Earning £60k aged 23.

[sandycracks]

If someone told you that their child was 23 and already earning £60k, would you believe them?

Huh?

MI5 pay peanuts.

Are you saying that if you work in cyber security as a grad you can't be on 60k?

Cos that's bollocks!

Depends what their job is! Training contract for big 4, totally.

Ahh the myth of meritocracy. Work hard and you’ll be fairly rewarded. NepoBabies, favours and class still determine your Likelihood of success. Plenty ambitious , smart WC folk just not getting a fair go. However it well concealed and the meritocracy Myth of work hard you’ll make it, yadda yadda

Oh hun are you ok, head tilt only £200k is he,like, a charity worker

Exactly. Goldman Sachs pay more than £60K plus bonuses to coding kids straight out of university. I'm sure many other firms do too.

Yes

‘MI5’ don’t employ cybersecurity experts other than in their internal IT department. You are talking about GCHQ, and no one joins them for the money. It’s a civil service job and they hire from an extremely small recruiting pool (British citizens who are happy to work for peanuts) - hardly “the best of the best”.

These kinds of graduate salaries are absolutely par for the course for devs in Fintech, AI/ML, IB, and even the hyperscalers (AWS in particular). Consultants (ie devs with actual people and business skills) are particularly well paid.

The government contracts out a lot of it's security shit these days. Which is a load of bollocks in its own right.

Yes, very possible. I earned 16k up north in my early twenties and had disposable income. I now work down south with people that age out earning me. I now (much older than 23) earn around 120k and can’t buy a house. I work 14 hour days and am knackered.

Earnings aren’t the full picture!

My friend was earning £48k at the age in 23 in 1998. I'm not sure what that is adjusted with inflation but it is probably comparable if not more.

He's graduated with a first in maths and theory of computation and then did a master's in IT security and was ( still is) a very skilled hacker.. a rarer beast in earlier days of the internet. He was employed as an ethical hacker by a large financial company

You have missed the point of the other 'tech' fields mentioned.

But yes, it is extremely rare for a recent grad to be on 60k in cyber security, there is a reason why Silicon valley has outsourced a lot to India, and if your talking about highly sensitive security that is really cutting edge (MI5, etc) then the wage is what it is (33k), the likes of banking building on top of 3rd party products is not indicative of the wider job market.

The fact you think its bollocks shows your lack of knowledge of the recent trends, but hey this is MN, I have worked in the industry for decades, I should just pretend it is easy to earn 60k a year at 23 when statistics across the globe show it is an outlier....

Just because codeacadmy et al have moved on from 'coding' to 'cyber security' doesn't mean it is an easy money ticket.

This site needs and edit...
needed to add

The fact you think its bollocks shows your lack of knowledge of the recent trends and the industry..

because you are clearly basing it on some headlines and hearsay.

As an example, this is your typical 60k cyber security job in the north (which is lower paid than the City)

Ashdown Group Cyber Security Engineer in Sheffield (S1) (totaljobs.com)

Anyone with even an inkling of knowledge of the industry will know that a 23 year old recent grad will not meet the criteria. The fact that Goldman Sachs are offering a training program and any search is flooded with online 'universities' that used to offer 'coding' courses show it is a yet another flooded market that MN meme is far behind.

They still don't offer 60k, can you earn it, of course you can, but unlike the MN world, the real world is about 5 years ahead where we can outsource to India for far cheaper, the finance bro's are building on 3rd party software and logging loads of tickets while hoping to get the knowledge to move on to the higher paid job in there 30's..

It looks like the new MN meme is Cyber Security rather than just go on Codeacadamy for a few months and earn 50k a year doing coding....

This site used to be helpful and honest.

£88,676.45 in today's terms,

Yeah cos I don't know anything. It was my imagination eating pizza with them in my kitchen. All imaginary.

1998, is a different timeline to today, I didn't go to uni and got picked up in some of the websites and web services I built by hand in ASP and was earning that with free accommodation and travel to the US. In the meantime we have had Blair wanting 50% going to university and mass globalisation/Immigration and the upskilling of regions like India.

I'm now am in control of dealing with a multi national team, and 60k a year for even such a broad term of 'cyber security' (which clearly shows a lack of knowledge) for a 23 year old is an outlier.

I could play MN bingo with my wage, but then I didn't go to an RG uni so as with all online discussions just anecdotal, but I will call out the mn meme of trying to push coding, sorry now it is cyber security, is a road to riches.

My brother is in this industry. He was at Goldman Sachs first and is now at one of the big tech giants mentioned. He's still only 27 and has been on six figures for a few years plus massive bonuses. The joining bonuses alone are around 30K at those firms. Maybe Civil service jobs pay much less, but banks certainly pay those salaries.

Have experience of working for a magic circle firm although didn’t train at one

we worked until 3am/4am/5am every night for about 6 weeks and worked most weekends for about 3 months. Could never ever make plans because even when it was quiet i worked until about 10

its not based on connections as there are formal application processes but it is def the top graduates of oxbridge and a select few other j is eg LSE/UCL/Bristol - so not all Russell unis

60k a year for even such a broad term of 'cyber security' (which clearly shows a lack of knowledge) for a 23 year old is an outlier.

I'd say that's an outlier too. However, in the context of the OPs question If someone told you that their child was 23 and already earning £60k, would you believe them? , then I'd be willing to believe their child was one of the outliers rather than more typical (my DD is 24 so I've some idea of the norm)

There are so many of us lawyers on MN there is always the risk these kinds of threads turn into discussions about our wonderful legal profession..... you don't need "an in" to get into those hard to get jobs. However they are very very competitive. The processes to get obtain a training contract require a huge amount of work (I applied to 139 firms and had 25 interviews (probably a record) before getting mine - 1982 was the worst UK unemployment for 50 years however.)

The process to apply will start during your degree. Having an "in" I suppose might mean you are on some disadvantaged people's programme which guarantees you an interview I suppose but being the son of the senior partner as an "in" would not work these days nor often in 1983 when I started work.

By the way not a law job but my ex cleaner's law graduate son (muslim immigrants, comprehensive school) has a job in financial services at a leading firm - I hope that does illustrates that the UK is a reasonably fair place for jobs in the City. It is not a perfect system but it is better than in some countries although in that boy's case his advantage was being in London. The white working class boys of my native North East England probably find it harder to get a job in a leading firm in London due to geography, poverty etc.

They are very interesting issues. My only point more generally for people is make sure your teenagers know that if money is important to them that there are a range of high paid careers ou can do and the process to get most of them starts in your teens usually with very high exam grades and a lot of hard work and lots of applications.

For law jobs people can do a google search of the big firm's name, linkedin and the "trainee solicitor" and that will throw up qite a few trainees and show you who they are and where they studied to get an idea of who is hired. They tend universally even if they are from the worst comp in Wales to have extremely high exam results eg a first even if from a particularly poor university but they came ot of poverty to get it.

I earned a bit more, £72k at 28, 15yrs ago.

Accountant, who job hopped every 2-3 years for a big pay rise each time.

Rather astonishingly, I did the least work at that job, of any that I'd had.

for law yes you need to apply for vacation schemes whilst at uni - and then training contracts. I too applied for at least 50 and got interviews with 6- and landed 1! The application process was very formal - almost like a ucas form. This was 15 years ago. Knowing a partner may get work experience at 15 which you can put on your application I suppose- but it would never get you a training contract. Obviously connections can get you jobs the higher up you go though.

regarding immigrants - yes of course, I’m the daughter of immigrants - it really means nothing if the child goes to a good university and gets brilliant grades. In my case my parents taught me timetables at 5 and instilled a crazy work ethic - a bit ott. But it helped to push me anyway. A significant proportion of grads in the big 4 and increasingly large city law firms are the children of immigrants. Obviously there is usually still a lack of representation at the top but that’s another point altogether

My friends DS was on close to that at that age he is a coder and won a hackathon or two. He had been coding for years by the time he graduated and was making a thousand a month sometimes more when studying. He is around 27 now and took a six month sabbatical to go travelling late last year.

Namechanged, I agree.
I think the general point to be made is whether you are a good teenager footballer, dancer or potential lawyer or accountant it is hard to get the very top jobs when you graduate (or, for footballers, leave school to train with a potentially good team); that these high paid graduate jobs are not the jobs all graduates obtain and it is a bit of a squid game to fight your way to get them. Even just the time to make the applications can be days with a 1% chance of success only.

It’s not just about graduates though. Some of the best fee earners in DH’s City team have qualified through the firm’s school leaver programme. They join straight from A-levels and qualify on the job. They come from very diverse backgrounds and stand a strong chance of promotion into senior roles, and tend to be strong, popular members of the team. I think it’s interesting that there are now more routes into professions, not just the graduate milk round.

I find that interesting as my own profession (medicine) has been heading towards adopting apprenticeship routes, as an alternative to the convention 5/6 years just at university.

These alternative routes in will hopefully be good for diversity in professions.