Man of Honour
Madness!
This Business and Moment...
- Thread starter randomshenans
- Start date
I worked out even with the 27% equivalent pension contribution it was still a fair bit off in places. I had a similar decision to make recently. However, if another place has a particularly poor pension scheme, then all in all it can work out very close. Though I always say to people don't do without now because you might not ever get to use your pension.
Have to weigh it all up, for me it's mainly about the balance, so I enjoy a ten minute commute, hybrid working, condensed hours, and I am not sure industry would offer the same flex ability. Obviously depends on individual circumstances
The CS do pay additional skills allowances for certain roles, but I am not familiar enough with industry equivalent salaries really.
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As far as I am aware, public sector pensions are not actually funded, meaning that you don't actually get that money put into an account of some kind today. Your pension "contribution" is just a (liability) line item on a spreadsheet somewhere. For this reason, I don't personally put much credence into unfunded pensions and doubt that the Government will actually fund them 100% in the future. Give me the pension contribution money now, so that I can buy assets now.
I wouldn't be surprised if some public sector jobs, even with a 27% pension contribution, can be >75% lower paid than an equivalent private sector job.
https://therecord.media/head-of-cyber-role-salary-uk-hm-treasury said:
This person has effectively said that just the salary offered at £57K is ~88% to ~122% lower than what an experienced candidate would expect.
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Oh ok, didn't know that re the pension, as said though I don't really think about it. I am not a specialist so for me I feel I am paid ok for what I do and reflects my skillset (project management). Maybe in future I will consider contracting or working for one of the common defence companies like BAE/Jacobs/Leonardo etc but happy where I am for now. I Also really enjoy the pretty much unlimited training opportunities, I have done a lot of formal learning, and like to explore some other areas too like the cyber defence competencies. I am not sure if this would be possible elsewhere, it almost feels like paid full time education in way.
But yes, if money is a higher priority than the rest of it then I totally get why people stay clear.
I saw that... I know and worked with the Cabinet Office CTO. I did think about dropping him a line on that.I'm not even shocked, they were looking for a Head of Cyber Security role at 57k.
British government mocked for advertising head of cyber role with £57K salary
A job advertisement for the new head of cybersecurity at His Majesty’s Treasury (HM Treasury) in Britain has provoked derision because of its stated pay of £57,000 (about $70,000) per year.therecord.media
If you read that job spec it gets worse - it says 51-57k as the range and then says if you are coming from outside of the civil service that you are told to expect to come in at the start of the band - which is 51K.
Man of Honour
27% is quite high tbf, at present the BAE pension is (the baseline core) 4% employee contribution, 6% employer, so 10% total. Although having said that, I'm on the shares incentive plan as well, and after 5 years of being on it most people don't bother looking elsewhere because the shares value banked is so high as a member of the plan. I recall one guy when I first joined taking home £14k lump sum after selling about 10 years worth of his shares. I buy £75 worth each month which goes out of my monthly wage before tax, the company then buy £75 on my behalf and it gets added to my SIP account, so £150 worth of shares each month. I've only been on the plan a little over a year yet my shares plan total value is nearly £3800 with only £1138 of that being my own purchases each month from the wage.
Also on an annual basis, as the company does well, we get free shares as an added gift from the company.
Also on an annual basis, as the company does well, we get free shares as an added gift from the company.
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I expect that you're able to earn 17+% more salary (after tax) when working for BAE than you would if you were working for the MOD. If you include other BAE benefits, like the share scheme and likely healthcare/vision benefits, it probably more than pays for any MOD benefits that you might get, like a childcare subsidy.
Perhaps a job in the MOD is more relaxed / laid back than BAE, but at this stage of my life (with prime career earning potential), I don't understand why someone like me would join the MOD over BAE.
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Turns out the CIO was in the bar of the hotel taking the video call. Pfft. Was good he was in a good mood for once!
Man of Honour
No half day finish on a Friday?! Come 12pm here nobody is around
Yeah the pay really is very competitive, my other colleague yesterday applied for an internal role too and she said the offer she got was impossible to reject, so i am hoping the formal offer I get is more than what I said I was expecting too, but even if it's exactly what i proposed, then that's £8k more than my current anyway and this new role is on the exec grading, so bonuses from meeting objecives each year end up being massive, 7% bonus per objective, for example in some examples.
Caporegime
Had an unexpected interview today for a role I had previously had as no response. HR living in a different timeline it seems.
Went really well I thought, not as technically hands on as the role I already have an offer for but more of a 'advocate' type role I guess you'd call it.
Main issue is the business is very set on 2 office days a week and the two closest locations are 2 hours away. Had a very upfront chat with the hiring manager afterwards without the rest of the panel (who were engineers within the hiring team) about that and salary expectations. Which was good as he didn't shy away in his frustration around the office working given their limited locations and the impact it's had on hiring even though it's such a large organisation.
Basically said if they could offer a figure that would negate travel costs plus a bit extra I'd be happy. I'd be pretty surprised if they did offer that figure though.
Who knew trains were so expensive these days as well! Like £100 for a return for 4 hours of travel. I've just paid £70 for 3 of us in 1st class to go 4 hours from Prague to Vienna in the summer. Mental.
Can you out-earn the MOD pension contribution by working for the private sector though? I'm pretty sure that you (easily) can.
Of course, but it used to be you joined for the job security, easy(ish) life and the nice pension at the end of it all.
Don't know what it's like now.
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That depends on the cost of living.
If you can't afford a house, then the continue rental increases negate the pension unless you've been in the service for so long that the pension out performs that.
As others have said, it really is circumstantial and depends where you are in your career cycle. There are many things I dislike about the civil service, but the good outweighs the bad for me currently and I'm certainly wiser now to understand the grass isn't always greener. Should that ever change that is when I will shall explore other options.
The thing is I cannot work on a project unless it in a sector I find interesting so I have pretty much limited myself to space and defence at this point, which I guess isn't a bad thing considering the scope of it all. Plus, I'm still holding out that I'll get an international post at some point just to broaden my horizons a bit.
I will also say that working in CS has allowed me to see and experience things I'd probably not get to in industry.
The thing is I cannot work on a project unless it in a sector I find interesting so I have pretty much limited myself to space and defence at this point, which I guess isn't a bad thing considering the scope of it all. Plus, I'm still holding out that I'll get an international post at some point just to broaden my horizons a bit.
I will also say that working in CS has allowed me to see and experience things I'd probably not get to in industry.
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It's a bit a shambles throughout with salaries in public sector IT although even by public sector standards I'm surprised it's on that low a band.
Basically the issue they have is the talent pool for their senior roles will be very small and largely filled by either:
a) Lifers in the public sector that just work their way up and see it as easy steady progression whilst building up their pension. A £55k job appeals if you are being paid £45k etc.
b) People who just see it as a 'loss-leader' for their CV i.e. work a couple of years on a crap salary but then use that as a stepping stone to get a good role in the private sector because they can reference an impressive job title and lots of responsibility.
c) Vocational choice i.e. there is some specific niche in the public sector where they feel they can 'make a difference' to society in some way. But these roles can't be common in IT.
Then there's the challenge that they will always have their best people getting poached by the private sector, even the people in pot A above may get their heads turned by jobs paying 150%+ elsewhere.
Soldato
They're defined benefit still, mostly, just with varying degrees of generousity in terms of the accrual rate.
I've just joined the LGPS in my new role which is 1/49th accrual rate (meaning that's the amount added each year to my pot as it were), but then it gets uprated by CPI every year and paid from state pension age until my death. They typically also have benefits like death in service cover and pay out to a surviving dependents at varying rates. There's also the option to take it earlier or later with a corresponding penalty/benefit.
MoD is 1/47th, NHS is 1/54th, and TPS is 1/57th for comparison.
You can't really compare them to DC pensions. In most cases you'd need a very generous and/or well performing DC pot to match the benefits provided.
Whilst they aren't fully funded in the same way that a DC pension is by it's nature, they're not totally unfunded. You're thinking of the older DB pensions which closed years ago to new entrants which in a lot of cases had no contributions at all from either employee or employer, which isn't the case with modern DB pension schemes. The LGPS in this example has funds (mostly employer contributions as it's only in recent years that employee contributions have increased) totalling £342 billion invested in various assets around the world. It's these sorts of public pension funds that Jeremy Hunt has been making a lot of noise about wanting them to invest in UK assets. When the investments perform well or poorly, a notional asset or liability arises on the books of the employers depending on the number of members, benefits being paid at that point, etc but that's not the same as being unfunded. It's an exercise performed every few years by government actuaries.
Whilst of course there's a risk of changes being made by future governments, they'd have to get through parliament first and it'd affect basically the entire public sector which would make the recent strikes look like childs play. More likely that changes would be phased in to new joiners which is what's happened since the old career average schemes closed.
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Soldato
I finally got my contract btw after 3 weeks in the role, so a couple of weeks ago now. It was dated before I started, just hadn't been sent to me. The HR department is non-existent for an organisation this size. I'm putting it down to public sector inefficiency/lack of resources for the time being.
I may be getting a new laptop this week to boot... since Power BI kills the current one and part of the role is improving their data analysis. My current plan is to see how it goes for a year, as the perks are just very good no matter which way you cut it (3 days WFH and more in school holidays, 37 hours a week, 30 days holiday, great pension, walking commute). Who knows, maybe I can put my mark on the place and improve it a bit for the next person.
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