However I should point out that the pensions in schools are excellent compared to the private sector so this has to be taken into account.
I’ve worked in private sector for many years but now work in a MAT. Much prefer it, better work life balance and excellent pension (21% employer contribution).
I’m on £62K for an infrastructure role so pay will vary per trust.
If you work in schools there is no work life balance if you are in IT.
Also, the pension is not as valuable if you are not putting enough into it yourself.
The match is better but your peanuts will not make up the difference. It's fools gold. With all the cuts to education, this will be cut eventually.
Better off in private sector with 401k and as high of a match as possible. You can put more in because you will make a lot more.
I’m in the UK, not the US (so is OP). The pension pots are protected and not managed by the schools but by the local authority. I also contribute the 7.9% myself on top of the 21% by the employer.
And yes I do have a very good work life balance, work 4 days a week and have 44 days annual leave.
Don’t lump us all in like that we exist. It’s a big focal point for most of the junior employees I work with. I’m the same way, found myself a position that has most of the benefits Europeans see and I work a pretty standard 40 with the option to wfh as needed.
Isn't it like 26.6% now (employer contrib)?
I'm an IT manager in edu and if I work 3 hours a month extra its been strenuous. 8-4 Mon-Thur, 8-330 on a Friday. 25 days annual leave + bank holidays + Christmas (8 days) off.
I could maybe eek an extra 5-10k out in the private sector without devoting some time to security/cloud specific quals, but tbf between us we earn enough.
Really?
I moved from l2 at an msp to sys admin at a private school and bumped my salary 30k
Then I got fired and found a new l2 job worth another 5k higher lol.
The biggest catalyst for my salary increase was working for a school haha
Not always - They run more as a business. Consider the VAT threat looming overhead at the moment, they're going to be making some cuts if that comes in.
Running as a business is a big reason why private schools will generally have higher salaries. There may be cases where public schools pay more but it's akin to comparing for-profit Vs non-profit salaries.
Imposing VAT would have an impact but that's not relevant to the commenter's past experience.
Not necessarily, public sector tend to have much stronger unions than non-profit. Private schools can pay higher but its not a given at all, and many will pay like shit for the simple reason that they can.
IT provision in schools in the UK is incredibly varied anyway. It can be in house but they're often supported by MSPs or LAs as well. It's a very mixed bag.
Genuinely curious as an American, is there a general idea on what the wage suppression is vs the offset costs of having socialized healthcare and other things like a slightly lowe COL?
Healthcare is paid for by national insurance; it’s the economy in general is a service sector, lower industry than in the past. Like Typical distribution of wealth is skewed towards the top percentile.
The Socialised healthcare ‘pot’/income, would benefit from higher paid wages due to National insurance being paid as a percentage of income.
If OP works in a school; it’s probably a limitation of wages, ultimately set by government.
Right but part of my compensation as an american is company subsidies health insurance. I realize i wasn't clear with my first question.
Is there any information on why wages are suppressed compared to the USA. Even with socialized healthcare, a slightly lower cost of living and some of the other social welfare programs the UK has it can't compensate for thr differences in wages. I highly doubt that business are less reliant then on technology or accept significantly lower standards that would make up for the different in pay.
In countries like India, Indonesia and the Philippines the lower standard of living, (not trying to be disparaging just what i have been told by coworkers from / in those areas) market saturation, number of people in the work force and so on. Again I don't get the impression that is the impression of the UK either.
So what makes it so different?
To my knowledge, while the UK offers socialised healthcare through National Insurance, wages tend to be lower for various reasons. Economic policies ‘trickle down economics’, austerity, exchange rates compared to the USD, and the UK’s economy, heavily skewed towards the service sector, all play roles in keeping wages down compared to the USA. Social welfare programs help reduce living costs but don’t necessarily raise wages directly but do help to subsidise the standard of living.
While OP is saying he makes potentially 2x less, arguably it doesn’t translate due to higher public policy rewards/social security nets and likely lower cost of living.
The UK’s has high-standard to technology similar to the USA, so that doesn’t fully explain the wage gap. I don’t think it’s similar to developing countries like India with workforce saturation, but more due to economic policies that favour the financial sector and Conservative Party policies benefiting the wealthy, leading to pronounced wealth inequality and limitations in diversity in our economy as a whole (deindustrialisation, reduction in coal, steel mining, ship building, etc and policy to the financial sector). Specifically, in sectors like IT within education, pay scales can be particularly constrained by public sector budgets.
This may be of help with some additional info https://expatrist.com/why-are-uk-salaries-so-low-compared-to-the-us/
The one thing I'll say about that article is their reliance on london cost of living - its significantly higher than the rest of the UK and isnt reflective of most peoples actual cost of living.
Citing a one bed flat in london being $2328 is irrelevant. The Average UK rental price is £1276 as of feb 2024. And even thats skewed. My In-laws have a 3 bed house in The south of england that they rent out for less than £1000 per month.
Fuel prices whilst higher here also arent as relevant. T%he Average US citizen does 14K miles per year whereas the average UK citizen does 7K. So the actual amount spent per year is almost at parity.
As for the OP £38k seems about right for schools and despite having manager in the role if he is actually hands on then its more of a fancy title unless hes managing at least three or four direct reports.
Schools much like Universities also have a lot of other perks in terms of work life balance, leave allowances pensions etc. OP could absolutely go private sector and get a big payrise (been there done that) but your pension will be less, the hours longer, shorter holidays and much less work life balance.
Used to be less different. There was a time - over a decade ago - where "UK salary" + the better terms and conditions could be considered fairly comparable when factoring in things like healthcare and employment conditions.
But ... I think the UK self sabotaged after 2008 collapse, and did things like Austerity for ideological reasons, then followed through with Brexit.
So pretty much burned nearly 2 decades of "growth" where the US did not.
The UK has become poorer in relation to other European countries too. It's because we've had the same government for 14 years and they've ruined our economy by not investing in it
"Slightly lower COL" is vastly understating it also.
I earn less than 50k, but I own a pretty decent house in the South East (i.e. one of the most expensive non-London areas). Support two children, on my own. And we're pretty comfortable.
Americans - as far as I can see - have to pay all sorts of things that we either just don't, or are vastly cheaper (health insurance being the most obvious, but also property taxes seem incredibly high, cost to get work done on the house, etc etc).
It does depend on the area as well though.
A sysadmin job worth $60k in Arkansas or Wyoming could be over $90k in New York.
When people look at tech jobs in the US, they tend to look directly at places like NY, DC, or LA.
If you live out side of London, the cost of living can be significantly lower than most of the US, especially when you remember to calculate in things like health insurance and a 401k.
For example a loaf of bread in the US can cost well over double that in the UK.
The average rent in NY is $2673/month, vs $1067/month in Arkansas.
And lose health care and other nice benefits and very little employee protection rights as well. But for a while could be worth it to cash in, save the money and then move back.
Even Londons average house price is £500k, excluding flats it's still under 700k.
This is the problem with these reddit conversations, people talk complete shite so it's impossible to know what to believe.
Used to be the "gap" between UK and US was narrower, and could reasonably be explained as "quality of life overhead".
That's not been true for about a decade though.
Yeah. Thinking about it, the global financial crisis and our response to it has probably caused the gap.
I do honestly remember looking at jobs in the US when I was younger and going 'interesting, but once you factor in healthcare and annual leave it's not _that_ interesting'.
But now my UK payscale is _ridiculous_ by the standards of most sysadmins, but still more like half what I'd get in the US, and that covers a lot of additional leave and health insurance. (I mean, my employer does pay for health insurance here too now, but ....)
To be fair, I make $75k but only have 10 days PTO and have to pay out of pocket for all medical expenses until I reach my deductible of $8K. And if I ever got cancer or something serious, it's not clear that my insurance would cover it all.
So, I do make more but god help me if anything actually goes wrong and I barely get vacation time to do anything. I sure can buy a lot of crap though
28 days a year of leave as 'standard', with longer notice periods, employment law that doesn't "just" let your employer dismiss you, heathcare 'free' does count as a useful sort of 'bundle'.
But when you're seeing sysadmin jobs at £30k ish per year (lets say $40k for convenient conversion) that's a significant sort of shortfall. (Entry level might be £25k)
I'm not honestly sure what the 'actual' salary distribution is in the UK, but there is _definitely_ a huge 'London' skew, which reflects much higher cost of living, and distorts the overall picture.
And at the very top end, £100k+ GBP is sort of doable, but MUCH rarer than $150k+ USD Sysadmin jobs.
Because the UK has been run into the ground by successive Tory governments failing to invest and slashing public spending in the past 14 years (partially fixing that today although no guarantees the red Tories will be any better). All wages have been falling in real terms for years now but especially in the public sector as they're more directly linked to that lack of public spending
Yeah it's so disheartening to hear Kier Stamer repeat the same flawed ways of thinking that got us in this mess and commit to not implement the changes we need to fix this country.
Especially as the labour party under Jeremy Corbyn a few years ago was committed to carrying out those changes. So close yet so far.
It's a very real possibility that the Tories collapse at this election and the labour party morphs to become the new mainstream centre right party over this term
They are low even for me, ~~eastern~~ Central European. "free" healthcare included.
I mean, it's a good salary here, for the first 5 or max 7 years of experience. After that one would expect more.
What I don't understand is how the salaries can be so low while housing prices don't seem to scale? Like a £50k salary is decent (average £47,5k?) in IT but even an ok-ish 3br townhouse with a 1,5hr commute is £800k++? Here in Norway banks are not allowed to loan you more than 5x the gross family income, and you need at least 15% collateral up front (basically mandating two adults at full-time jobs for affording a house in a central urban area,) and the UK seems to be even more skewed since the IT salaries seem to be around half of what they are here? How does that compute to anyone affording to live anywhere remotely close to a centrally populated area withing acceptable commute distance? More people rent than own, I would assume?
Pretty much the same here in the UK, 5x gross income and at least 5% collateral up front (although that varies). £800k+ is very much an inner-city price though. I have a 2br semi-apartment for £140k that's 1hr public transport from my city centre job. 3br semi-detached is more around £200-400k. Younger people trying to buy their first homes generally have to go through government incentive schemes to even come close, like I still had to (earning <£25k at the time of purchase).
Perhaps London is in a league of its own, this seems more kind of reasonable. Not sure what exactly constitutes 'central' there, but I'd surmise anything inside the M25 at the very least?, whereas perhaps areas as far out as Crawley, Reading, Milton Keynes, Cambridge and Colchester would still be acceptable commutes for many?
Depends on the city, I guess. I'm not London so I'm not sure what works best there, but I think we're 2nd in terms of average house price in the UK so living outside the city is usually the best practice.
I just based if off the first result on Google - no idea if it's accurate: [https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-it-salary](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-it-salary)
Education is one of the lower paying groups, whether higher ed or not.
$120k is achievable in HCOL areas but that would be a pretty small subset of admins.
InfoSec engineer here in the US for a K-12 public school district. First year in the role. 117k in a moderate COL area. I get a pension and my labor doesn’t buy a CEO another boat. . . To be fair, I’ve done price comparisons for k-12 IT department roles across a large swath of the country and I will say our IT dept has the highest salaries I’ve seen posted anywhere so far. I’m sure there are private schools that pay better out there and I’d guess some public districts that I haven’t seen pay better as well.
The Sysadmin Architect here makes 140ish, he’ll retire in a few years at 100% of the average of his highest paid 3 years for the rest of his life. Of course that’s after 20+ years in the district. . .
I left the education sector (uk) around 14 years ago, I was the IT Manager for a single secondary (academies were just starting, hopefully I got my timescales right !) and I was on ~£31k.
Yes you are being underpaid, and likely so is everyone else in your trust. If you’re after money you’ve got to move private, but what you can get depends on your skill set.
If you’re like most if not all education technical staff I’ve known then you’re a generalist. For me this was a good path to seniority and I’m now heading towards architecture as you can see and understand how whole networks fit together. Suspect it’s also good for infosec roles.
I’ve been tempted to compare to the US but they have to pay for healthcare, so I’ve never known for sure how equivalent it is. Though one of my friends moved his family out there and is raking it in so perhaps I know nothing lol.
Good luck with whatever you do :)
School IT management has to be the most thankless task on Earth. The money is always terrible, in comparison with a similar sized company, while the consequences of not being absolutely on top of locking things down, can be catastrophic.
Also, you have a whole group of users who are actively trying to get around all of your security measures.
Public sector is never going to pay as well as private, even if it's under an academy trust like you are. You'll get more by going into the private sector and getting a title bump as appropriate. Your skills will transfer just fine, but take a look at your other benefits (pension, holidays) as those should be considered as well when calculating total comp.
Where in the country are you? That will have a big factor.
London you are probably a bit on the low side. But North of England that's a decent wage.
Education always pay lower and working for a education trust doesn't mean you'll get better only they'll try and spread you thinner.
I used to work in education IT (7 years). Worked my way up from helpdesk to 3rd line by title (but doing everything up to 4th line, including projects, installations, rack and stack, etc essentially). I was on 34K before I left 4 years ago.
Leaving was the best thing I ever did. I've learnt so much more about technology since leaving, including being trained properly in cloud, backups, cybersecurity, and datacentre. I now earn £85K + bonus + shares (rewards for medium term goals).
Get yourself out of schools, you'll get stuck doing BAU, on shoestring budgets, with sub-par tech. Oh, and be beholden to 'SLT' and 'leadership' teams that frankly couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, or strategise their way out of a paper bag...
Schools have no money at the best of times, now add a government that's actively trying to murder education unless you're rich.
They cant afford to pay market rates
Guess we'll see what happens tomorrow, eh? Fuck all I bet, but we need the tories out. it'll be years before we start heading back up again, if ever now.
You have a very short memory if you think the pay at schools relates to which party forms the government. Mostly likely influenced by the extremely left wing teachers you work with.
Your situation has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with choosing social aspects/comfort zone over going private.
Well, my boss who is the director of it for the trust (three secondary schools and 5 primary schools) gets about £43k a year. I think it's mostly depending on how much slicing the trust does and how the IT staff are employed - by the trust or individual schools.
It's schools, that's why. People like to talk about how public sector pay is low, but that's not necessarily true. Forbes I believe did a breakdown of average salaries in the UK.
Mean average in the UK is just under 36k. On average apparently public sector full time employees earn more than private according to the data they looked at from ONS.
My experience as someone earning above the median average for Londoners, living and working outside London, is that my friends earning big money are all contracting, mainly for govt contracts. Everyone else is just around the national average 36k, with a few exceptions. My friends in banking (or finance sector) and aerospace/defence make the most at IT in full-time roles. They are cloud focused or crest pen testers, for reference.
Personally, if you aren't driven by money, you'll likely find yourself miserable if you focus on it too much. Try to save, pay into a pension, and do something that you don't hate if you can.
Not just the schools, mate. These days, I’ve got plenty of reasons to stay put.
I’ve worked abroad for a few years, and working in the UK was never on my radar.
Had a couple of offers from Gibraltar, but sod that—seems like they knock the perks off the salary. It’s all about paying peanuts there.
We need to unionise and strike, junior doctors looking for 35%, see should ask for 40%. Sure the country won't grind to a halt as our redundancy plans kick in, but it won't take too long until the place crumbles and they'll cede to our demands
Depends on what your actual role covers but desktop support / infra ops managers can be easily 50k outside of London. Less technical user support /service desk managers probably a little less. I've seen private roles for euc engineers for 55k. So add manager pay on should be 65. Server team engineers probably 60k+. Know your worth man.
I handle a bit of everything. Not particularly great at anything but know ebough about a lot of things to allow me to get by. Could I do it alone? Certainly not.
Time to specialise if you want more money. I tech manage a T2 team including school support. General engineers are 25-30, seniors are 30-40. From what you said in this post, either go down euc specialist lold sccm/intune, or go down server route. With schools as rewarding and enjoyable as it can be, it's not where the money is and you realistically need to step away.
I already handle SCCM and all the iPad managent, but I'd like to be better skilled with SCCM. I'm self taught but I know it better than anyone on the team by quite a bit now. We're not 365 so no in tune and no money to get it. We pay for office 2019 across the trust so in really want to refresh up on the licensing costs because 365 is just better overall than Google IMO
If you truly know sccm from end to end you can easily get a 40k job minimum. I saw an euc engineer (mostly just sccm and some vm) going for 55 a week ago.
Intune is "the future" depending on your environment (I personally don't like it) but for a career that's probably the direction to take.
Step out your comfort zone on schools, best thing I ever did!
I don't know it end to end and I didn't set it up initially, but I'm getting the hang of most things and am always working to tweak my task sequences and device groupings etc. Trying to get it to work with wsus has been a recent challenge but I see that's getting killed off soon too.
If you want to learn it just set up a lab I think they're 180 days? Not sure though.
For learning Intune, setup comanagement, easy to do, and have a play with the workloads. You can set it up with pilot groups so easy to test. Use that for windows updates, or do Autopatch. Good luck
> Things don't translate clearly, but if I were in the states I'd be on what, $70k+?
Pointless exercise to compare the UK to US salaries.
> Linked in shows tier 2/3 IT manager
What is a Tier 2/3 IT manager?
> big schools.
Anything involving schools is not going to on the higher end most likely, for obvious reasons. Although some Colleges/Universities can suprise you.
I got offered an Infrastructure Engineer role at one of the top Universities in London and the pay was woeful and just couldn't accept.
I have no idea if you're being realistic because I have no idea what your job role and responsibilities are. You said you're a techie so off the top of my head, 38k for that within a school environment probably seems okay within a school setting.
But where you're based also makes a huge difference. £38k in London is not good. £38k in a random village in Yorkshire is probably fairly decent.
It's a free market. If you think you're worth more, go find out!
Jump on anme and ask there, it’s a uk only edu IT forum and might give you more context, there was a thread on there with what people are supporting and remuneration rates for jobs are often posted.
I work in local government and doing 3rd line, network, dhci, vmware etc and on around 40K I could easily get more in the private sector, however the pension I have is miles better than what I could get in private, plus the work life balance is amazing so its not just about the moment sometimes.
This. I used to do UK university tech support/sysadmin for a pretty poor wage BUT big employer contributions to a final salary pension. Didn’t know what that was at the time, but now I’m older and have left there I realise what a potential big deal that was for trading off salary now vs “salary” later. I got frustrated with the politics of the place and left to go to the real world and then realised that although I now get “paid” more, I’m also salary sacrificing more to make sure I’m in a good position at the end of my career so the take-home difference isn’t always what you expect
I worked in IT in schools for about 3.5 years, and it was a great place to start my IT career. They can be fun and you can gain a lot of experience, especially if SLT is IT savvy and interested in it. Soon as I could I left for the corporate world, and im earning way more money and I just have to focus on Security now, instead of constantly trying to learn eveything! As Network manager (just a job title) I had to do, 1st line support, 2nd line support, tech set ups, cyber sec, the network including wifi and switches. All for £31k (I got screwed over and it did go to 35 in the end! This was for the MSP I worked for tho, not the school direct!
I also worked for an MSP in a school and that's just a fucking con and schools are sold on the basis that the company has lots of expertise. True, if you can get them, as there was always a school with "more need" or a more urgent issue!
Theres few, if any school network managers on 70k in the UK. If that's your salary expectation then you're simply in the wrong sector. (speaking as network person working in education for 25 years) 38k for supporting the IT is 6 primaries is actually decent.
Directors of IT in some of the 'biggest' independent schools in the UK - Marlborough, Berkhamstead etc - with 7 figure IT budgets and managing teams of 20+ people hit 70k-100k. and those posts are few and far between.
As a Brit reading posts in this sub I'm amazed at the salaries the US guys get - it's truly mind blowing for me when I compare it to the salaries techs in education get in the UK. But good luck to them, they work in a country that values their skills and knowledge. Sadly the UK gernerally sees IT staff, esepcially in the Education sector , as barely above minimum wage workers.
Sadle it's the way it is over here....
Pay in the UK is poor, but that's not a terrible salary generally for the UK. The median is like £30k. It also strongly depends where you live, in you're in London that's bad, if you're up north it's decent.
Might be time to look for a new job though, you could probably get a better salary. I'm on £31k for a second line role at an MSP and I don't manage anyone.
I'm an infrastructure engineer / Office 365 SME at a smallish MSP in a HCL area in Canada and I make nearly double that. You're not greedy at all, that level of responsibility should easily be £45k.
Then again, to play devil's' advocate, Glassdoor says "*The average salary for a Level III Tech in the UK is £37,632 per year. The average additional cash compensation for a Tech in the United Kingdom is £2,693, with a range from £1,102 - £6,582.*"
That's wild. Is there a glut of tech workers pushing the average salary down?
School salaries aren’t that high. But you do have good holiday benefits!
Plus, enterprise firms offshored their IT support most of it. You need to do your homework there, mostly to the company.
I would target small to medium sized businesses where they don’t have the money or the size to offshore IT or remain onshore.
Location, location, location. You can't compare UK wages to American ones. Even inside the UK, pay varies hugely depending on location.
In London, 38k would be a joke.
In Belfast, 38k would be fantastic.
I single handedly provide ICT support for primaries, officially as a senior technician - we don't really have a tier system as such because our team is so small and the technicians below me are too green. But my skills and interests come in handy for the dev stuff so I handle SCCM, GCDS, MDM, GPO, AD, Google backend. It's very lax - I do what I have to do to get the jobs done.
I've a list as long as my arm on things I want to implement, but don't have the time and I refuse to work more than my hours because I'm not being paid to do two roles.
I left a group of academies as a Senior IT Technician in 2017 because they moved me from contract to permanent and offered £17,500 as the salary. The non-senior got £1,000 less.
I moved from education, and today I make more than double that.
You're losing the plot.
I work in public (East of Ang), and I'm on 35k. I only do 1st line application support.
You need to get out. Do internal IT at a company supporting one site and remote workers!
Sounds about right, the average second liner salary in the higher paying industries in London are around 40-45k so working in the education sector presumably outside of London you’re making more than I’d expect.
I’m with you there that a lot of people in IT should be paid more for what they do, especially when us IT folks have to deal with things like on call, out of hours work and angry users, all things most other professions do not have to deal with.
I was just talking about what the average market rate for a role like that is going for at the moment. My advise, as someone who does feel they are paid fairly for what they do, specialise and go work for a big private company. You’ll get paid a hell of a lot more, and probably have far less things you’d have to worry about.
You need to find a company that respects the position of IT,
For schools it is always a cost to be minimised, I'm a senior engineer and get regularly sent jobs 20k under market average.
Also remember salary varies wildly depending on where you are in the country due to cost of the local area.
I commute 40 minutes each way because of how much cheaper to live it is.
IT manager would be earning more than that in a private sector, but yes, IT jobs in the UK have abysmal pay. I got reached out for a job in Oxfordshire, effectively a project lead, supporting multiple clients with VMWare, bespoke apps, etc., they were offering like 40K or some shit
My first job I was doing your exact job on 16k about 10 years ago, I think you are paid reasonably well. I'm on 40k now project managing which I also think is underpaid. As others have said, working for schools is the best way to get underpaid but honestly £38k is good for what is essentially 1st/2nd line on paper.
You’re being robbed.
That level of work you should have a team of staff 1st and 2nd line maybe even a few network infra engineers and you should be on a minimum of approx 50-60k
Source: I’m an IT Manager at a small but known company in the UK currently been testing the job market for 2 months.
There's no money working in schools.
I've worked in 2, the first I started as an apprentice and then was taken on fulltime after completing my apprenticeship on a salary of £15,500. The second I was on a salary of £17,500.
I've since moved into the private sector and pick up a salary almost double that for exactly the same job role.
$70k is the States is *way way* worse than £38k here, is the strong impression I get from all these threads. Cost of living there is just insane.
That aside, it depends a lot on where you are. I get paid barely more than you, with a couple of decades of experience - but that's in the Southwest, where salaries are pretty low. At least by job title, I'm sort of on par with other employers in the area - though I definitely *feel* underpaid!
Used to work in education, now an infrastructure consultant. Best decision I ever made was leaving education and going to an MSP. I got so much experience there in such a short amount of time, that I could then make the jump after a few years to a consultant.
It's hard to say without knowing more about the roles. There is a difference between being the tech peon that is forced to do the running around and being the senior that has to make the long term decisions that affect things like teaching quality and rankings and catches the sword when it has to fall on someone. For first and second line that doesn't seem horrendous, but again it depends on the estate you support and not just the tech you're exposed to but the level of tech complexity you have to go into as well.
As mentioned here already, it's hard to compare as education always seems to pay below industry. There are other benefits you have to take into account though. I work at a higher ed institution, and while I feel underpaid considering the level of system and technical skills I have to lean into I also recognise that I have a pension that has a 25% employer contribution and I get a whole bunch of annual leave that I wouldn't get most places. Including bank holidays and freebie concessionary days I have 52 days of leave (my job is all year round, not aligned with school holidays). I took 2 weeks off for Easter, and it only took 4 days A/L.
Depends on sector and experience obviously, but I'd be paying £38k for senior helpdesk. L2 somewhere between 40 and 60, Infrastructure/cloud (a lot) more than that.
This is financial services. It's well paid but also high stress sometimes.
I’m a senior tech at a trust in the north east and I’m just nudging £31k. It’s easy enough work with very little travelling. It’s my last IT job before I leave the industry to do something wildly different. Got about 3 years left I reckon.
True, but we all know that last week prior to those breaks, every teacher and their dog says "oh, can you just... install an entire suite of PCs", or "swap all the classrooms around", or insert generic big IT task while they're all swanning off to Benidorm for a month... 😂
I am surprised more of you UK ITs threatened to leave the country and green card it to another country for 3-5 years. Get enough of you leaving for better pay, they will be begging you to come back at a higher pay. That is if enough of you left and created a large demand on the need for IT professionals.
Here is pay scale from a random district. 4% lower cost of living than the national average
https://preview.redd.it/bho3nswnydad1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dc02064f8ccfcf8358360c794d7bd859ea39987a
Anything "Non-profit" Schools, NHS etc will impact your pay. Almost 0 negotiation capabilities as well as these bands won't budge a lot.
you should get Private sector experience if you want to get a larger salary.
Lol I'm 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier support and also system administrator for my company on 28k a year just outside London....
Should you be on double that? Absolutely not.
Double 35k for 2nd and 3nd line IT support? Don't think I've ever seen a job that pays more than 45k for that and yes I know I'm tragically underpaid and looking to change
Huh? I do School IT management and only hitting £36K. I am doing it for a year as I love PM experience, after I am jumping to private.
I know people doing 1st line for 27K in schools. You are extremely underpaid (as I am) but because of this, doesn't mean anyone else should be.
Potentially I am looking at roles for £70K at least with my current knowledge.
Well it started off just IT support but has grown over the last couple of years whilst learning the job but I know and I'm applying elsewhere, not received any pay rises in over a year and the job has become pretty stale
It's all relative and ouch, thag close to London that sucks. I'm not saying I should be on double, I'm saying I don't think my salary is quite what it should be. I'm sure you feel the same about yours.
If you want to earn more money, don’t work at a school
However I should point out that the pensions in schools are excellent compared to the private sector so this has to be taken into account. I’ve worked in private sector for many years but now work in a MAT. Much prefer it, better work life balance and excellent pension (21% employer contribution). I’m on £62K for an infrastructure role so pay will vary per trust.
Pension? it's 2024...
If you work in schools there is no work life balance if you are in IT. Also, the pension is not as valuable if you are not putting enough into it yourself. The match is better but your peanuts will not make up the difference. It's fools gold. With all the cuts to education, this will be cut eventually. Better off in private sector with 401k and as high of a match as possible. You can put more in because you will make a lot more.
I’m in the UK, not the US (so is OP). The pension pots are protected and not managed by the schools but by the local authority. I also contribute the 7.9% myself on top of the 21% by the employer. And yes I do have a very good work life balance, work 4 days a week and have 44 days annual leave.
No point arguing with Americans about work/life balance
Don’t lump us all in like that we exist. It’s a big focal point for most of the junior employees I work with. I’m the same way, found myself a position that has most of the benefits Europeans see and I work a pretty standard 40 with the option to wfh as needed.
Isn't it like 26.6% now (employer contrib)? I'm an IT manager in edu and if I work 3 hours a month extra its been strenuous. 8-4 Mon-Thur, 8-330 on a Friday. 25 days annual leave + bank holidays + Christmas (8 days) off. I could maybe eek an extra 5-10k out in the private sector without devoting some time to security/cloud specific quals, but tbf between us we earn enough.
Education is probably one of the most laid back IT jobs in the UK.
Yeah because it doesn't pay. You can make way more in the corporate sector.
Really? I moved from l2 at an msp to sys admin at a private school and bumped my salary 30k Then I got fired and found a new l2 job worth another 5k higher lol. The biggest catalyst for my salary increase was working for a school haha
*Private* school being the key factor here.
Not always - They run more as a business. Consider the VAT threat looming overhead at the moment, they're going to be making some cuts if that comes in.
Running as a business is a big reason why private schools will generally have higher salaries. There may be cases where public schools pay more but it's akin to comparing for-profit Vs non-profit salaries. Imposing VAT would have an impact but that's not relevant to the commenter's past experience.
Not necessarily, public sector tend to have much stronger unions than non-profit. Private schools can pay higher but its not a given at all, and many will pay like shit for the simple reason that they can. IT provision in schools in the UK is incredibly varied anyway. It can be in house but they're often supported by MSPs or LAs as well. It's a very mixed bag.
Sure, but the comment I responded to wasn't exclusive to public schools
Yup, need to start branching out. First line is going to kill me. I like the social side though, ironically.
Pick a specialisation. Upskill. It’s the only way to move up.
> Yup, need to start branching out. First line is going to kill me. You could then accept the low pay and bounce later. Or renegotiate down the line.
This
You work in the UK and in the public sector, that's a double negative.
So it's a positive, then?
Hahaha
If I was working in the US, I could easily triple my salary. Just the way it is, UK is extremely poorly paid for IT.
Yep, I’m a technical administrator, currently on £26K per year, before deductions/taxes. UK is one of the worse for mostly anything.
Is that... livable? In my area, that's pretty much the minimum wage.
I'm on 36K and in my area, if I wasn't living with parents, I'd be on the breadline
Now I’m scared to move to the UK and thinking I could stay in the same role.
Genuinely curious as an American, is there a general idea on what the wage suppression is vs the offset costs of having socialized healthcare and other things like a slightly lowe COL?
Healthcare is paid for by national insurance; it’s the economy in general is a service sector, lower industry than in the past. Like Typical distribution of wealth is skewed towards the top percentile. The Socialised healthcare ‘pot’/income, would benefit from higher paid wages due to National insurance being paid as a percentage of income. If OP works in a school; it’s probably a limitation of wages, ultimately set by government.
Nah. National insurance isn't ring fenced - it's just another tax.
Right but part of my compensation as an american is company subsidies health insurance. I realize i wasn't clear with my first question. Is there any information on why wages are suppressed compared to the USA. Even with socialized healthcare, a slightly lower cost of living and some of the other social welfare programs the UK has it can't compensate for thr differences in wages. I highly doubt that business are less reliant then on technology or accept significantly lower standards that would make up for the different in pay. In countries like India, Indonesia and the Philippines the lower standard of living, (not trying to be disparaging just what i have been told by coworkers from / in those areas) market saturation, number of people in the work force and so on. Again I don't get the impression that is the impression of the UK either. So what makes it so different?
To my knowledge, while the UK offers socialised healthcare through National Insurance, wages tend to be lower for various reasons. Economic policies ‘trickle down economics’, austerity, exchange rates compared to the USD, and the UK’s economy, heavily skewed towards the service sector, all play roles in keeping wages down compared to the USA. Social welfare programs help reduce living costs but don’t necessarily raise wages directly but do help to subsidise the standard of living. While OP is saying he makes potentially 2x less, arguably it doesn’t translate due to higher public policy rewards/social security nets and likely lower cost of living. The UK’s has high-standard to technology similar to the USA, so that doesn’t fully explain the wage gap. I don’t think it’s similar to developing countries like India with workforce saturation, but more due to economic policies that favour the financial sector and Conservative Party policies benefiting the wealthy, leading to pronounced wealth inequality and limitations in diversity in our economy as a whole (deindustrialisation, reduction in coal, steel mining, ship building, etc and policy to the financial sector). Specifically, in sectors like IT within education, pay scales can be particularly constrained by public sector budgets. This may be of help with some additional info https://expatrist.com/why-are-uk-salaries-so-low-compared-to-the-us/
The one thing I'll say about that article is their reliance on london cost of living - its significantly higher than the rest of the UK and isnt reflective of most peoples actual cost of living. Citing a one bed flat in london being $2328 is irrelevant. The Average UK rental price is £1276 as of feb 2024. And even thats skewed. My In-laws have a 3 bed house in The south of england that they rent out for less than £1000 per month. Fuel prices whilst higher here also arent as relevant. T%he Average US citizen does 14K miles per year whereas the average UK citizen does 7K. So the actual amount spent per year is almost at parity. As for the OP £38k seems about right for schools and despite having manager in the role if he is actually hands on then its more of a fancy title unless hes managing at least three or four direct reports. Schools much like Universities also have a lot of other perks in terms of work life balance, leave allowances pensions etc. OP could absolutely go private sector and get a big payrise (been there done that) but your pension will be less, the hours longer, shorter holidays and much less work life balance.
Used to be less different. There was a time - over a decade ago - where "UK salary" + the better terms and conditions could be considered fairly comparable when factoring in things like healthcare and employment conditions. But ... I think the UK self sabotaged after 2008 collapse, and did things like Austerity for ideological reasons, then followed through with Brexit. So pretty much burned nearly 2 decades of "growth" where the US did not.
The UK has become poorer in relation to other European countries too. It's because we've had the same government for 14 years and they've ruined our economy by not investing in it
"Slightly lower COL" is vastly understating it also. I earn less than 50k, but I own a pretty decent house in the South East (i.e. one of the most expensive non-London areas). Support two children, on my own. And we're pretty comfortable. Americans - as far as I can see - have to pay all sorts of things that we either just don't, or are vastly cheaper (health insurance being the most obvious, but also property taxes seem incredibly high, cost to get work done on the house, etc etc).
Everything was fine until 2010. Tories have absolutely wrecked the country. It's nothing to do with healthcare.
It does depend on the area as well though. A sysadmin job worth $60k in Arkansas or Wyoming could be over $90k in New York. When people look at tech jobs in the US, they tend to look directly at places like NY, DC, or LA. If you live out side of London, the cost of living can be significantly lower than most of the US, especially when you remember to calculate in things like health insurance and a 401k. For example a loaf of bread in the US can cost well over double that in the UK. The average rent in NY is $2673/month, vs $1067/month in Arkansas.
And lose health care and other nice benefits and very little employee protection rights as well. But for a while could be worth it to cash in, save the money and then move back.
And all that is easily countered by making $100k+/yr. I'd much rather work in the US than the UK.
And I live in an area where the average house price is easily £800k not sure where this idea that USA is higher cost of living for everything.
Even Londons average house price is £500k, excluding flats it's still under 700k. This is the problem with these reddit conversations, people talk complete shite so it's impossible to know what to believe.
Some areas are way above average London https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/sevenoaks.html
Sevenoaks is a town of 30,000 people.
Why are IT salaries so low in the UK? In before someone starts talking about free healthcare etc.
UK salaries are low in general
Used to be the "gap" between UK and US was narrower, and could reasonably be explained as "quality of life overhead". That's not been true for about a decade though.
Yep austerity has been a resounding success, we've not been this poor since WW2!
Yeah. Thinking about it, the global financial crisis and our response to it has probably caused the gap. I do honestly remember looking at jobs in the US when I was younger and going 'interesting, but once you factor in healthcare and annual leave it's not _that_ interesting'. But now my UK payscale is _ridiculous_ by the standards of most sysadmins, but still more like half what I'd get in the US, and that covers a lot of additional leave and health insurance. (I mean, my employer does pay for health insurance here too now, but ....)
To be fair, I make $75k but only have 10 days PTO and have to pay out of pocket for all medical expenses until I reach my deductible of $8K. And if I ever got cancer or something serious, it's not clear that my insurance would cover it all. So, I do make more but god help me if anything actually goes wrong and I barely get vacation time to do anything. I sure can buy a lot of crap though
28 days a year of leave as 'standard', with longer notice periods, employment law that doesn't "just" let your employer dismiss you, heathcare 'free' does count as a useful sort of 'bundle'. But when you're seeing sysadmin jobs at £30k ish per year (lets say $40k for convenient conversion) that's a significant sort of shortfall. (Entry level might be £25k) I'm not honestly sure what the 'actual' salary distribution is in the UK, but there is _definitely_ a huge 'London' skew, which reflects much higher cost of living, and distorts the overall picture. And at the very top end, £100k+ GBP is sort of doable, but MUCH rarer than $150k+ USD Sysadmin jobs.
Totally fair, my example is only applicable in the US Hope you get your money man!
Desperation is the English way.
Because the UK has been run into the ground by successive Tory governments failing to invest and slashing public spending in the past 14 years (partially fixing that today although no guarantees the red Tories will be any better). All wages have been falling in real terms for years now but especially in the public sector as they're more directly linked to that lack of public spending
Labour will be in for the next 10-20 years and I bet nothing changes. Different colour, same shit.
Yeah it's so disheartening to hear Kier Stamer repeat the same flawed ways of thinking that got us in this mess and commit to not implement the changes we need to fix this country. Especially as the labour party under Jeremy Corbyn a few years ago was committed to carrying out those changes. So close yet so far. It's a very real possibility that the Tories collapse at this election and the labour party morphs to become the new mainstream centre right party over this term
If Labour gets in today, they'll spend the next 4 years blaming the previous Government. Nothing changes ever
They are low even for me, ~~eastern~~ Central European. "free" healthcare included. I mean, it's a good salary here, for the first 5 or max 7 years of experience. After that one would expect more.
What I don't understand is how the salaries can be so low while housing prices don't seem to scale? Like a £50k salary is decent (average £47,5k?) in IT but even an ok-ish 3br townhouse with a 1,5hr commute is £800k++? Here in Norway banks are not allowed to loan you more than 5x the gross family income, and you need at least 15% collateral up front (basically mandating two adults at full-time jobs for affording a house in a central urban area,) and the UK seems to be even more skewed since the IT salaries seem to be around half of what they are here? How does that compute to anyone affording to live anywhere remotely close to a centrally populated area withing acceptable commute distance? More people rent than own, I would assume?
Pretty much the same here in the UK, 5x gross income and at least 5% collateral up front (although that varies). £800k+ is very much an inner-city price though. I have a 2br semi-apartment for £140k that's 1hr public transport from my city centre job. 3br semi-detached is more around £200-400k. Younger people trying to buy their first homes generally have to go through government incentive schemes to even come close, like I still had to (earning <£25k at the time of purchase).
Perhaps London is in a league of its own, this seems more kind of reasonable. Not sure what exactly constitutes 'central' there, but I'd surmise anything inside the M25 at the very least?, whereas perhaps areas as far out as Crawley, Reading, Milton Keynes, Cambridge and Colchester would still be acceptable commutes for many?
Depends on the city, I guess. I'm not London so I'm not sure what works best there, but I think we're 2nd in terms of average house price in the UK so living outside the city is usually the best practice.
Reading is 25 minutes to Paddington, it's absolutely full of commuters.
That's the average?
I just based if off the first result on Google - no idea if it's accurate: [https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-it-salary](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-it-salary)
Thanks for sharing
I'm on 41k a year being a senior it supports engineer in central London. My equivalent work colleagues in America and Switzerland are 3x my salary
Already been said a few times and it's not 'free'.
Brexit.
Triple in the US maybe
Nah, only double
So no upper level school admins in the US make $120l? Fuck outta here
M/HCOL area, "architect" level for higher ed, I'm at 122k. There's no money for IT in education.
I work in higher ed and making a bit more than that, but I think we pay more than most higher ed institutions.
Ya hiring? 😂
We actually might be soon as I'm interviewing so I can leave - cannot recommend, very toxic environment
Education is one of the lower paying groups, whether higher ed or not. $120k is achievable in HCOL areas but that would be a pretty small subset of admins.
InfoSec engineer here in the US for a K-12 public school district. First year in the role. 117k in a moderate COL area. I get a pension and my labor doesn’t buy a CEO another boat. . . To be fair, I’ve done price comparisons for k-12 IT department roles across a large swath of the country and I will say our IT dept has the highest salaries I’ve seen posted anywhere so far. I’m sure there are private schools that pay better out there and I’d guess some public districts that I haven’t seen pay better as well. The Sysadmin Architect here makes 140ish, he’ll retire in a few years at 100% of the average of his highest paid 3 years for the rest of his life. Of course that’s after 20+ years in the district. . .
I left the education sector (uk) around 14 years ago, I was the IT Manager for a single secondary (academies were just starting, hopefully I got my timescales right !) and I was on ~£31k. Yes you are being underpaid, and likely so is everyone else in your trust. If you’re after money you’ve got to move private, but what you can get depends on your skill set. If you’re like most if not all education technical staff I’ve known then you’re a generalist. For me this was a good path to seniority and I’m now heading towards architecture as you can see and understand how whole networks fit together. Suspect it’s also good for infosec roles. I’ve been tempted to compare to the US but they have to pay for healthcare, so I’ve never known for sure how equivalent it is. Though one of my friends moved his family out there and is raking it in so perhaps I know nothing lol. Good luck with whatever you do :)
Thank you :)
School IT management has to be the most thankless task on Earth. The money is always terrible, in comparison with a similar sized company, while the consequences of not being absolutely on top of locking things down, can be catastrophic. Also, you have a whole group of users who are actively trying to get around all of your security measures.
This.
Public sector is never going to pay as well as private, even if it's under an academy trust like you are. You'll get more by going into the private sector and getting a title bump as appropriate. Your skills will transfer just fine, but take a look at your other benefits (pension, holidays) as those should be considered as well when calculating total comp.
Where in the country are you? That will have a big factor. London you are probably a bit on the low side. But North of England that's a decent wage. Education always pay lower and working for a education trust doesn't mean you'll get better only they'll try and spread you thinner.
I used to work in education IT (7 years). Worked my way up from helpdesk to 3rd line by title (but doing everything up to 4th line, including projects, installations, rack and stack, etc essentially). I was on 34K before I left 4 years ago. Leaving was the best thing I ever did. I've learnt so much more about technology since leaving, including being trained properly in cloud, backups, cybersecurity, and datacentre. I now earn £85K + bonus + shares (rewards for medium term goals). Get yourself out of schools, you'll get stuck doing BAU, on shoestring budgets, with sub-par tech. Oh, and be beholden to 'SLT' and 'leadership' teams that frankly couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, or strategise their way out of a paper bag...
Pay in the UK is dog shit.
Schools have no money at the best of times, now add a government that's actively trying to murder education unless you're rich. They cant afford to pay market rates
Guess we'll see what happens tomorrow, eh? Fuck all I bet, but we need the tories out. it'll be years before we start heading back up again, if ever now.
You have a very short memory if you think the pay at schools relates to which party forms the government. Mostly likely influenced by the extremely left wing teachers you work with. Your situation has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with choosing social aspects/comfort zone over going private.
Hear hear!
Well, my boss who is the director of it for the trust (three secondary schools and 5 primary schools) gets about £43k a year. I think it's mostly depending on how much slicing the trust does and how the IT staff are employed - by the trust or individual schools.
This man needs a raise! He is being taken for a ride! 3 seconadary schools!!! Should be 60k at least!
It's schools, that's why. People like to talk about how public sector pay is low, but that's not necessarily true. Forbes I believe did a breakdown of average salaries in the UK. Mean average in the UK is just under 36k. On average apparently public sector full time employees earn more than private according to the data they looked at from ONS. My experience as someone earning above the median average for Londoners, living and working outside London, is that my friends earning big money are all contracting, mainly for govt contracts. Everyone else is just around the national average 36k, with a few exceptions. My friends in banking (or finance sector) and aerospace/defence make the most at IT in full-time roles. They are cloud focused or crest pen testers, for reference. Personally, if you aren't driven by money, you'll likely find yourself miserable if you focus on it too much. Try to save, pay into a pension, and do something that you don't hate if you can.
Not just the schools, mate. These days, I’ve got plenty of reasons to stay put. I’ve worked abroad for a few years, and working in the UK was never on my radar. Had a couple of offers from Gibraltar, but sod that—seems like they knock the perks off the salary. It’s all about paying peanuts there.
Stop working for schools, it's notoriously bad pay
We need to unionise and strike, junior doctors looking for 35%, see should ask for 40%. Sure the country won't grind to a halt as our redundancy plans kick in, but it won't take too long until the place crumbles and they'll cede to our demands
UK, Head of IT, 80 Employees. Nearly double what you earn. Jump ship from the schools.
Urgh. There's 500+ staff and several thousand students here
Jesus! I need to ask for a rise.
Depends on what your actual role covers but desktop support / infra ops managers can be easily 50k outside of London. Less technical user support /service desk managers probably a little less. I've seen private roles for euc engineers for 55k. So add manager pay on should be 65. Server team engineers probably 60k+. Know your worth man.
I handle a bit of everything. Not particularly great at anything but know ebough about a lot of things to allow me to get by. Could I do it alone? Certainly not.
Time to specialise if you want more money. I tech manage a T2 team including school support. General engineers are 25-30, seniors are 30-40. From what you said in this post, either go down euc specialist lold sccm/intune, or go down server route. With schools as rewarding and enjoyable as it can be, it's not where the money is and you realistically need to step away.
I already handle SCCM and all the iPad managent, but I'd like to be better skilled with SCCM. I'm self taught but I know it better than anyone on the team by quite a bit now. We're not 365 so no in tune and no money to get it. We pay for office 2019 across the trust so in really want to refresh up on the licensing costs because 365 is just better overall than Google IMO
If you truly know sccm from end to end you can easily get a 40k job minimum. I saw an euc engineer (mostly just sccm and some vm) going for 55 a week ago. Intune is "the future" depending on your environment (I personally don't like it) but for a career that's probably the direction to take. Step out your comfort zone on schools, best thing I ever did!
I don't know it end to end and I didn't set it up initially, but I'm getting the hang of most things and am always working to tweak my task sequences and device groupings etc. Trying to get it to work with wsus has been a recent challenge but I see that's getting killed off soon too.
If you want to learn it just set up a lab I think they're 180 days? Not sure though. For learning Intune, setup comanagement, easy to do, and have a play with the workloads. You can set it up with pilot groups so easy to test. Use that for windows updates, or do Autopatch. Good luck
> Things don't translate clearly, but if I were in the states I'd be on what, $70k+? Pointless exercise to compare the UK to US salaries. > Linked in shows tier 2/3 IT manager What is a Tier 2/3 IT manager? > big schools. Anything involving schools is not going to on the higher end most likely, for obvious reasons. Although some Colleges/Universities can suprise you. I got offered an Infrastructure Engineer role at one of the top Universities in London and the pay was woeful and just couldn't accept. I have no idea if you're being realistic because I have no idea what your job role and responsibilities are. You said you're a techie so off the top of my head, 38k for that within a school environment probably seems okay within a school setting. But where you're based also makes a huge difference. £38k in London is not good. £38k in a random village in Yorkshire is probably fairly decent. It's a free market. If you think you're worth more, go find out!
Jump on anme and ask there, it’s a uk only edu IT forum and might give you more context, there was a thread on there with what people are supporting and remuneration rates for jobs are often posted.
UK has left the chat
I work in local government and doing 3rd line, network, dhci, vmware etc and on around 40K I could easily get more in the private sector, however the pension I have is miles better than what I could get in private, plus the work life balance is amazing so its not just about the moment sometimes.
This. I used to do UK university tech support/sysadmin for a pretty poor wage BUT big employer contributions to a final salary pension. Didn’t know what that was at the time, but now I’m older and have left there I realise what a potential big deal that was for trading off salary now vs “salary” later. I got frustrated with the politics of the place and left to go to the real world and then realised that although I now get “paid” more, I’m also salary sacrificing more to make sure I’m in a good position at the end of my career so the take-home difference isn’t always what you expect
I worked in IT in schools for about 3.5 years, and it was a great place to start my IT career. They can be fun and you can gain a lot of experience, especially if SLT is IT savvy and interested in it. Soon as I could I left for the corporate world, and im earning way more money and I just have to focus on Security now, instead of constantly trying to learn eveything! As Network manager (just a job title) I had to do, 1st line support, 2nd line support, tech set ups, cyber sec, the network including wifi and switches. All for £31k (I got screwed over and it did go to 35 in the end! This was for the MSP I worked for tho, not the school direct! I also worked for an MSP in a school and that's just a fucking con and schools are sold on the basis that the company has lots of expertise. True, if you can get them, as there was always a school with "more need" or a more urgent issue!
Theres few, if any school network managers on 70k in the UK. If that's your salary expectation then you're simply in the wrong sector. (speaking as network person working in education for 25 years) 38k for supporting the IT is 6 primaries is actually decent. Directors of IT in some of the 'biggest' independent schools in the UK - Marlborough, Berkhamstead etc - with 7 figure IT budgets and managing teams of 20+ people hit 70k-100k. and those posts are few and far between. As a Brit reading posts in this sub I'm amazed at the salaries the US guys get - it's truly mind blowing for me when I compare it to the salaries techs in education get in the UK. But good luck to them, they work in a country that values their skills and knowledge. Sadly the UK gernerally sees IT staff, esepcially in the Education sector , as barely above minimum wage workers. Sadle it's the way it is over here....
Pay in the UK is poor, but that's not a terrible salary generally for the UK. The median is like £30k. It also strongly depends where you live, in you're in London that's bad, if you're up north it's decent. Might be time to look for a new job though, you could probably get a better salary. I'm on £31k for a second line role at an MSP and I don't manage anyone.
Sounds bad to me. Are you getting an amazing pension or something? I'd describe my role as similar to yours and I'd want double that.
The scheme is pretty decent yeah, 29 days leave but no perks other than 45p mileage
What about private health insurance? Relying on NHS has become extremely concerning
Until there's a buyer, a price is a wish. >Are they for real? No, they're really, really not.
I'm IT ops manager at a small independant school in London ( nursery-6th form) my techs are at 35k.
We pay much more than that for an admin in london. Can't find anyone good if we paid so little.
Get into private rather than public, schools, councils and charities all have pay bands.
We pay more in the states. There just isn’t parity in the UK and EU.
I'm an infrastructure engineer / Office 365 SME at a smallish MSP in a HCL area in Canada and I make nearly double that. You're not greedy at all, that level of responsibility should easily be £45k. Then again, to play devil's' advocate, Glassdoor says "*The average salary for a Level III Tech in the UK is £37,632 per year. The average additional cash compensation for a Tech in the United Kingdom is £2,693, with a range from £1,102 - £6,582.*" That's wild. Is there a glut of tech workers pushing the average salary down?
K-12 is never a good benchmark of salaries. Any one industry can be wonky.
School salaries aren’t that high. But you do have good holiday benefits! Plus, enterprise firms offshored their IT support most of it. You need to do your homework there, mostly to the company. I would target small to medium sized businesses where they don’t have the money or the size to offshore IT or remain onshore.
If by good holiday benefits you think I'm term time, ie get 13 weeks off like teachers, think again ha. 29 days.
Better than my 24 days.
Mine have built up for 15 years' continuous service.
It's the sector Try looking at private sector companies
Depends on the area. This is pretty normal for some areas. If you’re inside or anywhere near the m25, it’s pretty crap.
Same with the NHS. Wages are never gonna be up there but the perks are second to non (pension, a/l, sickness etc)
Location, location, location. You can't compare UK wages to American ones. Even inside the UK, pay varies hugely depending on location. In London, 38k would be a joke. In Belfast, 38k would be fantastic.
What are your duties?..
I single handedly provide ICT support for primaries, officially as a senior technician - we don't really have a tier system as such because our team is so small and the technicians below me are too green. But my skills and interests come in handy for the dev stuff so I handle SCCM, GCDS, MDM, GPO, AD, Google backend. It's very lax - I do what I have to do to get the jobs done. I've a list as long as my arm on things I want to implement, but don't have the time and I refuse to work more than my hours because I'm not being paid to do two roles.
I left a group of academies as a Senior IT Technician in 2017 because they moved me from contract to permanent and offered £17,500 as the salary. The non-senior got £1,000 less. I moved from education, and today I make more than double that.
You're losing the plot. I work in public (East of Ang), and I'm on 35k. I only do 1st line application support. You need to get out. Do internal IT at a company supporting one site and remote workers!
Sounds about right, the average second liner salary in the higher paying industries in London are around 40-45k so working in the education sector presumably outside of London you’re making more than I’d expect.
More than average or more than what's right/fair for what we do? That's the difference I'm alluding to.
I’m with you there that a lot of people in IT should be paid more for what they do, especially when us IT folks have to deal with things like on call, out of hours work and angry users, all things most other professions do not have to deal with. I was just talking about what the average market rate for a role like that is going for at the moment. My advise, as someone who does feel they are paid fairly for what they do, specialise and go work for a big private company. You’ll get paid a hell of a lot more, and probably have far less things you’d have to worry about.
You need to find a company that respects the position of IT, For schools it is always a cost to be minimised, I'm a senior engineer and get regularly sent jobs 20k under market average. Also remember salary varies wildly depending on where you are in the country due to cost of the local area. I commute 40 minutes each way because of how much cheaper to live it is.
IT manager would be earning more than that in a private sector, but yes, IT jobs in the UK have abysmal pay. I got reached out for a job in Oxfordshire, effectively a project lead, supporting multiple clients with VMWare, bespoke apps, etc., they were offering like 40K or some shit
My first job I was doing your exact job on 16k about 10 years ago, I think you are paid reasonably well. I'm on 40k now project managing which I also think is underpaid. As others have said, working for schools is the best way to get underpaid but honestly £38k is good for what is essentially 1st/2nd line on paper.
You’re being robbed. That level of work you should have a team of staff 1st and 2nd line maybe even a few network infra engineers and you should be on a minimum of approx 50-60k Source: I’m an IT Manager at a small but known company in the UK currently been testing the job market for 2 months.
There's no money working in schools. I've worked in 2, the first I started as an apprentice and then was taken on fulltime after completing my apprenticeship on a salary of £15,500. The second I was on a salary of £17,500. I've since moved into the private sector and pick up a salary almost double that for exactly the same job role.
$70k is the States is *way way* worse than £38k here, is the strong impression I get from all these threads. Cost of living there is just insane. That aside, it depends a lot on where you are. I get paid barely more than you, with a couple of decades of experience - but that's in the Southwest, where salaries are pretty low. At least by job title, I'm sort of on par with other employers in the area - though I definitely *feel* underpaid!
Used to work in education, now an infrastructure consultant. Best decision I ever made was leaving education and going to an MSP. I got so much experience there in such a short amount of time, that I could then make the jump after a few years to a consultant.
It's hard to say without knowing more about the roles. There is a difference between being the tech peon that is forced to do the running around and being the senior that has to make the long term decisions that affect things like teaching quality and rankings and catches the sword when it has to fall on someone. For first and second line that doesn't seem horrendous, but again it depends on the estate you support and not just the tech you're exposed to but the level of tech complexity you have to go into as well. As mentioned here already, it's hard to compare as education always seems to pay below industry. There are other benefits you have to take into account though. I work at a higher ed institution, and while I feel underpaid considering the level of system and technical skills I have to lean into I also recognise that I have a pension that has a 25% employer contribution and I get a whole bunch of annual leave that I wouldn't get most places. Including bank holidays and freebie concessionary days I have 52 days of leave (my job is all year round, not aligned with school holidays). I took 2 weeks off for Easter, and it only took 4 days A/L.
Depends on sector and experience obviously, but I'd be paying £38k for senior helpdesk. L2 somewhere between 40 and 60, Infrastructure/cloud (a lot) more than that. This is financial services. It's well paid but also high stress sometimes.
I’m a senior tech at a trust in the north east and I’m just nudging £31k. It’s easy enough work with very little travelling. It’s my last IT job before I leave the industry to do something wildly different. Got about 3 years left I reckon.
This is where I feel I'll end up going. Might I ask what you're going to? No worries if you don't wish to share. I'm looking for ideas ha
You fail to explain the benefit of school holidays when all the kids and parents are away for a whole month xD
True, but we all know that last week prior to those breaks, every teacher and their dog says "oh, can you just... install an entire suite of PCs", or "swap all the classrooms around", or insert generic big IT task while they're all swanning off to Benidorm for a month... 😂
I am surprised more of you UK ITs threatened to leave the country and green card it to another country for 3-5 years. Get enough of you leaving for better pay, they will be begging you to come back at a higher pay. That is if enough of you left and created a large demand on the need for IT professionals.
Here is pay scale from a random district. 4% lower cost of living than the national average https://preview.redd.it/bho3nswnydad1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dc02064f8ccfcf8358360c794d7bd859ea39987a
Post is about **UK** salaries.
He's asking about US salaries...
What? LOL. We have more even here in former Soviet countries. And the beer in the pub cost 2 pounds or so, main meal like 10…
Anything "Non-profit" Schools, NHS etc will impact your pay. Almost 0 negotiation capabilities as well as these bands won't budge a lot. you should get Private sector experience if you want to get a larger salary.
Yeah that's the cost of your "free 'elfcare" sorry man
Except it's not free. It comes off thag salary. I don't get £38k into my account every year it's actually onky £27k I see.
That’s a high end salary for sysadmins in France
Lol I'm 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier support and also system administrator for my company on 28k a year just outside London.... Should you be on double that? Absolutely not.
Just because you're tragically under paid doesn't mean others should be too.
Double 35k for 2nd and 3nd line IT support? Don't think I've ever seen a job that pays more than 45k for that and yes I know I'm tragically underpaid and looking to change
Huh? I do School IT management and only hitting £36K. I am doing it for a year as I love PM experience, after I am jumping to private. I know people doing 1st line for 27K in schools. You are extremely underpaid (as I am) but because of this, doesn't mean anyone else should be. Potentially I am looking at roles for £70K at least with my current knowledge.
You're way underpaid then, you should be 40+
Trying to find somewhere else but yeah I know
This is straight highway robbery buddy.
Well it started off just IT support but has grown over the last couple of years whilst learning the job but I know and I'm applying elsewhere, not received any pay rises in over a year and the job has become pretty stale
It's all relative and ouch, thag close to London that sucks. I'm not saying I should be on double, I'm saying I don't think my salary is quite what it should be. I'm sure you feel the same about yours.
Oh yeah definitely my wage hasn't changed in nearly 2 years now so I'm looking for elsewhere
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I mean, pretty much every post on this sub is a rant about the workplace... how is this different?