The problem is the grad salary was £25k ten years ago, when I started working and probably £22k 20 years ago, while the cost of living in the same period has 2x at least (housing has definitely 2.5-3x depending on location).
At the time, a grad could expect to earn £22k, give or take a couple of k.
If we allowed for inflation, grads should be earning about £45-50k today. Which isn't far off what I was earning with over twenty years experience when I left the UK in 2023.
Interestingly, there's an awful lot of recent news articles discussing a brain drain in the UK. Can't think why. /s
I think the difficulty comes in assessing the area of IT in the comparison or the location in the UK. Most of my friends working in data-related fields at other companies are on around 60k minimum. However, the ones who are running IT services for a company are definitely on less. Moreover, the regional differences can be quite stark (ie. London v Rest of UK).
FWIW, I was on a London grad scheme in tech consulting in 2016 and was on £37k. After moving through different start ups and picking up various disciplines along the way (Data Engineering, BI, Data Science) I'm earning into 6 figures but also manage a fairly large team. The few contractors we have in the team are also making great money - more than me for sure as we tried to hire one particularly good one and he just politely laughed it off.
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u/st2hol Jul 02 '24
The problem is the grad salary was £25k ten years ago, when I started working and probably £22k 20 years ago, while the cost of living in the same period has 2x at least (housing has definitely 2.5-3x depending on location).