this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
45 points (100.0% liked)

United Kingdom

4076 readers
200 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Streetlights@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day 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 23 hours 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 23 hours 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 20 hours 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 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours 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 20 hours 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 20 hours 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 20 hours 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.

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours 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 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours 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 20 hours ago

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

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours 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