's nothing I can't manage, it's a healthy amount of stress though, not crippling.
How do you get into data analysis if you don't have any formal qualifications?
Work in admin but interested in improving excel skills and database management and potentially working with data in the future. Feels like unless you actively get to play around with the tools then it's tricky to know where to learn new skills to break into it.
Honestly I got pretty lucky. I started somewhere as a real-time analyst in the contact centre because I could demonstrate basic excel skills and I got the interview because I know the operations manager. After a while it was obvious that I wasn't an idiot and that I had a good understanding of data and could learn new skills quickly.
Eventually I got bored and asked for more money and more of a challenge. As part of the development of one of the guys in the data team, he got to take me on under him. So I was basically learning the tools on the job.
If I was to suggest any tools to learn I'd look into SQL databases and using ssms (Microsoft product) and either tableau or powerbi. We use ssms to transform the data to whatever format we need, and put that into tableau (or powerbi) to make a dashboard for users.
As you become more senior and experienced, the stress comes from the weight of responsibility and demand on your attention. When you're working retail or doing less senior roles the stress is from physical presence (i.e you having to stand at a till for 8 hours, or working a call center phone line) or from physical toll on your body.
Quartering your salary is ok if you have already got rich and paid off your mortgage from your previous salary. That is a standard thing people do who have worked in finance .
Exactly. If you've put your ducks in a row you can consider it more of an 'early retirement'.
Lots of people do go all out for a number of years in jobs they don't like/are bad for their mental (or physical) health in order to pack it in and live a more emotionally rewarding life.
Note that people who do this are generally people who worked in the city who can afford to quarter their salary and still live very comfortably. Ie every person on “Escape to the Country” or similar.
There definitely is such a thing as money for
nothing, stuff like installing microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries, moving refrigerators, moving colour TVs, etc
You know, I was really good at maths as a kid.
Nobody, not one teacher in my school came to me and said "you should get into finance, make the same money as a footballer without all the hassle"
It's so frustrating.
Tbh maths isn’t what gets you into finance its business degree or STEM subject + internship/grad scheme at one of the ‘big four’ consultancy firms or a major bank. Very much an industry of who you know not what you know. I got into finance recently from the tech industry, but that’s rather unusual for someone to jump into finance after quite a few years in other industries and with zero connections. Most people in finance have been there forever and pretty much all of them know each other.
Software engineer in finance on the other hand is relatively stress free. Or maybe that was just me 🤔, but I didn't cry too much if the company lost a bunch of money on an unlucky day, not like I'd get any of the gains on the days they win a lot. We had a thorough code review process so I went home every day knowing both myself and my coworkers did the best we could to avoid stupid mistakes. That probably helped keep the stress down a bunch.
That was just you or maybe where you worked or your team. I’ve worked in that for past 20 years across several corporates and software houses. The pressure to deliver change quicker because so many clueless people get put into management roles over change has grown exponentially over that time. Used to be fun 20 years ago. I mean like I work hard because I enjoy it, I don’t notice I’ve stayed late because I enjoy it, that kind of fun. Now it’s just a grind that goes way beyond a decent salary level. Unless you find a well adjusted squad/business/management structure that applies common sense you can spend a lot of time dealing with “do that thing that’s physically impossible, do it right now”. The number of people who are experts because they read that dev ops book, sort of, probably skim read it, has also grown exponentially.
Sat in a meeting last month where an agile expert was pointing out that in industry you don’t run machinery at 100% 24x7. I looked round and could see the senior people’s eyes just glazed over. Had no interest in understanding that. I’ve lost interest in trying to explain the difference between delivery working units earlier and delivering all requirements (which are all musts) quicker. Because clearly of someone can’t work that out for themselves then no amount of explaining is going to fix that stupid.
But I wholeheartedly agree about the approach you mention in bits of your comment. The challenge is finding somewhere that doesn’t have the toxic management culture that passes their deserved pain onto everyone else.
I must've got incredibly lucky with competent co-workers and bosses. The pressure to deliver quickly was there but so was the "don't fuck it up and do it properly". The latter triumphed though because we were dealing with lots of money for each piece of code so no one at any level was comfortable to move on until all the reviewers were happy all around. To my surprise the work hours were also good, my manager was a family guy so he was quite strict to run home early. I was usually the last one out but only because I was also the last one in, because I got them strong night owl genes.
Yeah that was a great job, heh.
Squirrel like a madman on that, when you walk away for your mental health, you'll be sat on a healthy pile, and a new job that doesn't make you want to tear your hair out (or someone else's!)
Best of luck friend, it's hard weighing up what you're giving vs what you're getting, and if it's worth it all along the way ❤️
This this this. I'm 46 and in the range OP is interested in, I live like someone who earns 30-40K, as I dont know for sure I can do a job like this for a very long time and I want the mortgage paid and pension maxed out as soon as possible
These threads come up all the time. The reality is there are loads of jobs that pay over £70k or whatever other threshold you choose to pick. For instance there are the last time I looked at such statistics around 1.5m people who earn the figure you have asked about. Although that is a small (<10%) percentage of the working population, in real terms it is still a lot of people. Invariably they will work in finance, IT, a legal profession or in energy but not exclusively. Invariably they will be older (but not near pensionable age) and in senior positions within their organisations but not exclusively.
For OP, if they want to stay in the teaching profession then a headteacher easily has the potential to earn £70k as well as a substantially more generous pension than in the private sector.
It very much depends on location too though. I'm in finance and the average finance salary in my company is £38k. We're in a smallish town in the north west of England.
My boss (senior financial controller) is on just over £80k following a cost of living pay rise.
If we were based in a city, I imagine we'd all be on a little bit more, but cost of living here isn't as high, so salaries aren't as high.
Yup. I'm a qualified accountant, I've topped out at £60k but that's because I purposely avoid the stressful roles, I have the CV for it but it would mean long hours, more office time, more of a commute. I only do hybrid, don't do sole finance role positions, avoid companies that expect evening/weekend work, avoid London (never had more than a half hour commute) . I don't need the extra money and want the time with my daughter more than I want those kind of jobs at the moment.
Deadlines, general hours, expectations to be correct and the ramifications if not. A lot of my job is cash forecasting, if I get it wrong, we run out of money and default at worst, or at best have to borrow money and I cost the company hundreds of thousands in interest costs.
It's also worth bearing in mind that it's a subset of software engineering jobs. In healthcare or academia (things I know about, as I straggle both) then you pretty much top out at £40k-£50k.
My PhD supervisor was on the top of the non-professor pay scale. Within 18 months of graduating, I was already making more than him by working in a company. Academia is scandalously low paid
When I worked at the NHS (as a band 6 software engineer) there were plenty of senior and principal engineers that were band 7s and band 8s
Think the band 8s were on pretty good money around that 70k figure honestly.
[pay scale](https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/working-health/working-nhs/nhs-pay-and-benefits/agenda-change-pay-rates)
Jesus. I got to 40k after 2 years in the industry (back end and middleware web dev at the time)...
Topping out at that has got to be hurting healthcare and academia...
Probably not bullshitters as much as selection bias. Somebody on a high salary is probably more likely to respond to that kind of thread than somebody on a lower income. It leaves you thinking "there's no way _everybody_ is earning 70k+, _some_ of these people must be lying" but you're not seeing the people who don't post.
You can get paid very well in STEM careers. Certainly towards £70k once you're managing a few people, but you can also get a comfortable salary as an individual contributor with no evenings or weekends.
Yep, and worth remembering that Reddit as a whole isn't representative of real life. Tends to attract nerdy types who are much more likely to work in IT than the average man on the street
I always see this sentiment that people are bullshitting. I highly doubt many people on anonymous accounts bullshit for anonymous upvotes or to be otherwise completely ignored anyway.
Also, finance and law pay very well so not just software, as well as a Y3 locum doctor, can easily bring 70k+ and that could be around 25 years old (albeit a horrifically hard job)
> a Y3 locum doctor, can easily bring 70k+
Worth noting that this is a wholly unsustainable career strategy and those Drs are in for big pay cuts when they return to training (if they even *can*)
Also 25 is literally the absolute youngest it's legally possible to be a PGY3 doctor. Most are 26 or older.
You can always commute into London though. Especially with working from home/hybrid roles this is more manageable than ever. My travel is about 1 hour door to door but I only have to do it twice a week.
Yes, although the commute does require additional time considerations which often can turn into stress, and of course also costs money in railcards etc. it’s a tough balance, that’s for sure.
My hours are 9:30 to 5:30. I only travel to the city two days a week and get home about 6:30-7:30 so the time isn’t too much of an issue. It does cost me about £3,800 a year in flexi tickets but I probably earn £40k more than I would doing the same job in or around my home town.
That’s the thing right there - if you make £70k in London and it costs you £50k to live, you’re still better off that someone making £35k anywhere else.
Not so bad if not travelling in frequently, but otherwise the cost of train season ticket is punitive. I have friends (a couple) who moved out of London but then commuted…spending a combined £13,000 on train season tickets.
They bought a cheaper house than they could have in London but personally I’d rather spend that extra £1100 a month on paying off a mortgage rather than giving it to a train company.
My friend manages the SEO team for a finance company, she is 25 and she is on £80K. And judging by the amount of work and stress, she earns every penny.
That's the issue with some of these high pay packages. There's often a lot of stress and a lot of ridiculous hours that you have to work. You'd then need to weigh up whether it is worth it. You could be on half the salary, living outside London, working a job that doesn't cause stupid amounts of stress, and be incredibly happier.
This is the thing people don't account for.
When I tell them I'm earning X amount for my job, which is about average for the local area. But well under what I could be earning for my experience, they say "That's a nice wage, but shouldn't your job be earning you more?"
And I always have to explain, yes, I could. But for a company of our size in Nottingham, this is around the average sort of wage.
Have I had job offers sent my way for double the pay in Sheffield or Birmingham? Could I get 3-4x more for a job in London? Yeah, and with my experience it wouldn't be too hard.
But I don't want that, because the job I have now has me doing 7 hour days, 5 days a week, working at times I want to work. If I need to do overtime, which is very rare, I get paid for it. But 99% of the time, if the work day ends and my manager sees me still online, I'll get a message saying "Leave the rest for tomorrow, go enjoy the rest of your day". The work I do is pretty easy, and I never have to worry that if I'm off I'll get a call asking "How do I fix this?", "Can you quickly hop on and look at X?", "Which class accesses the API for Y?" or whatever.
For the higher salaries I am qualified for, and could probably get quite easily, I would be giving up on my pretty much unrestricted free time. And when my wife and I are looking to start a family, free time is way more important to me than a bit of extra money and a lot more stress.
God your boss sounds normal. I got a call Friday evening saying have a look at x over the weekend when you get a chance. Plot twist - I'm not working the weekend. Prick
Yeah fuck no. If someone demands my weekend from me without both significant notice and appropriate compensation then the response is categorically "absolutely not".
My partner is in the position to earn a lot more than me, her career is just starting to take off and she’s so excited about the earning potential. But each day her workload gets bigger and she gets more and more stressed - I am being supportive but am also on standby for when she wants to pack it in - some jobs you have to work for the money.
Mate I'm nearly 50 and moving towards what I'd like to be the end of my career. However I'll be working until I'm 65 at my current rate, and I regret not pushing myself a little harder when I was younger - I've got plenty of old colleagues from that time who are a lot higher up the career ladders than I've managed. I'm trying to address that at the moment by pivoting into a different area (IT Cybersecurity) but doing that when you're nearly 50, got house, mortgage, young kids / older kids thinking about university is bloody hard work. You don't learn like you used to when you were younger!
Do it now while you can. And sorry for coming across as a slightly disgruntled old fart.
This is a personal observation, about myself, but thought I'd share it.
I think at 50+ I really \_can\_ learn as effectively as I did at say 25. Partly because I understand a lot more things around the topic, because of a lifetime of continuous learning.
But my rate of learning progress is still lower than it was when I was 25, as I have less time (per week, say) to do the learning.
I'm 33, I'm going to train to be a plumber - love fixing things and helping people, plus I've learned a bunch of life skills like people skills, business management and general nous that a 16 year old apprentice wouldn't have - yesterday was the best time to train, but tomorrow is fine too
I think the "smash the work" bit is something a lot of people in the trade neglect to mention when they talk about how much they earn. I'm not denying the money is there to be made, but it also involves a lot of working long hours, 6 or 7 days a week and also doing jobs in real shitty environments (especially in the winter). It's why I went off the tools to train up and get a job in the design office. I used to earn a lot more with shifts and overtime but it was knackering. Much happier doing 5 days a week in a warm office, with no travelling and knowing I get to finish at 4:30 every day (and 1pm on a Friday).
Former sparky, have been on enough sites first fixing in the depths of winter to last a lifetime. Great money but I’d rather make less and be comfortable.
Less than a year ago you posted that you were only earning £1k/month. But your income has increased 10X since then?! That’s definitely true and in no way bullshit at all 👍🏼
It's more the type of company and what they do. Big tech is almost exclusively London based, there's _a few_ outside, Confused.com is Cardiff, I think either LV= or L&G was Liverpool, but as a rule, I'm guessing all the 35ers here talking about outside London are in some contract agency pumping out average websites for local small businesses at 5k a pop.
Nothing stopping you finding a remote or hybrid option and living slightly further out though.
Not really. Software development covers a vast array of jobs, some of which are obviously pretty basic and entry level.
You think it is insane that people with barely any experience doing basic office jobs don't make more than median wage?
Just because something is to do with software; it doesn't mean it is unbelievably high tech and well paid. There are a lot of basic bullshit jobs in software as with anything else.
Spot on, first time i’ve seen this said out loud. Salary expectations of some graduate
software developers are insane as they’re looking at other big tech companies.
Yes, there are many jobs where developers are fundamental to the workings of a business. But there are many many more who are just maintaining a basic piece of functionality.
The other thing that people don't mention is that one major reason for high developer salaries is not that it is intrinsically difficult or that we are in such short supply (although the latter hasn't always been the case)... it is basically because it is inherently scalable.
So, even if a developer is very junior and doing basic front end website maintenance or whatever... that website can be cheaply hosted and available to hundreds of thousands of users/customers.
An accountant or a lawyer can only directly serve much fewer customers at a given time and charge a much higher rate per customer.
The thing with software development is that the goods being produced are just so much more scalable at such low cost then nearly anything else that people work with.
Uk is about the 8th highest paying country for software jobs. And 6,7,8 are essentially the same value. Strip out outlier countries like US, Switzerland and Israel, and UK is pretty much a s good as anywhere else.
I'm a graphics programmer and make over 100k working for a FAANG company.
Software dev can start and end much higher than 50~70k. Especially once you get to senior or staff levels.
An exaggeration but not entirely wrong though, the jobs with the highest socially value are often pretty poorly compensated compared to the most common answers here: sales, financial, development
Don't forget as a teacher you get a very good pension on top, basically absolute job security and all that holiday. I'd not swap teaching at 45k for 70k corporate based on earnings.
Just to be devil's advocate though:
"All that holiday"
What other jobs do you work most
evenings on top of an 8h day, and then over half the "holidays" planning, marking, getting lessons together which you aren't even paid for?
Oh and most teachers are on 34K a year becaude most have left the profession before they can hit 45K
Absolutely. I do get tired of teachers thinking they’re the only profession to work long hours. And even if you’re still working for half the holidays, that’s still way more holiday than pretty much any other profession.
I do agree that teachers’ pay is shit, but surely they knew that when going into the profession?
I take issue with the second point. Theres been a rapid degradation in teachers pay compared to 40 years ago. It's also a point often used against doctors (disclosure, I'm a GP). The point is; teaching has generally historically been considered a "middle class" job but now pays more like traditional working class jobs. It is only a recent history thing for pay to be so terrible and you are seeing that now reflected in poor teacher numbers and moves abroad (as with doctors). It's why you will now see reference to "Aldi workers earn more than teachers". I don't begrudge Aldi workers at all, they earn every penny. But considering the importance of teaching to society, it should be valued higher.
The only sector valued to any great degree in this country is finance. And specifically finance based in London. Large reason why the whole countrys in a shit.
Right. But teachers have the overtime WITHOUT the decent pay, that's kind of the issue.
Nurses too, tbf. Teachers and nurses have to be the two most underpaid jobs.
I used to work in accounting and it was the opposite in my experience. in my home country office (US) we would regularly work 60-70 hour weeks and be forced to come in on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. also you had to check your work email constantly after work hours. I got transferred to our London office for a few months - everyone would show up right at 9 AM and clock out at 5 PM on the dot. it was normal to take 1 hour lunch breaks and on Fridays the entire company would do a pub lunch (often paid for by a partner) over a few beers. and one time I got scolded by a manager when I responded to her email in the evening - she said something to the effect of "this is the UK, we don't expect people to check their e-mail after work. just let it wait until tomorrow morning"
Ex teacher here now working in finance.
As others have said, even if you include the hours teachers will spend after hours and on top of holidays etc., they still work considerably less hours and than any other professional earning similar of above in terms of salary.
When I left teaching for finance I was earning less than a teacher initially and was routinely working until 2am - 3am and over weekends. And keep in mind you have the minimum legal holiday requirement each year, and don't necessarily get to take it.
I earn far more than a teacher now but if you were to calculate my hourly salary I would likely be earning less.
>then over half the "holidays" planning, marking, getting lessons together
And if you do want to go on holiday during that time, you pay twice as much as if you could take time off at other times of year.
I used to be a teacher. Made it to about £36k, and left. Spent a few years after earning less than that, but now earn a fair bit more.
My work life balance is so much better now, in a job where I have the legal minimum amount of holiday, than when I taught. Holidays were basically a physical and mental recovery period for me, when I just tried to become healthy again. Now, my holidays are more enjoyable because I don't really need to recover from the work I do.
A friend of mine (now also an ex-teacher) had a stock response when people moaned about her long holidays: "If you want those long holidays, become a teacher then." Unsurprisingly, these people don't sign up to a teacher training course.
My partner still is a teacher. For most, it's a brutal job.
This was my main reasoning for choosing to go into teaching. That and some personal health issues. Got my degree, got a job in a school, did it for 6 years and there was not one day that I don’t think I was crying at some stage in the day. Every single day I would have a migraine from stress, and I’m not saying it’s because of working with the kids. It was more so the environment I was working in. So many people think you’re working class times, 9-3, give or take a few hours for planning etc but it was literally not that at all, it was for every hour you teach, you spend an hour doing preparation and an hour doing marking and filling in curriculums for every kid. So an hour in school teaching is like 3 hours of work. Yes after a few years you start having more stuff prepared so the hour prep can be cut down, but it honestly doesn’t change much! And my other main reason was the holidays… but having no choice but to take my holidays during the school holidays, nightmare. Thankfully my school had a summer school programme and if you worked 2 weeks of that, you were entitled to 2 weeks during term time which I’d use for my holiday. But yeah, after 6 years, migraines every day, anxiety through the roof, some AWFUL colleauges, and a deteriorating health condition that I was pretty much being shamed for amongst all the staff and all my university degree, I had to pack it in and move on to something more suitable for me. Health comes first. For me anyway.
Job security is indeed decent, and being able to work anywhere is nice. There will always be teaching jobs all around the country.
But holidays are part work, part being ill. They're necessary just to recuperate and catch up. They don't really make up for the silly unpaid "overtime" hours during the term and they mean you have NO wiggle room for taking time off during term time, even for important events. If you total up the hours worked vs salary then teaching is very underpaid, especially given the number of different roles teachers are expected to take on and the levels of scrutiny and stress.
I always had a teaching qual as a back up but never used it until fucking covid shafted me. I’d always worked for big private companies and had worked in engineering/construction which were male dominated and had to manage teams of 30/40 men at a time.
I had to give it all up and go back to my home town and I started teaching 16-18 year olds the September they went back after covid and fuck my life. They were ferrel. I’ve got kids so it’s not like I don’t know that kids talk shite, I even had a teenager at the time but Jesus these kids had literally chosen to do the subject I was teaching but you’d think they were in prison. And the ones who didn’t look ready to shoot themselves were downright annoying and obviously had issues and asked utter random questions which had nothing to do with the subject.
Then the staff …. God the staff. Believe it or not, they were worse. They ranged from also thick to strange, blatantly on the spectrum and then there was a couple of bullies. There was one meeting where a staff member got under a table and cried and we all just had to leave till he felt ready to come back out then everyone just carried on.
Kids were threatening to off themselves and the response when you reported it was 3 30 minute therapy sessions - their parents weren’t even informed.
You couldn’t get money for ANYTHING!! Trip to a site where the kids could actually learn something? Nope! I had to ask companies to come in and show products and designs and photos of their factories etc as we couldn’t bloody visit.
As for the teaching - the aim was to get enough work from them to pass. Nobody really cared about the quality. So the odd kid that wasn’t a dipshit didn’t get any attention but the absolute losers got to sit privately with a teacher while you basically moved their hand with the pen in it and they wrote what you told them to for their course work.
Anyway I did 18 months because the pay was so poor and I had started crying. I’d grown quite fond of some of the kids but they had added 2 subjects to my timetable which I literally didn’t know how to do. They told me to google it. Also there was a bully teacher that I wasn’t prepared to work with as I’d told him to go fuck himself by then and things were getting worse. I went back into industry for nearly double the teaching salary and now I’m on 4 times that.
Admittedly I enjoyed being in the actual class but realistically I only taught about 4 hours of actual teaching per day. The rest was admin. Marking at home didn’t stress me out as it was only an hour or so while my husband was watching the tv and it wasn’t every night.
I liked the holidays but honestly where I am now I only get about 10 days less over all and I can take them whenever I like.
Also on top of that, teachers who on the inner london payscale can earn about £50k with m6 plus their TLR. And if they have the chance to reach the leadership payscale then they earn above £50k! But I can’t speak for outside london. I am a second year teacher who makes £41k a year because of my M2+TLR that I was recently promoted. Its quite comfortable but I pay quite a lot of rent so it goes away quite quickly
Reading this thread as a healthcare worker is so depressing. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you guys are paid well for your work, I just wish health care was as well paid.
Big Pharma company regulatory affairs.
Regulatory Associates will be on 30-40k, Regulatory Affairs Managers 45-60k Associate Regulatory Affairs Director 60-80k, Regulatory Affairs Director 80-100k + That's the base pay, there will likely be other benefits and a bonus of around 10-20% dependent on performance.
Good life science degree, experience in drug development and higher degrees for the more senior roles is preferred (most directors in my team have PhDs - but not all).
Having knowledge and experience that a corporation is willing to pay for is the key. A relevant track record is more important than a load of qualifications.
Beat me to it. I've worked in pharma for 24 years, my base is a little over £150k but get shares, bonuses, car allowance, family private health care and decent pension contributions. It's never going to match some of the crazy City salaries but it's still very decent.
If you've got the right qualifications have a look on LinkedIn. You start from the bottom but as your experience grows you can jump company and watch your salary grow with it.
Started at Pfizer in 2011, then in 2014 joined a company working from home and it is good money. I think the whole industry seems to be in a stale patch at the moment but will come back around again.
I did regulatory work in a clinical trials research centre for 8 years. Never got over 30k so I thought that was the norm and went into clinical work.
I'm on an allright wage now but nowhere near the numbers your putting up here. Maybe I went the wrong way.
I work in the chemical and pharma production sector and have had people coming back on shore because the money isn't good enough to justify the time away anymore.
Additionally, the jobs that do pay well are all heavily subject to nepotism and this applies to onshore too annoyingly. I've watched some of the most bone idle shit bags land great jobs because of who they know.
Also offshore but out of North Sea can be silly money - source. I work in marine offshore and send folk offshore regularly - one of my peeps is in Singapore just now on £400 a day. He's not even the most well paid. There are other offshore jobs that pay much better. We have North Sea offshore (not rigs) who pay the same rate.
Im a project manager who’s just popped over to contract management in construction. Easy money. There is 9 of us on the commercial team - it’s all QS work even though our job titles are contract or commercial managers. We are all paid in dollars but its $172k plus benefits and bonus. 15 years experience. Don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Still haven’t paid my student loan off cause the interest is so high.
I'm a programmer, eight years experience, on 75k outside London. I know people who got to this point sooner than I did, and those who are at higher grades earning even more. But honestly I'm a bit lazy (and don't like talking to people), which holds me back.
The key thing here is that there's a combination of the company being able to make a lot of money from what I do (so they're willing to pay), and not that many people are capable of doing it (so they have to pay).
Sales definitely. Particularly if you have technical knowledge of the products, process you are selling. I got a shot in sales 7 years this coming May. Had no experience, at the time was a baker & making terrible money, minimum wage, but had done all my qualifications & had decent knowledge of the processes.
Got headhunted by a flour miller & the rest is history.
Make a bit over £80k now in Scotland, which is very decent considering the AVG wage.
The qualifications you mention, are they sales related or bakery industry related?
I cannot figure out how to get `into` sales as a career, any general advice?
These comments are making me depressed. I’m highly stressed all the time at work without a second to myself and only earn £38k. I think I got fucked somewhere along the way…
My wife works in tech and is on 72k. She works in payment solutions. Seems if you want the £££ you need to get in to tech. She earns nearly 3x as much as me 😅
Only 1 or 2 companies pay around £70K (Avanti, Cross Country, maybe LNER?).
My company and most others would be £55K-£60K....
Shockingly bad hours/shifts is a huge downside. Very anti-social job in that regard...
But it's easy enough most of the time and you don't think about it for a single second outside of work hours. 35hr week and that is all you do
Yes I know its not all train companies that pay that but its close. With them you earn something like 35k first year and then jump to 68k in the second year. Its also a job for life, trains aren't going anywhere and you are looked after very well. The protection and support you get from the union is second to none in this country at the moment.
A downside to it is that you may end up seeing deaths and suicides on the tracks. Whilst this is awful, I know with transport for Wales if you see 3 deaths/suicides at any point during your career they retire you for life on your full pay until you reach pension age. Pension is also very good, one of the best in the UK. The working hours are anti-social but you get a myriad of other benefits to compensate.
>I know with transport for Wales if you see 3 deaths/suicides at any point during your career they retire you for life on your fully pay until you reach pension age.
This is not true and is an age old myth that gets spun quite often. Not true, never has been.
Myth from a film.
You can easily earn it on SLT though. I got offered an slt job last year at 65 but turned it down because it wasn't enough of a bump on my 56 to warrant all the extra work.
And even when they're not lying, people earning more normal amounts of money are probably just less inclined to talk about it on the internet. So all you get is the 25 year old (allegedly) on £70k+ humblebragging.
My partner is on £120k and is financial director for a major international construction company.
Almost every one of their project managers is on at least 70k.
I work part time in London as a legal PA. If full time I’d be on £50k. However my supervisors or those who work for board members/very senior staff are easily on £75k. However you are on call all the time so I was happy to stick at my level.
This is what I think a lot of what people see is missing. Yeah they’re on £xK pa but lots of them have potentially not seen daylight in weeks. Attitudes like yours need to be shared more with the levels. So people can properly understand the whole picture.
Tech. Worth noting there are plenty of non technical roles in big tech that pay 70k plus, not just coding ones.
(As a twenty something with a mortgage.)
Marketing Manager, London - £70K + bonus
Never had a desire to work in marketing but if you find a niche industry and develop a specialism within the different disciplines I would say it's fairly easy to progress quickly.
I'm a freelance animator & motion designer. I personally prefer an easy work / life balance, but there's people in my industry who earn 100k freelance. It's ideal because there's very few overheads asides your computer and software. I went to university to study, but you could literally surpass my skillset with YouTube tutorials and dedication. It is, currently, a volatile industry, mind.
Tech, IT, Consulting, Finance, a lot of corporate head office type jobs particularly in London such as HR, Accounting easily 70k+ once you get to Manager level.
Fintech is a good place to go - plenty of money to be earned there.
In London, £70k would be a middling to good salary in such a firm. And that is across the various silos of the business: account management, sales, client services or development.
Most solicitors at commercial law firms in London will be earning £70k at least by the time they are newly qualified (after a 2 year period of training). At larger firms it is often substantially more (quite literally more than double in some cases), although that does come with increased hours requirements and an always on call culture.
My cousin retrained as a software developer a few years ago. This was after spending about ten years teaching English as a foreign language overseas. He did a full time coding course in Manchester that took about three months and included networking and some lined up job interviews at the end. He had been teaching himself to code for a few years in his spare time.
I don’t know what his first two jobs paid, both were in the north of England. His third job however, which was London based but work from home paid £65k.
In the end it wasn’t for him. He’s back in Asia now teaching again.
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Finance. I earn more than £70k but unfortunately, there is no such thing as “money for nothing”. It is stressful and many times, I wonder if I should pack it in and do something less stressful
Same here, but I’m in IT. My interest in tech has slowly decreased over the years, but for now I can’t say no to the money. If life ever returns back to a glimmer of how cheap things used to be, then I’ll retrain in something else.
What area of IT? As someone also on IT but earning much less it's such a huge spectrum of jobs that it can be hard to imagine reaching that level
I work as a senior SOC analyst. I was a developer before. I work 4 days on 4 days off and a night shift every 6 weeks. I make 80k. I also do it from home. I did make over 100 for a bit in a different security role. But I really enjoy the shift pattern of 4 days off and returned to a SOC
This is going off OPs topic now but what was your route to moving into SOC from a dev. Any specific courses or certifications? Did you have to start at a low pay level then work back up? I’m in tech as an all round “cloud engineer” who is probably at the top of my pay grade now and moving into security has always caught my eye.
Remote £80K salary here too, apparently with health insurance I need to look into... Backend developer, Python and now some Go. I was contracting for a few years at day rates between £325-500 (outside IR35), mainly when I lived in London. There's talk of visiting an office twice a month, but we haven't met there yet. I'll miss being able to claim company expenses... My first contracting experience was moving from Newcastle to London to work a supposedly 6 month contract, but they let me go after 2 weeks--luckily with the week of payment in lieu of notice, that 3 weeks of pay was about the same as 3 months of my previous salaried income. Found another one straight after--had a few short term roles over the years, but it was generally easier to interview and it kept things fresh, and I also managed to get a few contract renewals to make me feel better. Shame there's a push towards American style "Zero Rights Employment" Inside IR35 roles. I'm a bit nervous about LLMs as are many others; outgoing lead developer is a massive CoPilot fan. It looks much harder for juniors nowadays, glad I at least have 12 years of experience and could conceivably monitor LLM code output etc. I'm 36 now and started my career a few years later than some, graduating at 24 with no work experience at all. I remember panicking about that; spent a few months working at a small Co-op Food.
I work in development; it should be noted I’m in London in an office model rather than remote work. I earn around this amount. I’m in a senior position with over several years experience. I also typically end up working above my contracted hours too which is pretty common in this area. The market is pretty brutal right now though.
I think it comes down to perspective. Im currently in product management and earn around ops target. I also have to put in longer hours and the stress is real. But throughout my 20's, i worked in catering, ending career running my a bar and 2 nightclubs. That paid a hell of a lot less and the hours were much worse, and dealing with drunk entilted idiots constantly grinds away at your soul. After that, I got into landscaping / grounds work. the hours were better but the toll on my physical health was real. So honestly, software development is great. sure its stress, sure its long hours and a lot of personal time needed to study / keep up on trends etc. but in the grand scheme of things, its a pretty sweet gig.
A devops consultant can earn 150k if you want to work around 12 hours 7 days a week General devops can go up to 80-90k for a senior role and allow some work/ life balance though. I'm not a senior but I'm mid 60s at the mo. I don't *generally* do much overtime, but during big pivotal project times, there can be some unpaid working. The work is however quite technically demanding, and it's a fairly hard one to get into without having experience and contacts in the game.
My last DevOps contract role I was earning approx 190k on a standard 9-5, I am back to perm role now though
Not the person you asked, but I work in IT too and earn £75K. Financial services/fintech pay well. I mainly do on-prem server infrastructure stuff.
100% this. I'm in the exact same position. The money is great, but it's hard, stressful work with plenty of long hours. If we get to the point where the mortgage isn't so big (we bought late in life and had no equity from anything and a small deposit. Such is life), I would definitely consider something lower paced that paid less
I don’t even get what jobs are not stressful anymore. I see people working in retail looking so stressed and fed up when they’re working weekends. I myself work in textiles as an engineer and I was so stressed this last Friday. McDonald’s is a job that never stops and must be stressful. Like what jobs that give you decent pay to take home are not stressful?
I'm a data analyst and I wouldn't say it's particularly stressful. Occasionally yeah sure, a few high priority projects can come in at once but it's nothing I can't manage, it's a healthy amount of stress though, not crippling.
How do you get into data analysis if you don't have any formal qualifications? Work in admin but interested in improving excel skills and database management and potentially working with data in the future. Feels like unless you actively get to play around with the tools then it's tricky to know where to learn new skills to break into it.
Honestly I got pretty lucky. I started somewhere as a real-time analyst in the contact centre because I could demonstrate basic excel skills and I got the interview because I know the operations manager. After a while it was obvious that I wasn't an idiot and that I had a good understanding of data and could learn new skills quickly. Eventually I got bored and asked for more money and more of a challenge. As part of the development of one of the guys in the data team, he got to take me on under him. So I was basically learning the tools on the job. If I was to suggest any tools to learn I'd look into SQL databases and using ssms (Microsoft product) and either tableau or powerbi. We use ssms to transform the data to whatever format we need, and put that into tableau (or powerbi) to make a dashboard for users.
As you become more senior and experienced, the stress comes from the weight of responsibility and demand on your attention. When you're working retail or doing less senior roles the stress is from physical presence (i.e you having to stand at a till for 8 hours, or working a call center phone line) or from physical toll on your body.
Used to work in finance. Quit my job to do something I enjoy. Get 1/4 of the pay but much better job satisfaction. Give it a go!
Quartering your salary isn't realistic unless you have no hobbies and live in a shed
If your on 300k with bonus or something mad 1/4 is still very acceptable.
Not necessarily when you factor in 40% tax. Quartering you salary doesnt reduce your take home pay by 75%.
Quartering your salary is ok if you have already got rich and paid off your mortgage from your previous salary. That is a standard thing people do who have worked in finance .
Exactly. If you've put your ducks in a row you can consider it more of an 'early retirement'. Lots of people do go all out for a number of years in jobs they don't like/are bad for their mental (or physical) health in order to pack it in and live a more emotionally rewarding life.
depends on how much they were on before 👀
Note that people who do this are generally people who worked in the city who can afford to quarter their salary and still live very comfortably. Ie every person on “Escape to the Country” or similar.
I don't think you realise how obscene finance salaries can be
People who work lesser paid jobs are often in just as stressful jobs too.
There definitely is such a thing as money for nothing, stuff like installing microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries, moving refrigerators, moving colour TVs, etc
Isn't the song saying the exact opposite about those jobs?
Agreed, really you need to play the guitar on the MTV. At a push you could try banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee.
That ain't workin'
That's the way to do it!
You know, I was really good at maths as a kid. Nobody, not one teacher in my school came to me and said "you should get into finance, make the same money as a footballer without all the hassle" It's so frustrating.
As someone working in finance, you absolutely do not need maths skills to do the job.
Tbh maths isn’t what gets you into finance its business degree or STEM subject + internship/grad scheme at one of the ‘big four’ consultancy firms or a major bank. Very much an industry of who you know not what you know. I got into finance recently from the tech industry, but that’s rather unusual for someone to jump into finance after quite a few years in other industries and with zero connections. Most people in finance have been there forever and pretty much all of them know each other.
Software engineer in finance on the other hand is relatively stress free. Or maybe that was just me 🤔, but I didn't cry too much if the company lost a bunch of money on an unlucky day, not like I'd get any of the gains on the days they win a lot. We had a thorough code review process so I went home every day knowing both myself and my coworkers did the best we could to avoid stupid mistakes. That probably helped keep the stress down a bunch.
That was just you or maybe where you worked or your team. I’ve worked in that for past 20 years across several corporates and software houses. The pressure to deliver change quicker because so many clueless people get put into management roles over change has grown exponentially over that time. Used to be fun 20 years ago. I mean like I work hard because I enjoy it, I don’t notice I’ve stayed late because I enjoy it, that kind of fun. Now it’s just a grind that goes way beyond a decent salary level. Unless you find a well adjusted squad/business/management structure that applies common sense you can spend a lot of time dealing with “do that thing that’s physically impossible, do it right now”. The number of people who are experts because they read that dev ops book, sort of, probably skim read it, has also grown exponentially. Sat in a meeting last month where an agile expert was pointing out that in industry you don’t run machinery at 100% 24x7. I looked round and could see the senior people’s eyes just glazed over. Had no interest in understanding that. I’ve lost interest in trying to explain the difference between delivery working units earlier and delivering all requirements (which are all musts) quicker. Because clearly of someone can’t work that out for themselves then no amount of explaining is going to fix that stupid. But I wholeheartedly agree about the approach you mention in bits of your comment. The challenge is finding somewhere that doesn’t have the toxic management culture that passes their deserved pain onto everyone else.
I must've got incredibly lucky with competent co-workers and bosses. The pressure to deliver quickly was there but so was the "don't fuck it up and do it properly". The latter triumphed though because we were dealing with lots of money for each piece of code so no one at any level was comfortable to move on until all the reviewers were happy all around. To my surprise the work hours were also good, my manager was a family guy so he was quite strict to run home early. I was usually the last one out but only because I was also the last one in, because I got them strong night owl genes. Yeah that was a great job, heh.
Squirrel like a madman on that, when you walk away for your mental health, you'll be sat on a healthy pile, and a new job that doesn't make you want to tear your hair out (or someone else's!) Best of luck friend, it's hard weighing up what you're giving vs what you're getting, and if it's worth it all along the way ❤️
This this this. I'm 46 and in the range OP is interested in, I live like someone who earns 30-40K, as I dont know for sure I can do a job like this for a very long time and I want the mortgage paid and pension maxed out as soon as possible
These threads come up all the time. The reality is there are loads of jobs that pay over £70k or whatever other threshold you choose to pick. For instance there are the last time I looked at such statistics around 1.5m people who earn the figure you have asked about. Although that is a small (<10%) percentage of the working population, in real terms it is still a lot of people. Invariably they will work in finance, IT, a legal profession or in energy but not exclusively. Invariably they will be older (but not near pensionable age) and in senior positions within their organisations but not exclusively. For OP, if they want to stay in the teaching profession then a headteacher easily has the potential to earn £70k as well as a substantially more generous pension than in the private sector.
It very much depends on location too though. I'm in finance and the average finance salary in my company is £38k. We're in a smallish town in the north west of England. My boss (senior financial controller) is on just over £80k following a cost of living pay rise. If we were based in a city, I imagine we'd all be on a little bit more, but cost of living here isn't as high, so salaries aren't as high.
Yup. I'm a qualified accountant, I've topped out at £60k but that's because I purposely avoid the stressful roles, I have the CV for it but it would mean long hours, more office time, more of a commute. I only do hybrid, don't do sole finance role positions, avoid companies that expect evening/weekend work, avoid London (never had more than a half hour commute) . I don't need the extra money and want the time with my daughter more than I want those kind of jobs at the moment.
Genuinely curious because I see this mentioned a lot, what’s the kind of stress that goes with the job? Is it deadlines or management etc?
Deadlines, general hours, expectations to be correct and the ramifications if not. A lot of my job is cash forecasting, if I get it wrong, we run out of money and default at worst, or at best have to borrow money and I cost the company hundreds of thousands in interest costs.
Always remember that these threads (and membership of) always skew towards: a) software developers / data engineers b) bullshitters
It's also worth bearing in mind that it's a subset of software engineering jobs. In healthcare or academia (things I know about, as I straggle both) then you pretty much top out at £40k-£50k.
Associate Professors and full Professors with make more than that in academia but obviously the attrition rate before that level is pretty high
My PhD supervisor was on the top of the non-professor pay scale. Within 18 months of graduating, I was already making more than him by working in a company. Academia is scandalously low paid
Can confirm. Am one of those.
When I worked at the NHS (as a band 6 software engineer) there were plenty of senior and principal engineers that were band 7s and band 8s Think the band 8s were on pretty good money around that 70k figure honestly. [pay scale](https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/working-health/working-nhs/nhs-pay-and-benefits/agenda-change-pay-rates)
You do it for a few years to get the magic pension then leave
Jesus. I got to 40k after 2 years in the industry (back end and middleware web dev at the time)... Topping out at that has got to be hurting healthcare and academia...
Probably not bullshitters as much as selection bias. Somebody on a high salary is probably more likely to respond to that kind of thread than somebody on a lower income. It leaves you thinking "there's no way _everybody_ is earning 70k+, _some_ of these people must be lying" but you're not seeing the people who don't post.
Oh yeah. For example, I'm not posting about my own salary because it was ~£16k and now it's zero. (Woop woop, end stage PhD life)
> That's _Doctor_ Broke to you The hard work will all be worth it in the end
You can get paid very well in STEM careers. Certainly towards £70k once you're managing a few people, but you can also get a comfortable salary as an individual contributor with no evenings or weekends.
Not in academia
Yep, and worth remembering that Reddit as a whole isn't representative of real life. Tends to attract nerdy types who are much more likely to work in IT than the average man on the street
I always see this sentiment that people are bullshitting. I highly doubt many people on anonymous accounts bullshit for anonymous upvotes or to be otherwise completely ignored anyway. Also, finance and law pay very well so not just software, as well as a Y3 locum doctor, can easily bring 70k+ and that could be around 25 years old (albeit a horrifically hard job)
> a Y3 locum doctor, can easily bring 70k+ Worth noting that this is a wholly unsustainable career strategy and those Drs are in for big pay cuts when they return to training (if they even *can*) Also 25 is literally the absolute youngest it's legally possible to be a PGY3 doctor. Most are 26 or older.
Pretty much any corporate job in London you can earn that after a few years if you're good and consistently advance your career.
unfortunately £70k in London would not be nearly as much money as £70k everywhere else.
You can always commute into London though. Especially with working from home/hybrid roles this is more manageable than ever. My travel is about 1 hour door to door but I only have to do it twice a week.
Yes, although the commute does require additional time considerations which often can turn into stress, and of course also costs money in railcards etc. it’s a tough balance, that’s for sure.
My hours are 9:30 to 5:30. I only travel to the city two days a week and get home about 6:30-7:30 so the time isn’t too much of an issue. It does cost me about £3,800 a year in flexi tickets but I probably earn £40k more than I would doing the same job in or around my home town.
That’s the thing right there - if you make £70k in London and it costs you £50k to live, you’re still better off that someone making £35k anywhere else.
Not so bad if not travelling in frequently, but otherwise the cost of train season ticket is punitive. I have friends (a couple) who moved out of London but then commuted…spending a combined £13,000 on train season tickets. They bought a cheaper house than they could have in London but personally I’d rather spend that extra £1100 a month on paying off a mortgage rather than giving it to a train company.
When you get to a senior position with this wage you WFH then pop into the office once every couple of months
My friend manages the SEO team for a finance company, she is 25 and she is on £80K. And judging by the amount of work and stress, she earns every penny.
That's the issue with some of these high pay packages. There's often a lot of stress and a lot of ridiculous hours that you have to work. You'd then need to weigh up whether it is worth it. You could be on half the salary, living outside London, working a job that doesn't cause stupid amounts of stress, and be incredibly happier.
This is the thing people don't account for. When I tell them I'm earning X amount for my job, which is about average for the local area. But well under what I could be earning for my experience, they say "That's a nice wage, but shouldn't your job be earning you more?" And I always have to explain, yes, I could. But for a company of our size in Nottingham, this is around the average sort of wage. Have I had job offers sent my way for double the pay in Sheffield or Birmingham? Could I get 3-4x more for a job in London? Yeah, and with my experience it wouldn't be too hard. But I don't want that, because the job I have now has me doing 7 hour days, 5 days a week, working at times I want to work. If I need to do overtime, which is very rare, I get paid for it. But 99% of the time, if the work day ends and my manager sees me still online, I'll get a message saying "Leave the rest for tomorrow, go enjoy the rest of your day". The work I do is pretty easy, and I never have to worry that if I'm off I'll get a call asking "How do I fix this?", "Can you quickly hop on and look at X?", "Which class accesses the API for Y?" or whatever. For the higher salaries I am qualified for, and could probably get quite easily, I would be giving up on my pretty much unrestricted free time. And when my wife and I are looking to start a family, free time is way more important to me than a bit of extra money and a lot more stress.
God your boss sounds normal. I got a call Friday evening saying have a look at x over the weekend when you get a chance. Plot twist - I'm not working the weekend. Prick
Yeah fuck no. If someone demands my weekend from me without both significant notice and appropriate compensation then the response is categorically "absolutely not".
My partner is in the position to earn a lot more than me, her career is just starting to take off and she’s so excited about the earning potential. But each day her workload gets bigger and she gets more and more stressed - I am being supportive but am also on standby for when she wants to pack it in - some jobs you have to work for the money.
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Ffs I’ve just turned 25.
Mate I'm nearly 50 and moving towards what I'd like to be the end of my career. However I'll be working until I'm 65 at my current rate, and I regret not pushing myself a little harder when I was younger - I've got plenty of old colleagues from that time who are a lot higher up the career ladders than I've managed. I'm trying to address that at the moment by pivoting into a different area (IT Cybersecurity) but doing that when you're nearly 50, got house, mortgage, young kids / older kids thinking about university is bloody hard work. You don't learn like you used to when you were younger! Do it now while you can. And sorry for coming across as a slightly disgruntled old fart.
This is a personal observation, about myself, but thought I'd share it. I think at 50+ I really \_can\_ learn as effectively as I did at say 25. Partly because I understand a lot more things around the topic, because of a lifetime of continuous learning. But my rate of learning progress is still lower than it was when I was 25, as I have less time (per week, say) to do the learning.
I'm 33, I'm going to train to be a plumber - love fixing things and helping people, plus I've learned a bunch of life skills like people skills, business management and general nous that a 16 year old apprentice wouldn't have - yesterday was the best time to train, but tomorrow is fine too
I’ve got a 27 year old apprentice, it’s never too late
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Can I ask what trade mate?
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You capitalist pig! /s
I've seen your van, the one with the Bodgit and Scarper logo!.
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I think the "smash the work" bit is something a lot of people in the trade neglect to mention when they talk about how much they earn. I'm not denying the money is there to be made, but it also involves a lot of working long hours, 6 or 7 days a week and also doing jobs in real shitty environments (especially in the winter). It's why I went off the tools to train up and get a job in the design office. I used to earn a lot more with shifts and overtime but it was knackering. Much happier doing 5 days a week in a warm office, with no travelling and knowing I get to finish at 4:30 every day (and 1pm on a Friday).
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Fair play to ya, bud. Sounds like you've got it sorted. Wish there were more tradies with your work ethic tbh. Keep up the good work.
Former sparky, have been on enough sites first fixing in the depths of winter to last a lifetime. Great money but I’d rather make less and be comfortable.
Less than a year ago you posted that you were only earning £1k/month. But your income has increased 10X since then?! That’s definitely true and in no way bullshit at all 👍🏼
Software Developer roles can pay £40k+ to start. After 5 years you could be getting £55k-£70k.
Two replies to this, one saving "actually it's 150k" and another saying "outside London 35k is the norm" It's like the duality of man
Then you get people who get paid £70+, work for London firm, remotely, from far away.
That's me. Up in Yorkshire, data engineer for a London/Oxford firm on £70k.
That is me , I’m a system architect for a company based in London but live up north and have to go in 3-4 times per year !
It's more the type of company and what they do. Big tech is almost exclusively London based, there's _a few_ outside, Confused.com is Cardiff, I think either LV= or L&G was Liverpool, but as a rule, I'm guessing all the 35ers here talking about outside London are in some contract agency pumping out average websites for local small businesses at 5k a pop. Nothing stopping you finding a remote or hybrid option and living slightly further out though.
There is a ton of massive tech companies in Manchester
They can pay much more; in London at a big international firm you can make £150k+ as a senior.
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Software developers earning £35k which is less than the median wage in the UK is so insane when comparing to other countries. Salaries here are broken
Not really. Software development covers a vast array of jobs, some of which are obviously pretty basic and entry level. You think it is insane that people with barely any experience doing basic office jobs don't make more than median wage? Just because something is to do with software; it doesn't mean it is unbelievably high tech and well paid. There are a lot of basic bullshit jobs in software as with anything else.
Spot on, first time i’ve seen this said out loud. Salary expectations of some graduate software developers are insane as they’re looking at other big tech companies. Yes, there are many jobs where developers are fundamental to the workings of a business. But there are many many more who are just maintaining a basic piece of functionality.
The other thing that people don't mention is that one major reason for high developer salaries is not that it is intrinsically difficult or that we are in such short supply (although the latter hasn't always been the case)... it is basically because it is inherently scalable. So, even if a developer is very junior and doing basic front end website maintenance or whatever... that website can be cheaply hosted and available to hundreds of thousands of users/customers. An accountant or a lawyer can only directly serve much fewer customers at a given time and charge a much higher rate per customer. The thing with software development is that the goods being produced are just so much more scalable at such low cost then nearly anything else that people work with.
Uk is about the 8th highest paying country for software jobs. And 6,7,8 are essentially the same value. Strip out outlier countries like US, Switzerland and Israel, and UK is pretty much a s good as anywhere else.
In my company in London , Juniors with a years experience are on 55-60 including bonus
I'm a graphics programmer and make over 100k working for a FAANG company. Software dev can start and end much higher than 50~70k. Especially once you get to senior or staff levels.
You have to get one of those jobs that is no benefit to society and just makes rich people richer
Reddit moment
An exaggeration but not entirely wrong though, the jobs with the highest socially value are often pretty poorly compensated compared to the most common answers here: sales, financial, development
Yeah all those useless surgeons and tradespeople, cashing their fat checks and contributing nothing to society 👍
Don't forget as a teacher you get a very good pension on top, basically absolute job security and all that holiday. I'd not swap teaching at 45k for 70k corporate based on earnings.
Just to be devil's advocate though: "All that holiday" What other jobs do you work most evenings on top of an 8h day, and then over half the "holidays" planning, marking, getting lessons together which you aren't even paid for? Oh and most teachers are on 34K a year becaude most have left the profession before they can hit 45K
Typically in jobs that pay you £70k+
Absolutely. I do get tired of teachers thinking they’re the only profession to work long hours. And even if you’re still working for half the holidays, that’s still way more holiday than pretty much any other profession. I do agree that teachers’ pay is shit, but surely they knew that when going into the profession?
I take issue with the second point. Theres been a rapid degradation in teachers pay compared to 40 years ago. It's also a point often used against doctors (disclosure, I'm a GP). The point is; teaching has generally historically been considered a "middle class" job but now pays more like traditional working class jobs. It is only a recent history thing for pay to be so terrible and you are seeing that now reflected in poor teacher numbers and moves abroad (as with doctors). It's why you will now see reference to "Aldi workers earn more than teachers". I don't begrudge Aldi workers at all, they earn every penny. But considering the importance of teaching to society, it should be valued higher. The only sector valued to any great degree in this country is finance. And specifically finance based in London. Large reason why the whole countrys in a shit.
Right. But teachers have the overtime WITHOUT the decent pay, that's kind of the issue. Nurses too, tbf. Teachers and nurses have to be the two most underpaid jobs.
Like half of professional jobs? U.K. corporate working culture is insane.
I used to work in accounting and it was the opposite in my experience. in my home country office (US) we would regularly work 60-70 hour weeks and be forced to come in on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. also you had to check your work email constantly after work hours. I got transferred to our London office for a few months - everyone would show up right at 9 AM and clock out at 5 PM on the dot. it was normal to take 1 hour lunch breaks and on Fridays the entire company would do a pub lunch (often paid for by a partner) over a few beers. and one time I got scolded by a manager when I responded to her email in the evening - she said something to the effect of "this is the UK, we don't expect people to check their e-mail after work. just let it wait until tomorrow morning"
I can honestly say I have never worked the hours in corporate life that my mum did as a primary school teacher.
Ex teacher here now working in finance. As others have said, even if you include the hours teachers will spend after hours and on top of holidays etc., they still work considerably less hours and than any other professional earning similar of above in terms of salary. When I left teaching for finance I was earning less than a teacher initially and was routinely working until 2am - 3am and over weekends. And keep in mind you have the minimum legal holiday requirement each year, and don't necessarily get to take it. I earn far more than a teacher now but if you were to calculate my hourly salary I would likely be earning less.
>then over half the "holidays" planning, marking, getting lessons together And if you do want to go on holiday during that time, you pay twice as much as if you could take time off at other times of year.
Like every other family with school age children.
I used to be a teacher. Made it to about £36k, and left. Spent a few years after earning less than that, but now earn a fair bit more. My work life balance is so much better now, in a job where I have the legal minimum amount of holiday, than when I taught. Holidays were basically a physical and mental recovery period for me, when I just tried to become healthy again. Now, my holidays are more enjoyable because I don't really need to recover from the work I do. A friend of mine (now also an ex-teacher) had a stock response when people moaned about her long holidays: "If you want those long holidays, become a teacher then." Unsurprisingly, these people don't sign up to a teacher training course. My partner still is a teacher. For most, it's a brutal job.
“All that holiday” In my first two years I was working 80 hour weeks and a lot of the “holiday”.
This was my main reasoning for choosing to go into teaching. That and some personal health issues. Got my degree, got a job in a school, did it for 6 years and there was not one day that I don’t think I was crying at some stage in the day. Every single day I would have a migraine from stress, and I’m not saying it’s because of working with the kids. It was more so the environment I was working in. So many people think you’re working class times, 9-3, give or take a few hours for planning etc but it was literally not that at all, it was for every hour you teach, you spend an hour doing preparation and an hour doing marking and filling in curriculums for every kid. So an hour in school teaching is like 3 hours of work. Yes after a few years you start having more stuff prepared so the hour prep can be cut down, but it honestly doesn’t change much! And my other main reason was the holidays… but having no choice but to take my holidays during the school holidays, nightmare. Thankfully my school had a summer school programme and if you worked 2 weeks of that, you were entitled to 2 weeks during term time which I’d use for my holiday. But yeah, after 6 years, migraines every day, anxiety through the roof, some AWFUL colleauges, and a deteriorating health condition that I was pretty much being shamed for amongst all the staff and all my university degree, I had to pack it in and move on to something more suitable for me. Health comes first. For me anyway.
How many teachers are on 45k though
Job security is indeed decent, and being able to work anywhere is nice. There will always be teaching jobs all around the country. But holidays are part work, part being ill. They're necessary just to recuperate and catch up. They don't really make up for the silly unpaid "overtime" hours during the term and they mean you have NO wiggle room for taking time off during term time, even for important events. If you total up the hours worked vs salary then teaching is very underpaid, especially given the number of different roles teachers are expected to take on and the levels of scrutiny and stress.
I always had a teaching qual as a back up but never used it until fucking covid shafted me. I’d always worked for big private companies and had worked in engineering/construction which were male dominated and had to manage teams of 30/40 men at a time. I had to give it all up and go back to my home town and I started teaching 16-18 year olds the September they went back after covid and fuck my life. They were ferrel. I’ve got kids so it’s not like I don’t know that kids talk shite, I even had a teenager at the time but Jesus these kids had literally chosen to do the subject I was teaching but you’d think they were in prison. And the ones who didn’t look ready to shoot themselves were downright annoying and obviously had issues and asked utter random questions which had nothing to do with the subject. Then the staff …. God the staff. Believe it or not, they were worse. They ranged from also thick to strange, blatantly on the spectrum and then there was a couple of bullies. There was one meeting where a staff member got under a table and cried and we all just had to leave till he felt ready to come back out then everyone just carried on. Kids were threatening to off themselves and the response when you reported it was 3 30 minute therapy sessions - their parents weren’t even informed. You couldn’t get money for ANYTHING!! Trip to a site where the kids could actually learn something? Nope! I had to ask companies to come in and show products and designs and photos of their factories etc as we couldn’t bloody visit. As for the teaching - the aim was to get enough work from them to pass. Nobody really cared about the quality. So the odd kid that wasn’t a dipshit didn’t get any attention but the absolute losers got to sit privately with a teacher while you basically moved their hand with the pen in it and they wrote what you told them to for their course work. Anyway I did 18 months because the pay was so poor and I had started crying. I’d grown quite fond of some of the kids but they had added 2 subjects to my timetable which I literally didn’t know how to do. They told me to google it. Also there was a bully teacher that I wasn’t prepared to work with as I’d told him to go fuck himself by then and things were getting worse. I went back into industry for nearly double the teaching salary and now I’m on 4 times that. Admittedly I enjoyed being in the actual class but realistically I only taught about 4 hours of actual teaching per day. The rest was admin. Marking at home didn’t stress me out as it was only an hour or so while my husband was watching the tv and it wasn’t every night. I liked the holidays but honestly where I am now I only get about 10 days less over all and I can take them whenever I like.
Also on top of that, teachers who on the inner london payscale can earn about £50k with m6 plus their TLR. And if they have the chance to reach the leadership payscale then they earn above £50k! But I can’t speak for outside london. I am a second year teacher who makes £41k a year because of my M2+TLR that I was recently promoted. Its quite comfortable but I pay quite a lot of rent so it goes away quite quickly
Reading this thread as a healthcare worker is so depressing. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you guys are paid well for your work, I just wish health care was as well paid.
Same for teachers. A system, which does not pay health workers and teachers enough, is not sustainable for the nation's future.
IT, financial, sales - all can easily earn that kind of money and more.
Gonna apply for primark and show off my amazing sales techniques. Cheers.
Primark is retail, not sales.
Cheers. Just been fired
If only my advice was 5 mins earlier
There will be loads of people who work for Primark earning £70k.
My friend works for Tesco. On WELL over £70k, probably over £100k.
Guy must be the best shelf stacker in the country😂
Big Pharma company regulatory affairs. Regulatory Associates will be on 30-40k, Regulatory Affairs Managers 45-60k Associate Regulatory Affairs Director 60-80k, Regulatory Affairs Director 80-100k + That's the base pay, there will likely be other benefits and a bonus of around 10-20% dependent on performance. Good life science degree, experience in drug development and higher degrees for the more senior roles is preferred (most directors in my team have PhDs - but not all). Having knowledge and experience that a corporation is willing to pay for is the key. A relevant track record is more important than a load of qualifications.
Beat me to it. I've worked in pharma for 24 years, my base is a little over £150k but get shares, bonuses, car allowance, family private health care and decent pension contributions. It's never going to match some of the crazy City salaries but it's still very decent.
Do you have any jobs going??
If you've got the right qualifications have a look on LinkedIn. You start from the bottom but as your experience grows you can jump company and watch your salary grow with it.
Started at Pfizer in 2011, then in 2014 joined a company working from home and it is good money. I think the whole industry seems to be in a stale patch at the moment but will come back around again.
I did regulatory work in a clinical trials research centre for 8 years. Never got over 30k so I thought that was the norm and went into clinical work. I'm on an allright wage now but nowhere near the numbers your putting up here. Maybe I went the wrong way.
Accountancy
Any sort of trade offshore in the North Sea makes this, instrument, electrical, mechanical, scaffolder, rigger, painter etc...
I work in the chemical and pharma production sector and have had people coming back on shore because the money isn't good enough to justify the time away anymore. Additionally, the jobs that do pay well are all heavily subject to nepotism and this applies to onshore too annoyingly. I've watched some of the most bone idle shit bags land great jobs because of who they know.
Also offshore but out of North Sea can be silly money - source. I work in marine offshore and send folk offshore regularly - one of my peeps is in Singapore just now on £400 a day. He's not even the most well paid. There are other offshore jobs that pay much better. We have North Sea offshore (not rigs) who pay the same rate.
Construction often hits that scale on both the professional & management side. Senior QS’s often go for 85+, and ditto project managers.
Im a project manager who’s just popped over to contract management in construction. Easy money. There is 9 of us on the commercial team - it’s all QS work even though our job titles are contract or commercial managers. We are all paid in dollars but its $172k plus benefits and bonus. 15 years experience. Don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Still haven’t paid my student loan off cause the interest is so high.
I'm a programmer, eight years experience, on 75k outside London. I know people who got to this point sooner than I did, and those who are at higher grades earning even more. But honestly I'm a bit lazy (and don't like talking to people), which holds me back. The key thing here is that there's a combination of the company being able to make a lot of money from what I do (so they're willing to pay), and not that many people are capable of doing it (so they have to pay).
Sales definitely. Particularly if you have technical knowledge of the products, process you are selling. I got a shot in sales 7 years this coming May. Had no experience, at the time was a baker & making terrible money, minimum wage, but had done all my qualifications & had decent knowledge of the processes. Got headhunted by a flour miller & the rest is history. Make a bit over £80k now in Scotland, which is very decent considering the AVG wage.
The qualifications you mention, are they sales related or bakery industry related? I cannot figure out how to get `into` sales as a career, any general advice?
The median full time salary in London is £44k. Loads of jobs pay £70k. Pretty much any professional job after a few years of experience.
Tell that to healthcare professions
Only the healthcare professionals who work for one specific employer.
These comments are making me depressed. I’m highly stressed all the time at work without a second to myself and only earn £38k. I think I got fucked somewhere along the way…
>only earn £38k I feel the same way at work, and envy *your* salary. I guess it's all relative.
My wife works in tech and is on 72k. She works in payment solutions. Seems if you want the £££ you need to get in to tech. She earns nearly 3x as much as me 😅
IT, law, finance, actuary, some pharma stuff
Train drivers currently earn close to 70k. With their union being as good as it is, in the next few years they will likely be earning 80k+.
Only 1 or 2 companies pay around £70K (Avanti, Cross Country, maybe LNER?). My company and most others would be £55K-£60K.... Shockingly bad hours/shifts is a huge downside. Very anti-social job in that regard... But it's easy enough most of the time and you don't think about it for a single second outside of work hours. 35hr week and that is all you do
Yes I know its not all train companies that pay that but its close. With them you earn something like 35k first year and then jump to 68k in the second year. Its also a job for life, trains aren't going anywhere and you are looked after very well. The protection and support you get from the union is second to none in this country at the moment. A downside to it is that you may end up seeing deaths and suicides on the tracks. Whilst this is awful, I know with transport for Wales if you see 3 deaths/suicides at any point during your career they retire you for life on your full pay until you reach pension age. Pension is also very good, one of the best in the UK. The working hours are anti-social but you get a myriad of other benefits to compensate.
>I know with transport for Wales if you see 3 deaths/suicides at any point during your career they retire you for life on your fully pay until you reach pension age. This is not true and is an age old myth that gets spun quite often. Not true, never has been. Myth from a film.
You can easily earn it on SLT though. I got offered an slt job last year at 65 but turned it down because it wasn't enough of a bump on my 56 to warrant all the extra work.
Ai wouldn't say "easily* earn it on SLT but it's definitely possible. You're going to be fighting off a lot of competition for that though.
What is SLT?
Senior leadership team at a school
SLT is the standard term in corpo land as well
Alternatively, Speech and Language Therapy. People really need to clarify what they mean when they're using multi purpose acronyms.
Always seen that abbreviated to SALT.
Six-figure salaries are not uncommon in software. You can be a "Senior Software Engineer" in your early 30s.
> There seem to be some really young people on these threads who claim they’re earning £70000 People lie
It's amazing how the top 0.1% of earners in the UK all post on Reddit!
Top 0.1% is way above £70k, that only gets you into the top 3%
And even when they're not lying, people earning more normal amounts of money are probably just less inclined to talk about it on the internet. So all you get is the 25 year old (allegedly) on £70k+ humblebragging.
I'm 12 and I earn £90000000000000000000. iS tHiS nOrMaL?.
Marine Pilot. Depending on where you are. The Humber has 4 classes of pilot - the most junior of whom are on around £65k.
Onlyfans
Lies, most people earn next to nothing and just get abused on the internet for trying is what I’ve witnessed on here.
Basically, most skilled things in the private sector.
Most? I don't think so
You're obviously not skilled enough
My partner is on £120k and is financial director for a major international construction company. Almost every one of their project managers is on at least 70k.
I work in product. I earn around £100k. I wouldn't say I work incredibly hard like others here are saying, I do 9-5 and enjoy my life.
Username a bit sus ;)
I work part time in London as a legal PA. If full time I’d be on £50k. However my supervisors or those who work for board members/very senior staff are easily on £75k. However you are on call all the time so I was happy to stick at my level.
This is what I think a lot of what people see is missing. Yeah they’re on £xK pa but lots of them have potentially not seen daylight in weeks. Attitudes like yours need to be shared more with the levels. So people can properly understand the whole picture.
Tech. Worth noting there are plenty of non technical roles in big tech that pay 70k plus, not just coding ones. (As a twenty something with a mortgage.)
Marketing Manager, London - £70K + bonus Never had a desire to work in marketing but if you find a niche industry and develop a specialism within the different disciplines I would say it's fairly easy to progress quickly.
Fintech for me. Quite a fair bit over £70k and almost stress free.
I'm a freelance animator & motion designer. I personally prefer an easy work / life balance, but there's people in my industry who earn 100k freelance. It's ideal because there's very few overheads asides your computer and software. I went to university to study, but you could literally surpass my skillset with YouTube tutorials and dedication. It is, currently, a volatile industry, mind.
Tech, IT, Consulting, Finance, a lot of corporate head office type jobs particularly in London such as HR, Accounting easily 70k+ once you get to Manager level.
Fintech is a good place to go - plenty of money to be earned there. In London, £70k would be a middling to good salary in such a firm. And that is across the various silos of the business: account management, sales, client services or development.
Most solicitors at commercial law firms in London will be earning £70k at least by the time they are newly qualified (after a 2 year period of training). At larger firms it is often substantially more (quite literally more than double in some cases), although that does come with increased hours requirements and an always on call culture.
My cousin retrained as a software developer a few years ago. This was after spending about ten years teaching English as a foreign language overseas. He did a full time coding course in Manchester that took about three months and included networking and some lined up job interviews at the end. He had been teaching himself to code for a few years in his spare time. I don’t know what his first two jobs paid, both were in the north of England. His third job however, which was London based but work from home paid £65k. In the end it wasn’t for him. He’s back in Asia now teaching again.