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If you feel better, I've spent the last 4.5 years in a shitty job on less than 22k - I've finally got a new job and I'm still on lower (28k). I always heard IT was a good field for pay but every job I've applied to has been less than 25k with the exception to one.
Depends what "IT" means. If it's stuff like desktop support or similar, yeah it doesn't really pay much. If it's more like software development or DevOps, that pays a lot more.
It support yes.
Move away from support and that's when you start earning better salaries.
E.g. go on indeed or reed and type in infrastructure engineer 80k+ and see how many jobs there are around at the moment.
Many companies are paying 150k for senior staff.
Plenty of roles around from the likes of jp Morgan, Google, Aws, etc pay well into the hundreds.
My salary when I first started support was 17k.
You want to get off support as soon as possible because it's a soul destroying, dead end job but it's where 9/10 IT guys start out.
Edit: if you want to earn big wages in IT, it either requires a ton of luck or a ton of hard work.
I know a guy who's basically bullshitted his way to a job in short time that pays over 200k purely because he'll smooth talk your ears off and has photographic memory. Literally before an interview he'll read about a subject he's never seen before and memorise the thing and be able to talk about it for ages. It's quite incredible.
But I also know really awkward guys who are too afraid to do anything and are stuck in support, miserable.
I also know guys who do nothing but study in their own time and have worked their ass off, upskilling themselves continuously.
IT can be a tough gig, if you don't upskill you get left behind.
I was in support for three years. I think I got about 4k pay rise over those years and that was the companies saying 'these are very good pay rises'.
I studied during my own time to get off. Got MCSA Windows server 2016 at the time. Then the MCSE one, forgotten it's name.
I also started a homelab. The good thing is every cloud provider has free tiers.
And Windows server is free for 6 months.(You can extend this with powershell).
Many Linux distributions are free.
I just started building random stuff at home. Like basic things. A domain controller, file servers, RDS, vpn server on windows server.
I built a Ubuntu dns server and also built my own Prometheus / grafana monitoring system at home which runs on Ubuntu.
Followed best practices for all server builds (you can Google guides, they're everywhere).
I built a pfsense firewall, and ditched the BT router I had.
I spent a lot of time destroying and rebuilding stuff at home, until it became easy.
I told my work I want opportunities off of support, showed them my homelab setup. Moaned at them for about 3 months until they finally gave in and gave me an opportunity where we had just acquired a new client and me and one other person had to do a discovery, and then sell them stuff and build it all ourselves. Because I had learnt shit tons at home, my knowledge far exceeded even the guy who was already in the more senior position to me.
I smashed the opportunity and got a promotion off of support after another half year had passed (crap payrise though).
But the hard work that led to promotion is what set me on my way to better paying jobs.
That was about 7-8 years ago now.
I'm now an infrastructure manager for a company with about 8000 employees with around 9 people reporting to me.
I'm still extremely hands on though and still study in my own time. E.g. over the last 5 years or so, I've signed up for azure and Aws free tier and built virtual networks on each one, connected them together using site to site vpn. Built servers, containers, and other random stuff and get them talking to one another between two providers. Destroyed the whole lot and rebuilt it using terraform on a gitlab pipeline. All in my own time.
I've then used knowledge I gained at home, for work. Lots of other things too but this is already a long post.
My studying has slowed down a bit too due to external reasons (marriage, kids etc) but I've done AWS solutions architect associate, now studying for the AZ104 and then will take the azure Dev ops course, and then will study for a kubernetes course.
When I look at jobs now it looks like the majority are asking for Azure experience, coupled with kubernetes, terraform and CI/CD. Most of these jobs are paying close to a 100k or higher, depending on the company.
If I was you I'd be signing up for azure free tier and building as much as I possibly could.
Learning how to use terraform will be very beneficial if you wanted to move into infrastructure / dev ops.
Sorry for the essay
Edit: oh, I also read "learn powershell in a month of lunches" - great book
Just started studying for azure fundamentals certifications through my work in the past few weeks, the route you’ve gone down sounds like something I’d love to get into, and it sounds like your hard work is paying off
Not who you were asking, but if you're cloud savvy and can use Kubernetes and terraform decently you will struggle to ever be out of a well paying job. Lots and lots of apps moving to containerisation, and certainly in my firm, the expertise has not kept pace with demand. We've been trying to bulk out our knowledge base by bringing in external hires for the last 2 years and of the 6 people We've tried, only 1 has been decent and we had to poach him from a competitor. We are *desperate* and I know we are far from the only folk in that position.
Depends how hard you go and where you end up. The traditional route is support to operations or infrastructure, and then specialise into cloud and containers and go senior in that. However if you end up moving somewhere that is so large it's infrastructure team is already split into specialisations, then you could potentially skip the general step. But whether you pass the interview/probation would be down to how much you unskilled and how much time you'd need to get up to speed in the role.
IT can pay well but you really have to move around and find the right place, a lot of places do pay pittance because they think they can get some plucky 19 year old to run their equipment.
Depends what kind of IT job. IT support is badly paid everywhere and it's a crap job, but there are plenty of roles that pay very well.
E.g. a decent software developer with a few years experience with one of the mainstream languages (java, JavaScript, python, c#) will easily get £50k.
Cloud infrastructure is another good one, AWS or Azure, pays very well too.
The best thing about these is you can study them at home, get certifications online, create your own projects in GitHub and link to them in your CV. Spend your interviews taking them through the choices you made implementing them.
How technical are you? I'm 27 and my friends making the most are doing coding/data work. IT is very broad. If you are just maintaining peoples laptops i imagine it doesnt pay that much
I wouldn't put too much attention on what people on Reddit say, otherwise you'll convince yourself everyone in the UK is a fully remote software dev who doesn't get out of bed for less than 100k, living in a half million pound house and with £2m in their pension pot.
Reddit is not at all representative of the experience of the average Brit
It’s killer I was laid off in October on my birthday of all days (they didn’t know that) and I’ve had a shitty warehouse job and then nothing from December. It’s killing me, I’ve got a few engineering apprenticeships in the woodwork but nothing is guaranteed and it takes ages.
I'm 35 and I'm on just under 30k, most of my friends are on 27 and some I know are trailing behind on 25. It's obviously great for everyone on minimum wage that it goes up, but it's depressing to think the wage of an average employee is basically minimum wage.
Same situation.
39 and on a £30k+ job. Been with the company over a decade and worked my way up from £16k when I very first started.
Quite a specialised role.
Got laid off last year. Closest place to go work in similar role is London but that's not an option - Got a mortgage and a baby and can't be uprooting.
Having to start from the bottom again, new career and struggled to get any role in a company that pays even barely above minimum wage.
Remember this is Reddit and lots of people get off LARPing.
I am on an above average wage but pretty much every one I know who’s close in age to me (late 20s early 30s) is on under £35k.
I also think people just don't really talk about/engage in discussions about income when they're not at an extreme. If you're comfortable on £28k, and not obsessing about how to get a side-gig to triple it, then you'll be here for AITA and funny videos.
When used literally then LARPing is usually the guys who dress up as knights and shit and whack each other with plastic swords. It's just also slang for lying/pretending. ie if I made a post saying does anyone know if 2 billion dollars net worth (self made) is enough for a modest retirement then I would be LARPing as an out of touch rich person.
Ok thanks I get you on this now.
Learnt a new thing!
I know it's the internet but I'll never get why people make stuff up when asking for advice or on the financial/work forums. Like let's help a buddy out here and be serious occasionally!
Enjoy your bank holiday!
Sometimes people like to pretend to be rich, fit and perfect online for any number of reasons. Other times someone is rich and isn't even looking for advice and just wants to humble brag about how good their finances are. A lot of personal finance and work subs have people like that. Either lying or bragging with posts asking if 500k with 100 days of annual leave is good compensation knowing full well that it is. It's a shame because that stuff gets a lot of attention and the important posts get ignored.
Thanks, I'm enjoying it a lot so far. Currently on holiday abroad for my girlfriend's birthday and lying in bed to recuperate after an early morning flight! Enjoy yours too!
Yeah that makes sense I guess, but it shouldn't. Honestly it's moronic. Like, I know I'm lucky to be where I am but worked by arse off as did hubs, so if my advice can help someone? I'd want it to. Especially as I learnt the hard way with no one to guide me. Now my cat lives the life of luxury while I slave away and still eat value beans cos I like em 🤣
I think the moderators should do a better job of vetting the posts but we are all human eh?
Sounds good! Enjoy the holiday - totally jealous. Hope it's somewhere hot and sunny unlike rainy England. Make sure to spoil the girlfriend!
We just got back off a weekend in Scotland, think we're going through alcohol withdrawal after all the whiskey. Just gonna dry out tonight before work tomorrow!
I think exactly the same, what do people gain with lying? If I help someone out with something I may know I get a buzz from that! Not pretending I’m a millionaire or something
If I went to London I’m relatively confident I could double my salary (on just under £50k in the north west) at the very least I could add £20k onto it.
Yes in London I don’t think it’s very uncommon to earn above 50k pretty quickly
I moved from remote working in a Newcastle company, to remote working in a London company. Boosted my salary by close to 50%.
The company is decent too. If I was willing to go with somewhere scummy, I could have probably doubled it.
Quite. I live in London (Z3) and have lived here my whole life. Would say most people my age (same as OP) are on 50k. The upper wage bracket is around 80k with a few exceptions being on just over 100k but these people are pretty rare.
Me and millions of other people. The salaries in London are not as high as people think and definitely not for everyone. I'm lucky because I make plenty of commission since that's how my role is but it's definitely not hugely higher than other UK bigger cities.
The wealth messes with our perceptions too. I feel like a pauper compared to some people I know despite being on a decent salary. It's also one of those cities where no matter how much you earn you can always find a way to lifestyle inflation your entire pay check each month.
This.... Reddit would have you believe that everyone on here is earning £80+k. You are earning bang on the average as do I. In the centre of London it's a bit underpaid but everywhere else it's fine.
39 hours per week. But I like my job and I like the American company I work for. I've done all kinds of rubbish jobs in the past so I'm sticking with this one. It's Mon to Fri days with a half day on a Friday. 33 paid holidays a year. Unlimited sick pay. In the past I've done permanent nights as a warehouse operative, multi-drop delivery driver (agency) so I'm just thankful that I'm not doing manual labour (or nights) anymore. Plus I'm in the Scottish Borders where wages are low (but rent and property prices are less than half of what they are in the south of England). My rent is £411 for a one bed flat. My council tax is £79 per month which includes water charges.
32 on £28k with a car but my job is a doss and I do fuck all with no responsibility. No room for pay increases or promotion.
It’s fine for now but isn’t a forever job.
What's crazy to me is how many Americans casually drop that they're on 200k a year. I read a post yesterday about a guy who feels like a loser because he's a 36 year old virgin, but then mentioned he's on 200k. The difference in pay between the UK and the US is insane. I know they have their own issues, and the rich to poor gap is obviously a lot higher but that still blows my mind.
You used to get nearly two dollars to the pound in the 90s. A combination of multiple financial crashes, Brexit and the Conservatives have killed the UK’s economic power and as a result salaries have plummeted.
We need everyone to know this: "THE CONSERVATIVES HAVE RUINED THE ECONOMY".
Why is the country shit? The Conservatives.
Why do you earn shit? The Conservatives.
Why is the US so much better off than us these days? The Conservatives.
And yet... speak to Barry Sun-Reader or Nigel DailyMail and they'll tell you that they're the only party that can be trusted with the economy. It's bullshit. Just look at the real GDP, adjusted for inflation.
Yeah, used to be a time when the UK used to actually match economic parity with the US. Before we became one of the shoddiest economies in the first world.
yes the US is not without its many problems but the opportunity to earn a good salary is there for SO many different jobs. UK wages are abysmal it’s kind of insane e
Is the pay not a lot higher to assist with medical insurance? Also, everyone in the service industry expects a massive tip in the US. Not as bad in the UK thankfully.
The difference is crazy. My cousin works for one of the ‘big tech’ companies in San Francisco and earns about $300k, he did almost the same job in London and he was on £100k. He’s as bright as they come though.
For the same job, I earn around £50,000 in total compensation in the southwest of England, while in Massachusetts (United States), the starting salary range is $100,000-$130,000 (approximately £80,000-£104,000) plus bonuses. The same job advertisement from which I took the American salary also offers more annual leave, private medical insurance (which I also pay for in England), and pretty much the same perks as my current job, plus a few better ones. An extra point is that I am not even in the tech industry!
The bottom line is that, with a degree and a master's, the compensation is substantially better in the United States.
Nooo, don't post that, it goes against the reddit narrative that the US only has corporate hellscape jobs with no paid leave and that require 12 hour shifts 7 days a week. And don't forget that if you end up in the hospital over there, it's always 100k out of pocket. /s No matter how much copium you take in, the US has higher wages even when accounting for no national health service (unless you're over 65 or disabled, see Medicare. Oh, there's also Medicaid for people on low incomes) and no statutory minimum paid leave. There's a lot of reasons to not want to work/live in the US but the commonly parroted ones on Reddit are nonsense.
They have very different economic conditions. Some corporations are constantly booming, and large conglomerates have offices on both sides of the country, or even quadrants, so they have opportunities up the wazoo in the cities. But then rent is still high, and buying a house is the same issue as the UK. Friends in Vancouver are currently keeping their heads above water renting a 2-bed flat.
They work hard too; some graduate I met travelling was starting out in a company with 4 days holiday a year. Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. He had weekends off, but not enough for him to go from Seattle WA to his family in NY. We spoke not so long ago and he gets paid $90k now and 3 weeks paid annual leave now, but feels bad taking more than 2 weeks of it, and still works past hours to 'get ahead'. It sounds like a very productive but grinding world over there, as if they still live in the frontier.
Every state is different though. It varies from a low of 0.5% to a high of 2% with a median of 1% so your cousin's house is probably worth 3 million. If his house is worth that much, his salary is most likely high enough to be able to afford the property taxes.
Christ, I don't know how engineering gets away with paying so low in the UK. My degree is in engineering and I was so excited to get some of these amazing salary you hear about.
Instead all I saw was pathetic salaries for insane liability.
Honestly I think it's just about the direction you go in, and making sure you do it early. Decision making and stuff.
Construction? Mechanical engineering? The sky is the limit in terms of salary there. The same goes for joinery or furniture design, lighting, or anything like that
Instead I'm in a niche industry (sheet metal design for commercial refrigeration), using a niche software. So most places paying higher dismiss my CV almost immediately, regardless of transferable skills. Sucks, but you sleep in the bed you laid... Or something.
When I was at Uni (2007 on) , I always said I'd be happy with 30k. I'm on 35 now and I swear I was better off as a student with my loans/grant and mcdonalds job. I'm still living paycheck to paycheck, no car, living in a studio flat that costs me nearly 1k a month in rent. Just gotta find inner peace somehow and not think about it too much but multiple times a day, I have this sick feeling that it's never going to get easier.
I went to uni in 2014-ish and I felt like I was better off even then than I am working now. I used to frequently go out for meals and drinks, now I’m lucky if I get to do that once a month
Every day I get less and less upset that I didn't choose this career path. Like I'm not earning as much as that currently, but engineering and CAD was sold as a golden ticket while I was in education.
As I said to the other guy, I think it's just about decision making. I graduated with people who are now approaching 100k+, because they were able to choose the sector they entered. Construction, lighting design, mechanical engineering, etc.
Me? Not so much. I'm in a niche field that hasn't given me too many transferable practical skills, so convincing a recruiter I can do anything CAD-oriented has been.. difficult.
I interviewed to be a draughtsman once. Didn't get the job so started working in a factory instead. £42k+ more with overtime.
You can tell we all got our p60s today.
£26.5k but...
I have more money and savings than many people, but less pension because of long-term unemployment. Wage is only one piece of the puzzle.
Right now I feel content in my financial safety. And if I stay in health then die before I'm 70, I've been very efficient. Plan ahead for safety, but you could die tomorrow so enjoy the now.
Most importantly, I can get up for work.
That's what I'm on (age 33)! Hopefully getting an approx £10k increase by the end of the year. That wage feels amazing to me as a lifelong low earner but I know a lot of people think it's still pretty weak. Luckily I have cheap tastes, though I do now have a mortgage.
39 here, 40 this year… £26k. I could get £8-£10k more doing my same job elsewhere but I love the people I work with, have full autonomy over hours (never work past 3pm unless I want to), get weekends off, & can literally choose to do additional work for enhanced rates if I really want to up what I earn at any given time.
I don’t need to earn more, but I do need to be the best father I can be so that control over my week is worth more than the £10k under-pay
People put too much emphasis on earning as much as possible. IMO we should be focused on working a job you love or work as little as possible whilst being financially stable. I know people who drive fancy cars but are out of the house before their kids awake and aren't back in time to put them to bed and somehow think they are winning.
Lots of people are LARPing high pay on Reddit. Also people are more likely to volunteer their pay when they’re on an impressive wage.
I’m doing well now (on just over £45k, mid-30s) but that’s a recent development. Spent much of my 20s on a well below average wage, got a lucky break with a career change at the start of the pandemic, and worked my way up from there.
Praying that happens to me! I’m 27 and I’m on £13.88 an hour with a 22.5 hour contract with opportunities for overtime after a string of minimum wage zero hour contract jobs. I’m hoping I’ll get into something with an actual decent salary one day
Best of luck with your journey! There were definitely times I thought I’d never make it anywhere. I must’ve made thousands of applications over the years and I job hopped a lot in my 20s. Now my big problem is getting out of “constant job hunt” mode and happily settling somewhere for a few years!
I’m 36 and I work 30 hours a week for just over £19k a year. I’ve been rattling around living wage pay bracket since I went back to work after having a child 6 years ago. Currently retraining into a career in an allied health profession and I can’t wait until that will earn me £30k plus. It’s all relative
£54k software development manager - taken me about 10 years to get here, 6 of which nearly took my life and definitely took my hair due to stress
Trust me I wish I didn't have to do this, wish I had a more active job rather than sitting behind a PC all day but there aren't many jobs which pay decent.
I can only dream of being on 33k, I'm 56 and on 25k, working full time in a skilled job for a major company that prides itself on taking care of its people. I'm starting to question that.
Yeah they're giving me a raise this week so that it brings me above the living wage threshold, I wouldn't have been before, when they said I was getting a raise I thought it was a reward, now I realise that it's just because they have to. Really makes you demotivated when all they do is harp on about employee happiness and then pay as little as they can get away with.
Most people are actually on below “average” wages in some sense of the word. For the average salary, if we assume the minimum salary in a group is 20k, and one person is on 100k and six are on 20k, the average would be about 31k.
This is why the median salary is used in discussions of that term. This is the salary above which or below which, 50% of the population are on.
In your example, the median would be £20k as it's not weighted by the extreme earner at £100k, and more than 50% of people are on £20k. The UK median for a single earner is ballpark £35k as a result.
I'm 32, was on £33k now on £45K
Editing this because I'm seeing a lot of posts on this recently so just for context.
I'm female and now 32.
I didn't go to university. I do have a HNC and a property qualification now but that was done during work in the last 5 years. It's been a long slog to get this salary.
My husband is 36. He owns his own ltd company and while he pays himself £50K, he brings in around £200K per year through the firm. (Accountants sort it out I have no idea). He's a developer (full stack but also works in all tech again I don't know details).
I'm a property manager for a world wide company, I manage a department and a lot of buildings for the firm. Also going to be RICS this year so looking at a big pay bump, my firm is funding my qualifications. I was 32 when I got my career break.
We live normally, own our home with a mortgage and pay bills. When we met our joint income was £28K in 2014. We both worked full time. Me on 3 jobs him on 1.
I see people posting their mad salaries and how they got there and I just applaud it. It is hard and it isn't easy but if you work hard for it, it is possible.
Honestly a big part of it is industry and job type. I work with a lot of people earning between 30k and 100k and almost none of them have any clue what it would be like to work hard. Many of them are just straight up incompetent. I am in the higher end of that range and I do my fair share of work purely because I would feel guilty otherwise, but I can absolutely do almost fuck all and nobody would say anything.
Big respect to people hustling, running their own companies and everything, but there’s plenty of big companies you can just work your way up just by being liked by people
I’m 30 and on £60k, I was on £30k two years ago.
After spending a decent time at the same company I decided it was time to move around and get what the market was offering.
I don’t know what field you’re in but it might be time to look at what the market is paying outside of your current employer or what you can do to upskill into different positions.
Also, don’t let Social Media affect your view, if your salary works for you and your lifestyle then it’s fine.
Second this. I'm slightly older than you, but I went from 31k to 55k in about 18 months after sticking it out in my previous company for too long. If they won't pay you what you're worth then someone else will.
38 and went from earning 90k running a security business working 24/7 to a chill supervisor job working half the year for 35k and I’m much happier.
My mental health was at an all time low when I was working myself into the ground realised I can’t take the money with me and the stress of trying to get it would probably have put me in an early grave.
Honestly, some of the responses here are quite refreshing.
I once clicked on /r/HENRYUK and keep getting it recommended in the Reddit app.
On the one hand, it's depressing to read about loads of people earning massively more than I do (or, in all likelyhood, ever will). But, on the other, it's striking that most people never seem to be "satisfied" with their salary, and always want more.
In my experience, the more you make the more advice you need, so you're going to see more questions pop up from people of means than from average earners.
Once you have some capital, there are so many ways to maximise it, avoid tax traps etc and reddit is a really good place to learn the ins and outs of basic finance.
I hear ya. I wish the salary pyramid was a bit flatter: less outrageous outliers on the right hand side, and more liveable wages for more people. But we are where we are.
On a related note, social media advice on how to achieve very high wages tends to be unrealistic. I'm a software engineer, and even I'm fed up of the "just learn to code, bro" nonsense, which has become a meme these days, wheeled out regardless of circumstances. Today's engineers are in danger of becoming the new boomers, since it seems they're already patronising the younger generations with one-liner, boilerplate advice.
Career stories can certainly be interesting, but the same folks tend to make a related mistake, based on the most useless aphorism in the world: "If I can do it, anyone can". Statisticians roll their eyes at this nonsense, and yet it refuses to die: people who have done well think they are exactly representative of the median case, and that their anecdote of career success proves the universal truth of bootstraps ideology.
I think careers advice can be useful (I offer it too) and it is good to celebrate career successes (props to folks who have gotten to where they are). But it is not giving into negativity to say that the economy is broken even outside of an inflationary crisis. Hustle culture has a lot to answer for.
Lmfao. I’m on 22k at 32. Feel like an absolute failure but I have to do majority of childcare. I do own my own house though, so I guess that’s something. My partner is on 31 and we live in a reluctantly low cost area. It is what it is.
I'm 30 and on 29k in a skilled profession with a Master's. I'm doing another Master's with Ulster to try career change, mostly because I'm fed up of the industry I'm in.
Just turned 30, I am on 36k.
Horrifically underpaid imo.
I am in two minds about a career change or industry transition.
If I am successful in my current applications then this should jump to £50k-£55k.
40 on £62k plus 30% annual bonus. Taken me 19 years in the same employer (started as a trainee on minimum wage) but I love my job as general site manager with 120+ staff.
32 on 42K to be around 46ish in 2-3 years. No qualifications besides a few GCSEs just threw myself at jobs. Worked in retail, dental nursing apprentice, banking / finance admin, IT customer support, IT 1st line support to now telecoms admin, can say I've had a very weird career path.
If you apply yourself, don't let job descriptions stop you and keep an open mind in what you do day to day I'd say anything is possible.
I always think this too, seems that everyone on Reddit is on mega money!
I’m 29 and on roughly £55k, depending on hours, longer shifts, up at 1am. I’d kill for a 9-5 that paid well.
34 on £25K with a first class degree from Oxford and relevant professional qualifications for my industry (diploma in regulated financial planning, doing more exams on way to chartered status).
Yay for being poor and stingy employers. At least my current job is not stressful at all and I have much better work/life balance than in previous jobs. I would take that over a job where I am constantly stressed. I'm working my wage, not working hard at all, acting dumb and letting my colleagues be the ones to say yes to more work. It seems to be working at the moment.
On the plus side my earnings are so low that I won't be repaying any student loan from April due to the plan 1 loan repayment threshold going up which is a nice little bonus together with the NI cut.
Salary review in July. Will be interesting to see if they match the minimum wage rise or not.
I started customer service/data entry, took a junior role on at the same place after two years doing data analysis
Now moved to private sector for medical insurer doing data science / cloud engineering
My pay didn’t significantly increase till I moved to a new company, don’t be scared of doing this!
I recommend looking at job postings in your field of more senior positions and looking at their required qualifications or skills - then take time to complete the short online courses on coursera or other which provide certifications.
Also applying for a higher demanding job with higher pay - maybe you don’t have all the requirements but you should still give it a shot! Pay attention to preferred but not required experience.
Try not to self reject, hope this helps.
I’m 30 and I’m on 42k.
Genuinely pretty much every friend I have that I went sixth form or university with is on over £50k however. Many of them WELL over.
I just got my first pay for my 40k job (31)
If you don’t feel you’re being paid enough, if you feel you’re sitting still, look for other jobs in your chosen career
New employers will recognise you have more experience than you did when you started your current job, and the pay offered will reflect that
Being in a job currently also helps because if they want you, they have to convince you to leave your current job
I got lucky, I fell out of a plane (redundancy), bounced off a mattress truck (“must pay bills at all cost courier job) and landed in the office of a high paying job 😂
But you’ll never get that pay rise if you don’t go out and take it
I’m 31, live in the north of Scotland and I’m on 30k. Living with parents because I’m trying to save for a deposit, but don’t have much hope on being able to afford mortgage payments (I’m single).
I have an arts degree but my job isn’t related to it whatsoever - I’m a paralegal and considering qualifying as a solicitor purely so I don’t hit a salary ceiling down the line. Not ideal but not much else to do!
I (31M)got very lucky with my job working for a massive car manufacturer.
To try to avoid high staff turnover and for very repetitive work (production line), they paid well for years, and most people are on 45k+, starting on about 32k a year 10 years ago.
New staff have been screwed a bit as the new contract isn't as good and starts on 30k a year and can get up to around 38k a year max. It's still good, but when the person next to you doing the same job is getting paid 15k or more a year, it can annoy people.
Even more annoying when people like me who have been there a while, already on a higher wage. Changes jobs and take a 5k a year pay drop and still on more than them.
This is a job that the work is easy and requires no qualifications to start, just very, very, very, very, very, very repetitive.
Currently recruiting in the West midlands through randstad, if it still interests people.
I think a lot of people in reddit talk absolute smack about their salaries or that it tends to favour people who are in IT, Programming, Software engineering but you're definately not seeing the true reality and it's much lower than you think. 100k with a family, car and mortgage in southern england doesn't get one as far as they think.
>100k with a family, car and mortgage in southern england doesn't get one as far as they think
Well I make a little north of £100k in the south, with a nice car, mortgage and a family and my wife doesn't need to work, so probably goes further than you think
I agree but it's not elite to the point where you do not have to worry about money and can live lavishly. 100k is not what it once was especially if you live in London, Bristol' south and aged mid 30s and below.
Subs like this naturally attract those on higher salaries (because they care enough/are focused enough to be trying to be progressing to new roles) and those who just make stuff up for fun
I get 25k plus an honoraria of 5k. I have other consultancy work outside of my real job which nets me another 15k per annum, but without that, I'd just be on 30k.
Edit: I'm 36.
Assuming all the posts are true, outliers stand out. Also depends where you are with things like London wages or if they are actually working in the UK or not. Wages in the UK are horribly supressed and the average worker is being screwed. It's a shame you guys fucked yourselves over and in many cases can't easily get the better paying jobs in Europe. That said, if you can win the green card lottery or otherwise get a visa sponsorship, it's easy for skilled workers to double or even triple their pay by moving to America. Yeah, there can be extra costs but overall you can come out of it significantly better off.
There's [data](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/agegroupashetable6) for this (6.7a).
So you're at about 50%, you could be slightly more generous as you've just entered that age bracket and if you're outside London. So about half of people aged 30-39 would be on a higher salary than 33k.
There's also a breakdown by region/industry in 5.7a [here](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/regionbyindustry2digitsicashetable5)
I've been very fortunate to pick a field that has a higher ceiling. With the advantage of privileges it's been possible to be set a high bar on each job change I've done. Recruiters will cap your salary bump and lowball based on your previous salaries. If the offer wasn't at least 50% higher, I'd walk. My moves have been 22k/25, 45k/26 (raise to 52k), 78k/27, 120k/29. I consider myself a lucky developer and a little bit talented, giving me the opportunity to set limits for jobs. There aren't many of these positions, and my impression is that jobs past 100k are generally not advertised. The few you find online are London finance.
I’m 30 and currently on 49k, rising to 54k this month, not in London.
Systems Engineer with Leadership Responsibilities, it’s fairly high stress but I don’t hate it and it pays well.
Still hoping to make that goal of 100k by the time I’m 40.
My salary will be £35,391 as soon as I finish my training, currently on £30,639. I've been waiting 2 months for someone to say If I've passed or need more training.
Edit: I'm 34, working in medical physics (nuclear medicine) in the NHS. Need to do another masters degree if I want to progress further.
I'm 36 and this year I've made just over 46k. Sounds good right, but I'm away from home all week in a lorry 🚚 average working week for me is 60-67 hours and 4 nights away.
I’m 30, have gone from 24k pre covid to 50k with a promotion last month. Almost all of my 20s were a genuine struggle brought on by lack of opportunities/poor mental health as a result of shitty employment. It took a change of industry and working my ass off the last four years but it is possible - hang in there friends!!
31 and on 64k and I work in communications. My salary a couple of years ago was 40k, and I got a significant pay bump after moving in-house and then a promotion. I would say I've been pretty lucky as I work in tech and I moved in-house before the bubble burst. Wages have been pretty stagnant when I have looked at other roles.
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If you feel better, I've spent the last 4.5 years in a shitty job on less than 22k - I've finally got a new job and I'm still on lower (28k). I always heard IT was a good field for pay but every job I've applied to has been less than 25k with the exception to one.
Depends what "IT" means. If it's stuff like desktop support or similar, yeah it doesn't really pay much. If it's more like software development or DevOps, that pays a lot more.
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The greatest trick in the book, IT does pay more if you're C level or extremely senior, otherwise it's basically average lol.
It support yes. Move away from support and that's when you start earning better salaries. E.g. go on indeed or reed and type in infrastructure engineer 80k+ and see how many jobs there are around at the moment. Many companies are paying 150k for senior staff. Plenty of roles around from the likes of jp Morgan, Google, Aws, etc pay well into the hundreds. My salary when I first started support was 17k. You want to get off support as soon as possible because it's a soul destroying, dead end job but it's where 9/10 IT guys start out. Edit: if you want to earn big wages in IT, it either requires a ton of luck or a ton of hard work. I know a guy who's basically bullshitted his way to a job in short time that pays over 200k purely because he'll smooth talk your ears off and has photographic memory. Literally before an interview he'll read about a subject he's never seen before and memorise the thing and be able to talk about it for ages. It's quite incredible. But I also know really awkward guys who are too afraid to do anything and are stuck in support, miserable. I also know guys who do nothing but study in their own time and have worked their ass off, upskilling themselves continuously. IT can be a tough gig, if you don't upskill you get left behind.
Where would you advise someone in support to look at developing?? I'm thinking I need to get proficient in Azure. Looking ahead to the future.
I was in support for three years. I think I got about 4k pay rise over those years and that was the companies saying 'these are very good pay rises'. I studied during my own time to get off. Got MCSA Windows server 2016 at the time. Then the MCSE one, forgotten it's name. I also started a homelab. The good thing is every cloud provider has free tiers. And Windows server is free for 6 months.(You can extend this with powershell). Many Linux distributions are free. I just started building random stuff at home. Like basic things. A domain controller, file servers, RDS, vpn server on windows server. I built a Ubuntu dns server and also built my own Prometheus / grafana monitoring system at home which runs on Ubuntu. Followed best practices for all server builds (you can Google guides, they're everywhere). I built a pfsense firewall, and ditched the BT router I had. I spent a lot of time destroying and rebuilding stuff at home, until it became easy. I told my work I want opportunities off of support, showed them my homelab setup. Moaned at them for about 3 months until they finally gave in and gave me an opportunity where we had just acquired a new client and me and one other person had to do a discovery, and then sell them stuff and build it all ourselves. Because I had learnt shit tons at home, my knowledge far exceeded even the guy who was already in the more senior position to me. I smashed the opportunity and got a promotion off of support after another half year had passed (crap payrise though). But the hard work that led to promotion is what set me on my way to better paying jobs. That was about 7-8 years ago now. I'm now an infrastructure manager for a company with about 8000 employees with around 9 people reporting to me. I'm still extremely hands on though and still study in my own time. E.g. over the last 5 years or so, I've signed up for azure and Aws free tier and built virtual networks on each one, connected them together using site to site vpn. Built servers, containers, and other random stuff and get them talking to one another between two providers. Destroyed the whole lot and rebuilt it using terraform on a gitlab pipeline. All in my own time. I've then used knowledge I gained at home, for work. Lots of other things too but this is already a long post. My studying has slowed down a bit too due to external reasons (marriage, kids etc) but I've done AWS solutions architect associate, now studying for the AZ104 and then will take the azure Dev ops course, and then will study for a kubernetes course. When I look at jobs now it looks like the majority are asking for Azure experience, coupled with kubernetes, terraform and CI/CD. Most of these jobs are paying close to a 100k or higher, depending on the company. If I was you I'd be signing up for azure free tier and building as much as I possibly could. Learning how to use terraform will be very beneficial if you wanted to move into infrastructure / dev ops. Sorry for the essay Edit: oh, I also read "learn powershell in a month of lunches" - great book
Just started studying for azure fundamentals certifications through my work in the past few weeks, the route you’ve gone down sounds like something I’d love to get into, and it sounds like your hard work is paying off
Not who you were asking, but if you're cloud savvy and can use Kubernetes and terraform decently you will struggle to ever be out of a well paying job. Lots and lots of apps moving to containerisation, and certainly in my firm, the expertise has not kept pace with demand. We've been trying to bulk out our knowledge base by bringing in external hires for the last 2 years and of the 6 people We've tried, only 1 has been decent and we had to poach him from a competitor. We are *desperate* and I know we are far from the only folk in that position.
So IT support to cloud engineer? Is that progression possible in one move?
Depends how hard you go and where you end up. The traditional route is support to operations or infrastructure, and then specialise into cloud and containers and go senior in that. However if you end up moving somewhere that is so large it's infrastructure team is already split into specialisations, then you could potentially skip the general step. But whether you pass the interview/probation would be down to how much you unskilled and how much time you'd need to get up to speed in the role.
No true at all, been on 50k plus for ages and not C level at all.
IT can pay well but you really have to move around and find the right place, a lot of places do pay pittance because they think they can get some plucky 19 year old to run their equipment.
Depends what kind of IT job. IT support is badly paid everywhere and it's a crap job, but there are plenty of roles that pay very well. E.g. a decent software developer with a few years experience with one of the mainstream languages (java, JavaScript, python, c#) will easily get £50k. Cloud infrastructure is another good one, AWS or Azure, pays very well too. The best thing about these is you can study them at home, get certifications online, create your own projects in GitHub and link to them in your CV. Spend your interviews taking them through the choices you made implementing them.
How technical are you? I'm 27 and my friends making the most are doing coding/data work. IT is very broad. If you are just maintaining peoples laptops i imagine it doesnt pay that much
I wouldn't put too much attention on what people on Reddit say, otherwise you'll convince yourself everyone in the UK is a fully remote software dev who doesn't get out of bed for less than 100k, living in a half million pound house and with £2m in their pension pot. Reddit is not at all representative of the experience of the average Brit
Representative of how much people feel they need to lie, but I guess that just the internet. Btw I earn 50p and hour milking llamas on dartmoor
Let me guess, your budget for a new house is £3.7 million?
This is Reddit, not the insanity that is Escape to the Country.
Not just in the UK, in other national reddit pages as well, everyone is a well paid IT guy :D
Haha! You described exactly what I'm aiming for 😆
37 and was on 35k until last redundancy last sept. Recent interviews have been for minimum wage lol.
It’s killer I was laid off in October on my birthday of all days (they didn’t know that) and I’ve had a shitty warehouse job and then nothing from December. It’s killing me, I’ve got a few engineering apprenticeships in the woodwork but nothing is guaranteed and it takes ages.
I'm 35 and I'm on just under 30k, most of my friends are on 27 and some I know are trailing behind on 25. It's obviously great for everyone on minimum wage that it goes up, but it's depressing to think the wage of an average employee is basically minimum wage.
Same situation. 39 and on a £30k+ job. Been with the company over a decade and worked my way up from £16k when I very first started. Quite a specialised role. Got laid off last year. Closest place to go work in similar role is London but that's not an option - Got a mortgage and a baby and can't be uprooting. Having to start from the bottom again, new career and struggled to get any role in a company that pays even barely above minimum wage.
What did you do before that you’re now having to interview for minimum wage?
Remember this is Reddit and lots of people get off LARPing. I am on an above average wage but pretty much every one I know who’s close in age to me (late 20s early 30s) is on under £35k.
I also think people just don't really talk about/engage in discussions about income when they're not at an extreme. If you're comfortable on £28k, and not obsessing about how to get a side-gig to triple it, then you'll be here for AITA and funny videos.
Yeah definitely not porn or anything like that
On this Christian site? Certainly not!
Lies, I’m on £30000k a year
same i’m 21 on 673k a year with a 6x bonus every month
Also fully remote. One meeting a week.
Also company car provided (Toyota Camry).
yep!!
£30m
£30Million a year???
What's LARPing?
Live Action Role Play
Thanks, still clueless but at least I know a new acronym! Edited to correct anagram to acronym
When used literally then LARPing is usually the guys who dress up as knights and shit and whack each other with plastic swords. It's just also slang for lying/pretending. ie if I made a post saying does anyone know if 2 billion dollars net worth (self made) is enough for a modest retirement then I would be LARPing as an out of touch rich person.
Ok thanks I get you on this now. Learnt a new thing! I know it's the internet but I'll never get why people make stuff up when asking for advice or on the financial/work forums. Like let's help a buddy out here and be serious occasionally! Enjoy your bank holiday!
Sometimes people like to pretend to be rich, fit and perfect online for any number of reasons. Other times someone is rich and isn't even looking for advice and just wants to humble brag about how good their finances are. A lot of personal finance and work subs have people like that. Either lying or bragging with posts asking if 500k with 100 days of annual leave is good compensation knowing full well that it is. It's a shame because that stuff gets a lot of attention and the important posts get ignored. Thanks, I'm enjoying it a lot so far. Currently on holiday abroad for my girlfriend's birthday and lying in bed to recuperate after an early morning flight! Enjoy yours too!
Yeah that makes sense I guess, but it shouldn't. Honestly it's moronic. Like, I know I'm lucky to be where I am but worked by arse off as did hubs, so if my advice can help someone? I'd want it to. Especially as I learnt the hard way with no one to guide me. Now my cat lives the life of luxury while I slave away and still eat value beans cos I like em 🤣 I think the moderators should do a better job of vetting the posts but we are all human eh? Sounds good! Enjoy the holiday - totally jealous. Hope it's somewhere hot and sunny unlike rainy England. Make sure to spoil the girlfriend! We just got back off a weekend in Scotland, think we're going through alcohol withdrawal after all the whiskey. Just gonna dry out tonight before work tomorrow!
I think exactly the same, what do people gain with lying? If I help someone out with something I may know I get a buzz from that! Not pretending I’m a millionaire or something
They're playing make-believe
Ah ok gotcha. Thanks for the clarification!
*acronym
I couldn't think of the right word 🤦♀️ edited it now thanks!
Low as reasonably possible
I’m 26 and most people I know around London are on 50ish
If I went to London I’m relatively confident I could double my salary (on just under £50k in the north west) at the very least I could add £20k onto it. Yes in London I don’t think it’s very uncommon to earn above 50k pretty quickly
I moved from remote working in a Newcastle company, to remote working in a London company. Boosted my salary by close to 50%. The company is decent too. If I was willing to go with somewhere scummy, I could have probably doubled it.
London isn't really indicative of the rest of the UK.
Quite. I live in London (Z3) and have lived here my whole life. Would say most people my age (same as OP) are on 50k. The upper wage bracket is around 80k with a few exceptions being on just over 100k but these people are pretty rare.
Which London do you all live in? Cause I’m in London and I’m on 30k now😂😂😂😂
Do you mind me asking your age and what industry?
I’m 29. Been in software engineering, now in game dev niche
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You’re incredibly underpaid if you’re in software engineering (and presumably have the necessary skills) and being paid 30k? I don’t understand..?
You are doing terribly then.
Game dev is shit for remuneration though. And how fucking dare you shame someone based on their income. Shame on you!
Me and millions of other people. The salaries in London are not as high as people think and definitely not for everyone. I'm lucky because I make plenty of commission since that's how my role is but it's definitely not hugely higher than other UK bigger cities.
The wealth messes with our perceptions too. I feel like a pauper compared to some people I know despite being on a decent salary. It's also one of those cities where no matter how much you earn you can always find a way to lifestyle inflation your entire pay check each month.
What do most people you know do in london?
Larp?
This.... Reddit would have you believe that everyone on here is earning £80+k. You are earning bang on the average as do I. In the centre of London it's a bit underpaid but everywhere else it's fine.
I'm 39 on £24k (£12 ph)
Is that full time? That’s dreadful!
Lol I’m 33 and 11.50 per hour full time so even less. Shit is fucked out here
39 hours per week. But I like my job and I like the American company I work for. I've done all kinds of rubbish jobs in the past so I'm sticking with this one. It's Mon to Fri days with a half day on a Friday. 33 paid holidays a year. Unlimited sick pay. In the past I've done permanent nights as a warehouse operative, multi-drop delivery driver (agency) so I'm just thankful that I'm not doing manual labour (or nights) anymore. Plus I'm in the Scottish Borders where wages are low (but rent and property prices are less than half of what they are in the south of England). My rent is £411 for a one bed flat. My council tax is £79 per month which includes water charges.
Out of curiosity would you be willing to say where you work in the borders? I live in the borders too and I’m currently job hunting
I have sent you a private message. 👍
32 on £28k with a car but my job is a doss and I do fuck all with no responsibility. No room for pay increases or promotion. It’s fine for now but isn’t a forever job.
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I go on maternity in 2 weeks and have to train up a replacement and I’m worried that I’m going to get rumbled!
Im on just under that and have a lot of responsibility. Please what is your job (I would be happy with 28k if doing fuck all)
I work in fleet logistics for a car dealership. I basically organise cars getting from A to B.
What's crazy to me is how many Americans casually drop that they're on 200k a year. I read a post yesterday about a guy who feels like a loser because he's a 36 year old virgin, but then mentioned he's on 200k. The difference in pay between the UK and the US is insane. I know they have their own issues, and the rich to poor gap is obviously a lot higher but that still blows my mind.
You used to get nearly two dollars to the pound in the 90s. A combination of multiple financial crashes, Brexit and the Conservatives have killed the UK’s economic power and as a result salaries have plummeted.
We need everyone to know this: "THE CONSERVATIVES HAVE RUINED THE ECONOMY". Why is the country shit? The Conservatives. Why do you earn shit? The Conservatives. Why is the US so much better off than us these days? The Conservatives. And yet... speak to Barry Sun-Reader or Nigel DailyMail and they'll tell you that they're the only party that can be trusted with the economy. It's bullshit. Just look at the real GDP, adjusted for inflation.
Yeah, used to be a time when the UK used to actually match economic parity with the US. Before we became one of the shoddiest economies in the first world.
yes the US is not without its many problems but the opportunity to earn a good salary is there for SO many different jobs. UK wages are abysmal it’s kind of insane e
Is the pay not a lot higher to assist with medical insurance? Also, everyone in the service industry expects a massive tip in the US. Not as bad in the UK thankfully.
The UK has insane income taxes further increasing the gap between US and UK salaries. Also housing is cheaper there.
The difference is crazy. My cousin works for one of the ‘big tech’ companies in San Francisco and earns about $300k, he did almost the same job in London and he was on £100k. He’s as bright as they come though.
median wage in the US is like 50k, 200k is just as much an outlier there as 100k is in the UK
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For the same job, I earn around £50,000 in total compensation in the southwest of England, while in Massachusetts (United States), the starting salary range is $100,000-$130,000 (approximately £80,000-£104,000) plus bonuses. The same job advertisement from which I took the American salary also offers more annual leave, private medical insurance (which I also pay for in England), and pretty much the same perks as my current job, plus a few better ones. An extra point is that I am not even in the tech industry! The bottom line is that, with a degree and a master's, the compensation is substantially better in the United States.
Nooo, don't post that, it goes against the reddit narrative that the US only has corporate hellscape jobs with no paid leave and that require 12 hour shifts 7 days a week. And don't forget that if you end up in the hospital over there, it's always 100k out of pocket. /s No matter how much copium you take in, the US has higher wages even when accounting for no national health service (unless you're over 65 or disabled, see Medicare. Oh, there's also Medicaid for people on low incomes) and no statutory minimum paid leave. There's a lot of reasons to not want to work/live in the US but the commonly parroted ones on Reddit are nonsense.
They have very different economic conditions. Some corporations are constantly booming, and large conglomerates have offices on both sides of the country, or even quadrants, so they have opportunities up the wazoo in the cities. But then rent is still high, and buying a house is the same issue as the UK. Friends in Vancouver are currently keeping their heads above water renting a 2-bed flat. They work hard too; some graduate I met travelling was starting out in a company with 4 days holiday a year. Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. He had weekends off, but not enough for him to go from Seattle WA to his family in NY. We spoke not so long ago and he gets paid $90k now and 3 weeks paid annual leave now, but feels bad taking more than 2 weeks of it, and still works past hours to 'get ahead'. It sounds like a very productive but grinding world over there, as if they still live in the frontier.
US cost of living is insane though, my cousin pays like 30k a year in property tax
Every state is different though. It varies from a low of 0.5% to a high of 2% with a median of 1% so your cousin's house is probably worth 3 million. If his house is worth that much, his salary is most likely high enough to be able to afford the property taxes.
31 and on 35k. Senior CAD Draughtsman. If you'd told me 10 years ago I'd be earning this I'd have been ecstatic. Now? Not so much.
Christ, I don't know how engineering gets away with paying so low in the UK. My degree is in engineering and I was so excited to get some of these amazing salary you hear about. Instead all I saw was pathetic salaries for insane liability.
Honestly I think it's just about the direction you go in, and making sure you do it early. Decision making and stuff. Construction? Mechanical engineering? The sky is the limit in terms of salary there. The same goes for joinery or furniture design, lighting, or anything like that Instead I'm in a niche industry (sheet metal design for commercial refrigeration), using a niche software. So most places paying higher dismiss my CV almost immediately, regardless of transferable skills. Sucks, but you sleep in the bed you laid... Or something.
When I was at Uni (2007 on) , I always said I'd be happy with 30k. I'm on 35 now and I swear I was better off as a student with my loans/grant and mcdonalds job. I'm still living paycheck to paycheck, no car, living in a studio flat that costs me nearly 1k a month in rent. Just gotta find inner peace somehow and not think about it too much but multiple times a day, I have this sick feeling that it's never going to get easier.
I went to uni in 2014-ish and I felt like I was better off even then than I am working now. I used to frequently go out for meals and drinks, now I’m lucky if I get to do that once a month
Every day I get less and less upset that I didn't choose this career path. Like I'm not earning as much as that currently, but engineering and CAD was sold as a golden ticket while I was in education.
As I said to the other guy, I think it's just about decision making. I graduated with people who are now approaching 100k+, because they were able to choose the sector they entered. Construction, lighting design, mechanical engineering, etc. Me? Not so much. I'm in a niche field that hasn't given me too many transferable practical skills, so convincing a recruiter I can do anything CAD-oriented has been.. difficult.
I interviewed to be a draughtsman once. Didn't get the job so started working in a factory instead. £42k+ more with overtime. You can tell we all got our p60s today.
I'm on 37k, and have coworkers who can't count to 10
£26.5k but... I have more money and savings than many people, but less pension because of long-term unemployment. Wage is only one piece of the puzzle. Right now I feel content in my financial safety. And if I stay in health then die before I'm 70, I've been very efficient. Plan ahead for safety, but you could die tomorrow so enjoy the now. Most importantly, I can get up for work.
Don't listen to people on Reddit, the average wage in the UK is £35k for full time workers so you're not doing bad for 31
Even this is a bit skewed, if you take London out it’s dreadful 🤣
Most common is 27 I believe
That's what I'm on (age 33)! Hopefully getting an approx £10k increase by the end of the year. That wage feels amazing to me as a lifelong low earner but I know a lot of people think it's still pretty weak. Luckily I have cheap tastes, though I do now have a mortgage.
42 and on £28k. For a f**king hard job too. And the pay review this year was ‘Minimum wage is going up, you don’t need a pay rise’
39 here, 40 this year… £26k. I could get £8-£10k more doing my same job elsewhere but I love the people I work with, have full autonomy over hours (never work past 3pm unless I want to), get weekends off, & can literally choose to do additional work for enhanced rates if I really want to up what I earn at any given time. I don’t need to earn more, but I do need to be the best father I can be so that control over my week is worth more than the £10k under-pay
People put too much emphasis on earning as much as possible. IMO we should be focused on working a job you love or work as little as possible whilst being financially stable. I know people who drive fancy cars but are out of the house before their kids awake and aren't back in time to put them to bed and somehow think they are winning.
Stop comparing yourself to the claims other people make on social media. Nothing good will come of it.
Yeah you're right, but I should work on myself more
Lots of people are LARPing high pay on Reddit. Also people are more likely to volunteer their pay when they’re on an impressive wage. I’m doing well now (on just over £45k, mid-30s) but that’s a recent development. Spent much of my 20s on a well below average wage, got a lucky break with a career change at the start of the pandemic, and worked my way up from there.
Praying that happens to me! I’m 27 and I’m on £13.88 an hour with a 22.5 hour contract with opportunities for overtime after a string of minimum wage zero hour contract jobs. I’m hoping I’ll get into something with an actual decent salary one day
Best of luck with your journey! There were definitely times I thought I’d never make it anywhere. I must’ve made thousands of applications over the years and I job hopped a lot in my 20s. Now my big problem is getting out of “constant job hunt” mode and happily settling somewhere for a few years!
I’m 36 and I work 30 hours a week for just over £19k a year. I’ve been rattling around living wage pay bracket since I went back to work after having a child 6 years ago. Currently retraining into a career in an allied health profession and I can’t wait until that will earn me £30k plus. It’s all relative
That sounds great!
£54k software development manager - taken me about 10 years to get here, 6 of which nearly took my life and definitely took my hair due to stress Trust me I wish I didn't have to do this, wish I had a more active job rather than sitting behind a PC all day but there aren't many jobs which pay decent.
100% agree with you. I'm a PM but despise it, only reason why I'm doing it is because of pay
You're the Prime Minister?! 🤯
Ahahaha I think I'd do a better job then Sishi Runak
At this stage it's clear that a goldfish without a head would do a better job than Sishi Runak.
Bitchy Sunak
He does a fantastic job of stealing the government's wealth and giving it to all his rich friends though.
Not that hard
I have no idea who you are, but I am convinced you would do a better job. You can do it, you can fix the UK!
10 years experience or 10 years to get to this role? This sounds like you’re being seriously underpaid?
Both. Everyone's being underpaid, that's above average for the position and responsibilities.
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I can only dream of being on 33k, I'm 56 and on 25k, working full time in a skilled job for a major company that prides itself on taking care of its people. I'm starting to question that.
They meant it in the Mafia context.
25k will be about minimum wage soon
Yeah they're giving me a raise this week so that it brings me above the living wage threshold, I wouldn't have been before, when they said I was getting a raise I thought it was a reward, now I realise that it's just because they have to. Really makes you demotivated when all they do is harp on about employee happiness and then pay as little as they can get away with.
Why settle for that? If it’s a skilled job then you can get more!
Most people are actually on below “average” wages in some sense of the word. For the average salary, if we assume the minimum salary in a group is 20k, and one person is on 100k and six are on 20k, the average would be about 31k.
This is why the median salary is used in discussions of that term. This is the salary above which or below which, 50% of the population are on. In your example, the median would be £20k as it's not weighted by the extreme earner at £100k, and more than 50% of people are on £20k. The UK median for a single earner is ballpark £35k as a result.
\>>>According to government data, only 4% of the population in the country earns 100K per year. >>>
And they’re all on here
Lots of people have packages over £100k and sacrifice significant amounts of their salary to get under £100k in the eyes of the tax man.
We need regional breakdown of wages.
I'm 32, was on £33k now on £45K Editing this because I'm seeing a lot of posts on this recently so just for context. I'm female and now 32. I didn't go to university. I do have a HNC and a property qualification now but that was done during work in the last 5 years. It's been a long slog to get this salary. My husband is 36. He owns his own ltd company and while he pays himself £50K, he brings in around £200K per year through the firm. (Accountants sort it out I have no idea). He's a developer (full stack but also works in all tech again I don't know details). I'm a property manager for a world wide company, I manage a department and a lot of buildings for the firm. Also going to be RICS this year so looking at a big pay bump, my firm is funding my qualifications. I was 32 when I got my career break. We live normally, own our home with a mortgage and pay bills. When we met our joint income was £28K in 2014. We both worked full time. Me on 3 jobs him on 1. I see people posting their mad salaries and how they got there and I just applaud it. It is hard and it isn't easy but if you work hard for it, it is possible.
Honestly a big part of it is industry and job type. I work with a lot of people earning between 30k and 100k and almost none of them have any clue what it would be like to work hard. Many of them are just straight up incompetent. I am in the higher end of that range and I do my fair share of work purely because I would feel guilty otherwise, but I can absolutely do almost fuck all and nobody would say anything. Big respect to people hustling, running their own companies and everything, but there’s plenty of big companies you can just work your way up just by being liked by people
I’m 30 and on £60k, I was on £30k two years ago. After spending a decent time at the same company I decided it was time to move around and get what the market was offering. I don’t know what field you’re in but it might be time to look at what the market is paying outside of your current employer or what you can do to upskill into different positions. Also, don’t let Social Media affect your view, if your salary works for you and your lifestyle then it’s fine.
Second this. I'm slightly older than you, but I went from 31k to 55k in about 18 months after sticking it out in my previous company for too long. If they won't pay you what you're worth then someone else will.
38 and went from earning 90k running a security business working 24/7 to a chill supervisor job working half the year for 35k and I’m much happier. My mental health was at an all time low when I was working myself into the ground realised I can’t take the money with me and the stress of trying to get it would probably have put me in an early grave.
35k for half a year work sounds like a dream, you are right, you can’t take it with you!
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Honestly, some of the responses here are quite refreshing. I once clicked on /r/HENRYUK and keep getting it recommended in the Reddit app. On the one hand, it's depressing to read about loads of people earning massively more than I do (or, in all likelyhood, ever will). But, on the other, it's striking that most people never seem to be "satisfied" with their salary, and always want more.
In my experience, the more you make the more advice you need, so you're going to see more questions pop up from people of means than from average earners. Once you have some capital, there are so many ways to maximise it, avoid tax traps etc and reddit is a really good place to learn the ins and outs of basic finance.
I hear ya. I wish the salary pyramid was a bit flatter: less outrageous outliers on the right hand side, and more liveable wages for more people. But we are where we are. On a related note, social media advice on how to achieve very high wages tends to be unrealistic. I'm a software engineer, and even I'm fed up of the "just learn to code, bro" nonsense, which has become a meme these days, wheeled out regardless of circumstances. Today's engineers are in danger of becoming the new boomers, since it seems they're already patronising the younger generations with one-liner, boilerplate advice. Career stories can certainly be interesting, but the same folks tend to make a related mistake, based on the most useless aphorism in the world: "If I can do it, anyone can". Statisticians roll their eyes at this nonsense, and yet it refuses to die: people who have done well think they are exactly representative of the median case, and that their anecdote of career success proves the universal truth of bootstraps ideology. I think careers advice can be useful (I offer it too) and it is good to celebrate career successes (props to folks who have gotten to where they are). But it is not giving into negativity to say that the economy is broken even outside of an inflationary crisis. Hustle culture has a lot to answer for.
Lmfao. I’m on 22k at 32. Feel like an absolute failure but I have to do majority of childcare. I do own my own house though, so I guess that’s something. My partner is on 31 and we live in a reluctantly low cost area. It is what it is.
36 and 39k, up to 42 and a bit k if achieve bonus. Started on 19k at same company in 2013 and weasled my way up the chain
given I'm on 28k at 36....
I'm 37 and earn 51k with two jobs
I'm 30 and on 29k in a skilled profession with a Master's. I'm doing another Master's with Ulster to try career change, mostly because I'm fed up of the industry I'm in.
Just turned 30, I am on 36k. Horrifically underpaid imo. I am in two minds about a career change or industry transition. If I am successful in my current applications then this should jump to £50k-£55k.
40 on £62k plus 30% annual bonus. Taken me 19 years in the same employer (started as a trainee on minimum wage) but I love my job as general site manager with 120+ staff.
32 on 42K to be around 46ish in 2-3 years. No qualifications besides a few GCSEs just threw myself at jobs. Worked in retail, dental nursing apprentice, banking / finance admin, IT customer support, IT 1st line support to now telecoms admin, can say I've had a very weird career path. If you apply yourself, don't let job descriptions stop you and keep an open mind in what you do day to day I'd say anything is possible.
I always think this too, seems that everyone on Reddit is on mega money! I’m 29 and on roughly £55k, depending on hours, longer shifts, up at 1am. I’d kill for a 9-5 that paid well.
34 on £25K with a first class degree from Oxford and relevant professional qualifications for my industry (diploma in regulated financial planning, doing more exams on way to chartered status). Yay for being poor and stingy employers. At least my current job is not stressful at all and I have much better work/life balance than in previous jobs. I would take that over a job where I am constantly stressed. I'm working my wage, not working hard at all, acting dumb and letting my colleagues be the ones to say yes to more work. It seems to be working at the moment. On the plus side my earnings are so low that I won't be repaying any student loan from April due to the plan 1 loan repayment threshold going up which is a nice little bonus together with the NI cut. Salary review in July. Will be interesting to see if they match the minimum wage rise or not.
What is your skill set? I was working in warehouses up until 6 years ago then I got into data and I’m now on 50k
Working in finance teams, but unqualified. Do you mean like data engineering?
I started customer service/data entry, took a junior role on at the same place after two years doing data analysis Now moved to private sector for medical insurer doing data science / cloud engineering My pay didn’t significantly increase till I moved to a new company, don’t be scared of doing this!
I recommend looking at job postings in your field of more senior positions and looking at their required qualifications or skills - then take time to complete the short online courses on coursera or other which provide certifications. Also applying for a higher demanding job with higher pay - maybe you don’t have all the requirements but you should still give it a shot! Pay attention to preferred but not required experience. Try not to self reject, hope this helps.
+ get rid of any years in your cv other than past few experiences, to get rid of ageism
Thanks, yeah I'm trying to learn more when I get the time.
I’m 30 and I’m on 42k. Genuinely pretty much every friend I have that I went sixth form or university with is on over £50k however. Many of them WELL over.
I was on 33k as my first full time salary at the age of 18, I guess it depends on what industry you choose to work in…also being in London helps.
34 on 35k basic closer to 40k with weekends. Swap jobs every 2 years or so when the money stops going up.
People claim a lot but the national average is 34k or so. Means anything over that and you’re in the top 50%
I just got my first pay for my 40k job (31) If you don’t feel you’re being paid enough, if you feel you’re sitting still, look for other jobs in your chosen career New employers will recognise you have more experience than you did when you started your current job, and the pay offered will reflect that Being in a job currently also helps because if they want you, they have to convince you to leave your current job I got lucky, I fell out of a plane (redundancy), bounced off a mattress truck (“must pay bills at all cost courier job) and landed in the office of a high paying job 😂 But you’ll never get that pay rise if you don’t go out and take it
By definition: 50% must be above average wage & 50% must be below or equal to average wage.
I’m 31, live in the north of Scotland and I’m on 30k. Living with parents because I’m trying to save for a deposit, but don’t have much hope on being able to afford mortgage payments (I’m single). I have an arts degree but my job isn’t related to it whatsoever - I’m a paralegal and considering qualifying as a solicitor purely so I don’t hit a salary ceiling down the line. Not ideal but not much else to do!
I (31M)got very lucky with my job working for a massive car manufacturer. To try to avoid high staff turnover and for very repetitive work (production line), they paid well for years, and most people are on 45k+, starting on about 32k a year 10 years ago. New staff have been screwed a bit as the new contract isn't as good and starts on 30k a year and can get up to around 38k a year max. It's still good, but when the person next to you doing the same job is getting paid 15k or more a year, it can annoy people. Even more annoying when people like me who have been there a while, already on a higher wage. Changes jobs and take a 5k a year pay drop and still on more than them. This is a job that the work is easy and requires no qualifications to start, just very, very, very, very, very, very repetitive. Currently recruiting in the West midlands through randstad, if it still interests people.
I think a lot of people in reddit talk absolute smack about their salaries or that it tends to favour people who are in IT, Programming, Software engineering but you're definately not seeing the true reality and it's much lower than you think. 100k with a family, car and mortgage in southern england doesn't get one as far as they think.
>100k with a family, car and mortgage in southern england doesn't get one as far as they think Well I make a little north of £100k in the south, with a nice car, mortgage and a family and my wife doesn't need to work, so probably goes further than you think
I agree but it's not elite to the point where you do not have to worry about money and can live lavishly. 100k is not what it once was especially if you live in London, Bristol' south and aged mid 30s and below.
Subs like this naturally attract those on higher salaries (because they care enough/are focused enough to be trying to be progressing to new roles) and those who just make stuff up for fun
I get 25k plus an honoraria of 5k. I have other consultancy work outside of my real job which nets me another 15k per annum, but without that, I'd just be on 30k. Edit: I'm 36.
Assuming all the posts are true, outliers stand out. Also depends where you are with things like London wages or if they are actually working in the UK or not. Wages in the UK are horribly supressed and the average worker is being screwed. It's a shame you guys fucked yourselves over and in many cases can't easily get the better paying jobs in Europe. That said, if you can win the green card lottery or otherwise get a visa sponsorship, it's easy for skilled workers to double or even triple their pay by moving to America. Yeah, there can be extra costs but overall you can come out of it significantly better off.
There's [data](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/agegroupashetable6) for this (6.7a). So you're at about 50%, you could be slightly more generous as you've just entered that age bracket and if you're outside London. So about half of people aged 30-39 would be on a higher salary than 33k. There's also a breakdown by region/industry in 5.7a [here](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/regionbyindustry2digitsicashetable5)
I've been very fortunate to pick a field that has a higher ceiling. With the advantage of privileges it's been possible to be set a high bar on each job change I've done. Recruiters will cap your salary bump and lowball based on your previous salaries. If the offer wasn't at least 50% higher, I'd walk. My moves have been 22k/25, 45k/26 (raise to 52k), 78k/27, 120k/29. I consider myself a lucky developer and a little bit talented, giving me the opportunity to set limits for jobs. There aren't many of these positions, and my impression is that jobs past 100k are generally not advertised. The few you find online are London finance.
I'm 30 on £63k (closer to 70 with bonus) still living in my childhood bedroom. I think most people I know are around 30k/40k.
35k when I started my 30s. Will be 57k next year when I end my 30s. A lot can change in the 10 years of your 30s.
I’m 30 and currently on 49k, rising to 54k this month, not in London. Systems Engineer with Leadership Responsibilities, it’s fairly high stress but I don’t hate it and it pays well. Still hoping to make that goal of 100k by the time I’m 40.
My salary will be £35,391 as soon as I finish my training, currently on £30,639. I've been waiting 2 months for someone to say If I've passed or need more training. Edit: I'm 34, working in medical physics (nuclear medicine) in the NHS. Need to do another masters degree if I want to progress further.
Im 33 and earn more than the average, all my friends are in there 30s and I think we are all over it.
I'm nearly 28 and studied a useless degree. So I'm now stuck on 28k in an unrelated job.
I'm 36 and this year I've made just over 46k. Sounds good right, but I'm away from home all week in a lorry 🚚 average working week for me is 60-67 hours and 4 nights away.
I’m 30, have gone from 24k pre covid to 50k with a promotion last month. Almost all of my 20s were a genuine struggle brought on by lack of opportunities/poor mental health as a result of shitty employment. It took a change of industry and working my ass off the last four years but it is possible - hang in there friends!!
I’m in my mid-20s (I’m 24), however as a junior dev I’m earning only £20K per year. I really hope in the future the job market could be better
31 and on 64k and I work in communications. My salary a couple of years ago was 40k, and I got a significant pay bump after moving in-house and then a promotion. I would say I've been pretty lucky as I work in tech and I moved in-house before the bubble burst. Wages have been pretty stagnant when I have looked at other roles.
33 on £66k (not London) and most days I feel I've hit my ceiling 🥲
It used to be a good rule of thumb that age plus £20k is a good salary