this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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UK needs cyber security professionals, but won't pay up (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 week ago by thehatfox@lemmy.world to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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[–] MonsterMonster@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

There seems to be a race to the bottom when it comes to pay across all industries. These are wages from almost 30 years ago for a middle level IT person. In 1994 a typical high end IT manager for a national corporation was around £70k+.

Edit: I just remembered that in 1996 the company I worked for paid £1k per day for an external contractor to provide Unix and IP networking consultancy services to one staff member. That went on for five days per week for about a month at least. That staff member was on about £40k.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 5 points 1 week ago

Governments see inflation as a way of making things cheaper in real terms. Public sector wages should be index linked IMHO, but I'm always told that to do so would be "inflationary". To put that another way - Not giving people real-terms pay cuts is, apparently, a driver of inflation.

Economists have built a system which relies on the buying power of the workers going down.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The private sector is all right, but the public sector is absolutely mad. Everything is being run by committees these days which is a polite way of saying that everything is run by idiots that don't respect other people's talents. Also there's always someone that thinks that "patriotism" will somehow fill the pay gap.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

When the gap was only £10-20k a few years ago, you could justify to yourself that sticking in the public sector was probably affording you some quality of life benefits.

Now the gap is more like tripling your salary and nearly everyone good has left for greener pastures. Hell, the work/life balance didn't even change much for me

[–] Streetlights@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) sought a lead cyber security expert and advertised annual pay of £41,935

That's fucking shocking. And after they can't fill that role they'll bring in a contractor and pay 4 times as much.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The German equivalent did the same. The list of requirements was as long as an arm or two. from memory: The person should be a team leader with 10+ years of experience, know Windows, MacOS and Linux, networking, security, hacking, etc, pp, and have knowledge of the legal issues regarding this stuff on top of the technical knowledge to boot.

They offered ~€2500/month. Some guy with a company in that business said that he would rent out someone with that level of knowledge (minus the legal stuff) for more than that per day.

They pulled the ad after a few months.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 6 points 1 week ago

I know people who earn more than that working 4 days a week as a bank clerk. It seems to be universal of governments all over the world doesn't it.

[–] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A part of me thinks it's low on purpose so the only candidates that apply are doing it for ideological reasons, and aren't motivated by money (thus opening them up to risk of being bought by a foreign agency). Who knows, maybe it would be revealed their salary would quadruple after they get the job.

But the likelihood is that their budgets are low and can't compete with the private sector.

[–] Streetlights@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

People on low salaries are exactly the sort of people who would be vulnerable to being bribed by foreign adversaries.

[–] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah I realise that, that's why I thought about maybe the advertised salary might not necessarily be the truth and they do get decent compensation to reduce the chance of them getting compromised due to financial reasons.

[–] cook_pass_babtridge@feddit.uk 4 points 1 week ago

Or, if they're a foreign agent being paid by another state, they'll be at the front of the queue of applicants because they don't mind the uncompetitive pay.

[–] Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I was thinking the same. This will attract people who are essentially independently wealthy, and so don't actually need this income. Which adds a nice classism based barrier to entry too.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

What do you reckon that it'll be the same individual they would have hired but who was savvy enough to wait for them to hire the contractor?

Also I'm off to go study being a cyber security contractor

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Only 4x? Not sure what UK rates are like, but it could easily be 10x that in the US.

[–] SirQuackTheDuck@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The US does pay significantly higher, but with enormous costs (afaik).

My senior full stack engineer position would be about 60k/year at the government, which is a significant income to Dutch standaards.

My monthly costs are around 1400 per month, the rest used for savings and fun.

[–] Streetlights@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah you're right, immediately thought I'd low balled it.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My understanding is that if you're working in tech at GCHQ, you're dealing with fossils—both your colleagues and the actual tech stack itself. Apparently any kind of meaningful change has to go through countless layers of scrutiny and review, taking weeks.

You also need to basically nuke your social media and lie to your friends and family on the regular. Which IMO effectively means you need to be thinking about your job 24/7, and therefore are working 24/7.

~£40k isn't even close to the low-water mark for an entry level job given all that IMO. If they want such a specialist skillset too, they're probably gonna need to add a zero if they actually want to attract anyone good.

There are even other parts of the government that don't have all that baggage and pay more.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 10 points 1 week ago

It doesn't help that GCHQ is mainly seen as a department that enables all the authoritarian aspects of government in the digital age. Nobody wants to have their work put to use against their own countrymen.

Now, the truth maybe different but GCHQ is so secretive, nobody knows.

[–] benyameen@feddit.uk 11 points 1 week ago

The same as most other industries then.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

While they might need one, they surely don't look like they want one with that kind of payment offer.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Bruh. If anything they should pay extra for all the clearance one has to get as well. I love cyberchef, it's unironically a point of national pride for me, but something's got to give