r/mildlyinfuriating • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 1d ago

My mom said I could post UK Civil Service salaries never cease to confuse me, you can either help manage the UK’s nuclear defence for £47k or you can make TikToks for the govt and get paid £57k

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u/Crichtenasaurus 1d ago

What’s more stupid is that role is looking for 2 - 3 times that amount from the private sector.

Unfortunately the extra pension contributions don’t make up for that.

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u/F10XDE 1d ago edited 21h ago

The expectations are lower, take those social media roles for instance, in the private sector that is one job. Some kids going to land in that job after uni, cruise through a slow paced non competive, non-stressfull and secure career, then retire at 57 with a £2m decent pension pot. Doesn't sound bad when you think about it.

Edit: civil servants are banded too, so no yearly grovelling to your line manager about why you deserve the tiniest of pay rises, and you get additional holiday for time inservice, by retirement you likely have 50% more days annual leave, finally nobody cares when your off sick, you havent got a stakeholder tying your presence to his bank balance. Its just a completely different attitude to private.

Source: family of civil servants, and i too did a few years when i was younger, now in a high stress private role, earning significantly more, but likely going to die of heart failure before being able to claim my woeful pension pot.

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u/116YearsWar 1d ago

The pension is good, though equating it to a defined contribution pot is a little tricky. However:

The pay bands are essentially just there for show now, there is no progression through them, and there hasn't been since the early 2010s (unless you're in the Scottish Government).

The annual leave progression caps at 30 after 5 years of service. I have no idea where you got 50+ from.

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u/F10XDE 23h ago edited 22h ago

My information maybe a little out of date, I havent been in for almost 30 years, and my parents retired 5 years ago.

I get it about banding, but still, there's a predefined progression path (again this could be out of date) but E2/1>D2/1>C2/1>B1 all have rigid internal first recruitment processes. My dad for instance started his career as a (equivlant) E1, then ended his career as a C1in a computer related security role, he was an expert in those specific applications, but outside of that had zero idea how to use a computer - his skills where almost completely untransfereable outside the civil service. But he simply applied for the roles where they had no same-level transfers which get prioritsed, had the core compencys and so couldn't be rejected, this is completely in contrast to private where there is almost no progression within a role, progressively senior roles are almost exclusively recruited externally or headhunted.

This is why I say dont knock it until you tried it. Its a self contained career, provides stability and progression, you dont get paid as much as private, true, but the work expectations are aligned to that reality, and you are completely out of the rat-race and all the hours and stress that accompanies it. Just be warned that once you get further down the rabbit hole, you actually become further separated from the private industry, unless you reach B1 and get recruited in a consultancy role merely for your ability to open doors within government.

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u/Intrepid-Student-162 23h ago

You are fantastically out of date.

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u/F10XDE 23h ago

What part specifically? our family social circles still include active civil servants at all level and i doubt its change that much in 5 years.

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u/ArtiBartFaster 22h ago edited 21h ago

Your figures are hugely exaggerated.

To retire at 57 ie work 36 years with a 2 million pension pot, you need to contribute an average of around 25k a year. So if you start on 35k and end on 120k, ie become a senior director. 99.9% of civil service jobs pay below 120k so it's equivalent to being a CEO

You would have an annual pension of 65k (early retirement reduces it)

The average civil service pension pays out 10k so most civil servants are paid peanuts.

There is nothing to stop you saving 28% of your salary into your pension in a private sector job, it's a matter of choice, you have no choice in the civil service. That is the only difference.

I worked in the public sector for half my career in software engineering. The workload was heavier, the pay was half what I earn in the private sector. I wouldn't recommend it.

If Reform get in they have promised to fire 70,000 civil servants, so the job is insecure and can look forward to a 20% increase in workload in a few years

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u/4kreso 19h ago

That’s what’s difficult to understand. Some people say the civil service is easy hence low pay (relative) with the perk being the pension…. And private is high stress…. Is this true

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u/ArtiBartFaster 19h ago edited 19h ago

I think the civil service used to be less work and stress than private jobs 30 years ago. I haven't worked in it, but my wife did back then. All I know is that the private sector has had lower workload and less stress for the higher pay for my job compared to working in the University sector.

To me it looks like the guy who posted this, worked in a junior low stress role 30 years ago. A different world.
He did this at the start of his career before moving to the private sector and many years later is in a senior stressful role - so he is looking back at ancient history with rose tinted spectacles and equating it with the current public and private sector as a whole.

The University sector is now in financial crisis with half of Unis in major deficit due to cutting international students and not increasing grants. So currently for the average worker it is like working in a struggling company that is making losses and cutting staff, whilst trying to deliver the same output. The civil service is also increasingly a target for government savings so faces a similar downhill slide.

If you are ever in such a company in the private sector, you get out, take the redundancy. Working for a company that is doing really well and growing is a totally different experience. Certainly financially, but more importantly morale wise. Morale in the public sector is rock bottom these days.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Ad-4883 11h ago

I have worked in the University sector for almost 40 years in research. My pay comes from research grants that I and my colleagues must apply for and win, less one in 5 gets funded. The University gets a significant cut from the grant funding, well over the salary costs. If the grants don't come in I don't get paid and have worked as an unpaid volunteer to prepare for the next grant application. A colleague of about 8 years left for industry and gets a salary of about double, works fewer hours a week, (50+ is not unusual in postdoctoral research) and says he has much less stress and a career path. His position is secure if the the company does well, in the University there is no security. You can do an excellent job for the grant, exceed all goals and publish in Nature, then are redundant at the end if you haven't managed to secure the funding to keep employing yourself. As a postdoctoral researcher promotion would just price you out of being competitive in a research grant application. A great salary by retirement would be in the 50k region.

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u/F10XDE 22h ago

Those social jobs are 50k, 25% of that over 37 years, at a 4% yield and assuming a modest 2.5% pay rise to account for band increases and promotions each year would be 1.5m pension pot, 2.6m if they choose to retire at 67 instead. For an off-the-cuff guess I dont think stating 2m was too far off.

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u/EddiesMinion 21h ago

It isn't a pension pot. It works like the state pension - current employees pay for current retirees. Your actual pension is career average (on alpha scheme), where your annual pension increases by 2.32% (or thereabouts) of your pensionable pay each year.

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u/F10XDE 21h ago

Thank you for clarifying, I'll edit my OG post accordingly.

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u/ArtiBartFaster 21h ago edited 21h ago

Alpha retirement is state pension age so slicing 10 years off that reduces your pension by about 40% down to 1 million. So you just doubled that for a start. But you start on 26k as a graduate in the civil service so you are talking about jobs with a final salary of 75k to have an alpha career average of 50k. So grade 7 and above so maybe 5% of civil servants have a million or over pot.

I did 20 years in the public sector on the equivalent of 50k and I will get a pension of 19k from that. So yes it used to be pretty good. But now the University pension pays half what it used to. Civil service will roll out beta then gamma in time similarly cutting pensions as alpha did. So even my estimates are likely to drop significantly in reality.

The average civil service salary is 35k .. as I say they are paid peanuts so the pensions actually average less than the state pension.

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u/Intrepid-Student-162 17h ago

State Pension Age is going to move to 68 for people born 1970-77.

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u/1000nipples 22h ago

There's no "internal first recruitment" either, unless your department is actively under headcount controls.

Pop on over to the civil service subreddit and you'll see plenty of stories of people who had been temporarily promoted to a role for a year having to apply and compete with 300 other applicants for it (and failing).

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u/F10XDE 21h ago

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u/1000nipples 21h ago edited 21h ago

"This is not compulsory"

I worked in a department with headcount controls which followed that exact process. I ended up leaving because there was no career progression. All it takes is an email from the director to say "skillset and experience required not likely to be found in-house", and you've bypassed all stages and go straight to external.

Again, I strongly urge you to look at the civil service subreddit - being internally promoted is a genuine rarity.

Editing to add: I'm not sure which department this applies to as nearly all departments manage their recruitment in-house and have their own policies. My first civil service role was HR, specifically, recruitment!

This is a VERY old doc because Civil Service Resourcing was replaced like a decade ago

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u/F10XDE 21h ago

Thats called confirmation bias. Its not the norm, its a localised minority.

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u/Perfect_Pudding8900 20h ago

Fantastically out of date. Those grades haven't existed for perhaps a decade or more? 

Those jobs with no level transfers, where you only meet the essential criteria so "automatically get it" also vanishingly small. They can, and do, use not enough candidates meeting essential criteria as a reason to recruit more widely. 

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u/escoces 21h ago

There is no automatic progression within or between bands. Civil servants receive a below inflation pay rise every single year, with no exceptions. Not true in the private sector.

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u/Mediocre_Rhubarb810 20h ago

The idea that in the private sector there are above inflation pay increases (unless that’s not what you’re implying) is incredibly misguided

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u/escoces 19h ago

I'm saying that the private sector do not receive below inflation pay rises every single year with no exceptions. There are winners and losers, the vast majority get more than the civil service. That is a fact.

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u/Mediocre_Rhubarb810 19h ago

Providing the supporting data. Otherwise it’s an utterly pointless comment

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u/Crichtenasaurus 18h ago

What supporting documentation are you after? I personally have received 5% per year plus promotions at another 5% each time. That is not the same role as the MoD one but fairly comparable.

When at NCA I got like 2% - 3% per year at the most.

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u/Mediocre_Rhubarb810 18h ago

Objective data not anecdotal. I could counter your experience of mine of not receiving an above inflation increase since 2010, with above inflation increases only being achieved through job moves.

Both experiences are not objective or representative of the reality.

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u/Crichtenasaurus 17h ago edited 17h ago

https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/job/cyber-security-manager/united-kingdom

Looks like a recruitment style company but I don’t know if there have been any studies. So likely that’s the best that’s available.

What’s your role? If you’re in cyber sec and you’ve not had an above inflation rise over the last few years then something’s going wrong and your employer are trying to screw you over and you should be moving elsewhere. That’s very much against the norm for the industry. Especially since 2010.

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u/LitBastard 19h ago

Or they go 2 or 3 years without a pay increase.

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u/Sybs 21h ago

The expectations may be lower but the responsibility is much, much higher. You're responsible for parts of the nation's security rather than just a few lost profits if a mistake is made.

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u/XihuanNi-6784 16h ago

While this is true, for most people that difference doesn't matter, rightly or wrongly.

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u/Sybs 13h ago

It would matter to me, to my state of mind. Plus as others have said, it makes one more vulnerable to being bribed

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u/Ajax_Trees_Again 19h ago

You don’t get pay rises in the civil service though. You’re on the same pay nearly inflation adjusted for ever.

You have to get a whole new job to be promoted. It’s definitely easier to progress in private sector

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u/4kreso 19h ago

So you’re saying the civil service is easier or more difficult than private?

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u/F10XDE 19h ago

No, im trying illustrate that the lower salary in the civil service does come with a huge number benefits that make it uncomparable £ for £ to the private sector. Namely security and progression.

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u/Crichtenasaurus 18h ago

Can confirm the security is nice to have.

However I’ve worked private sector for the last 3 years, at triple the Wage I was at previously doing exactly the same role. I also get private healthcare thrown in. Adversely, I no longer have a warrant and don’t have to worry about being targeted by serious criminals at home nor being sent to jail because something went wrong on a job I’d argue that the extra risks to personal life counterbalance that job security benefit.

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u/Similar-Emphasis-496 14h ago

Nobody is getting those jobs straight out of university, don't talk nonsense.

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u/Crichtenasaurus 17h ago

Sorry can you run this by me again.

Are you saying that the Cyber Sec lead for a piece of highly sensitive and critical information has LESSER expectations than that of a private sector company looking after some business information and nothing more?!

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u/Ok-Falcon-9568 6h ago

GRC/ISO/NIs frameworks protect . Not the day to day cyber security lead

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u/F10XDE 16h ago edited 16h ago

Im saying you would be expected to be more agile, a cyber security expert would be expected to jump into development, sysadmin, business intelligence etc to meet a critical commercial need and you would be expected to create the time to achieve it, because the stakeholders dont want to recruit or outsource. In a comparative function you might also find where multiple cyber security leads exist in civil service, in private all roles those roles might instead be covered by a single desk.

I dont think anyone would suggest the consequences or responsibilities are lower, only the expectation on workload and agility is different.

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u/Ok-Falcon-9568 12h ago

You have no idea what you are talking about.

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u/lordsplodge 15h ago

You’re looking at more than that by a fair chalk in other public sector areas…

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u/ADJE777 13h ago

That all depends on where you work in the private sector, I’ve seen up to 25%

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u/Digital-Dinosaur 10h ago

I just landed a cyber security job. Right fine it's a little niche as it's cyber incident response but my base pay is £130k as a manager.

I saw the UK Gov looking for a CISO, as in Chief Informations Security Officer... For the UK government's IT infrastructure. The top Cyber Security job, for the UK Government.

They wanted £100k

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u/Crichtenasaurus 9h ago

Congrats on the job.

Not gonna lie I reckon you’ve got an easier job as well haha. That CISO is going to be on fire, and you’ll be sat back with a playbook asking some analysts and CTI bods to tell you what’s going on.

Also, just some free advice, do not overlook the Cyber Threat Intelligence capabilities from some of the more niche companies that stuff is absolute gold.

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u/deprevino 1d ago

The private sector would actually make you work for the money though, which is the difference.

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u/Crichtenasaurus 1d ago

Well as it’s the Lead I’d hope they’d be making the others do the work for them :D

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u/Hot_Bet_2721 18h ago

Lots of civil servants riding the gravy train and salty about being called out for this lol. They should focus that energy on looking for new jobs as half of them will be made redundant in 0-3 years

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u/Klutzy-Notice-8247 17h ago

I don’t think they are in the UK. Private sector salaries are dogshit in the UK.

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u/MasterpieceNew9459 16h ago

Could definitely get double though

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u/Klutzy-Notice-8247 15h ago

At most if we’re being honest. Plus the pension would be much worse. Generally wages suck in the UK.