Aibu to resent my employer for low salary

[throwaway3]

Work for financial company in central London. Lots of micromanaging and heavy workload, but it’s ‘low skilled’ work according to labour market (only junior banking operations).
After work, I’m too tired to do anything (other than apply for jobs). Also I can’t really afford to do much on my salary.

BSc degree and 5 years working experience in my industry. My current salary is just 31k (hard to live off in London). That 31k is with two pay rises due to hitting targets - used to be even lower! I’m humble and don’t mind starting at the bottom but the fact it’s low pay and then little to no progression is a bitter pill to swallow. Applied for few internal roles but rejected at final stage despite glowing performance review. No luck externally.

Always have flat shared but hard to find a decent room at an affordable price. Most flats have had mould, and I would share a bathroom in mixed gender shares.

Because of my low salary, I’ve tried to cut costs in virtually all areas of my life.
No beauty treatments, rarely eat out unless special occasion, don’t have a TV, no Netflix or Spotify subscriptions. Lidl and Savers for toiletries. Food budget is very tight too, I have sometimes had to scrimp on meals if have an unexpected payment.
Always lived in ‘unsafe’ areas of London - would pretend to take an Uber then cancel once my friends couldn’t see then walk back at night. Men regularly catcall on streets or shout things from their cars in these parts of London.
Once naively lived with a live in landlord (guy in his 50s) to get cheaper rent (still £750pcm) but then the landlord ended up being a creep who harassed me. I then had to leave early for my own safety but lost my deposit.

Sometimes companies have mistakenly taken a while to refund me something so I’m on edge waiting for the money back.

AIBU to start to resent my employer for paying such a low salary with no progression and bad working conditions? I feel like all the negative experiences in my life seem to stem from the fact I’m on low wage scraping by very stressed then desperate to try risky things just to save money to survive on this wage.

The idea of being able to have a job that pays more than just surviving seems pretty out of reach for someone like me (only had junior roles).

& please don’t tell me to leave London because the only thing that keeps me from giving up on life entirely is the fact I have amazing friends here who I regularly see. They very kindly have treated me to experiences I couldn’t otherwise pay for eg gigs or theatre tickets. I don’t have much time or money to be able to invest in my own future, but I love seeing my friends win.

Retrain? That’s the starting salary for a teacher.
Cut down to 3 days and get a second job that’s less stressful. Supermarket work keeps you fit plus the discount /freebies help?
Get a live in job?

Is your salary expected for your role and level?

Would you be paid the same outside london and so could take advantage of lower cost of living to salary ratio?

Are there similar jobs that use the same qualifications with better progrssion?

Why are you junior with five years of work experience? Put yourself out on the job market and aim higher.

You can resent them if you wish but it won’t make your situation better. It’s neither reasonable nor unreasonable, it’s just how you feel.

Have you benchmarked your salary for the industry/responsibilities/location? My partner did by using salary info online and talking to former uni peers in their industry and determined that they were underpaid. They put together all of the information, took it to their yearly review and explained they’d be leaving if they didn’t get a £15k bump. It worked. They were prepared to walk if necessary.

Other than that the options are to move or change your career. Moving doesn’t sound like a good option so I’d look at retraining.

Depending on skills you have, you might not need to actually undertake formal training to change your career. But even if you do, it’s a better use of your energy than being angry.

It's really shit but that's the world we live in now. You can't work full time and expect to have a reasonable standard of living. It's all about side hustles now, working 50-60 hour weeks just to afford the odd night out and a new pair of tights. The world has gone mad!

Can you do bar work or supermarket work at weekends to save some money to do some kind of training course? Something that will bump you up a few pay grades in your industry or give you a leg up in a different industry.

Honestly, your options are to either find a rich partner, retrain, or move out of London leaving your support network behind. None of them are easy or straightforward and none of them are necessarily the answer to your prayers.

I work in banking operations and our grads start on more than that in a regional office several hours from London…. It would be £40k plus in London. 5 years experience would be a promotion and closer to £50k!

A lot of firms are trying to decentralise Ops work to avoid paying London wages and either regionalising or offshoring however. Can you access any training to project management or low code/citizen developer type analytics such as Exceptor/Alteryx or similar? Projects and data analytics is the way to progress in my world!

You sound like a great employee, the only thing to do is apply for new jobs in London, as it doesn't seem like your current employer appreciates you. It's even worse where I live, by the sea, London rent prices, minimum wage jobs where they expect the earth.

Because I’ve only worked at a junior level doing ‘lower responsibility’ work. If I apply for a senior operations role they regularly decline me because I haven’t worked at that level before. I recently got to final stage of junior ops role at an American investment bank (who pay juniors much more). I technically met all of the job description but still didn’t get it. In feedback they said they were really impressed by how I came across in interview but chose another candidate due to having experience at same type of bank (I’ve worked at banks but not investment banks). Hence I’m not surprised I’m not getting shortlisted for step up jobs as they will already have candidates who exceed all reqs.

I would love to get more experience to improve my prospects but it’s hard. There are lots of junior employees at my scale at work, we are all competing to get tiny scraps of additional responsibility. People who’ve worked here longer at my scale haven’t been promoted. In internal networking event, multiple women who come across really well (smarter than me) and hardworking have still been stuck in low skilled roles for over 10 years.

In meantime I’ve applied for secondments at my current employer (declined because management claim it’s busy period in my own team so can’t risk losing resource), and joined internal networks and mentor scheme. It’s still not enough in my experience, because there aren’t many mid level roles in first place and fierce competition when they do come up

I imagine as retraining would cost money that is not an option. And might not be something you want to do especially if you are good at what you do. Perhaps you could consider transferable skills you have that would allow you to apply for different positions in your sector: positions that would offer better career progression. Good luck. You deserve it

Do you like the sector or do you have transferable skills that you could take into a different sector.

You might progress quicker outside of financial junior banking operations

I agree either way above, I would look at a side ways move to another sector with better promotion prospects.

Is your currently salary competitive? Would you be better off with a sideways move to another company where there are more development opportunities?

Get a live in Housekeeper or nanny job. In central London, you'll get your own accommodation, all bills paid and at least £40k on top.

I was on low pay when young, so I got a second part time job in a pub. Suggest you do likewise if you can't manage.

OP with qualifications and 5 years experience you should not be in a junior role...

Keep looking for a new job with a company that value you and your skills.

Swap companies
The good thing about living in London is there are so many jobs

Even if your new job is just a horizontal one (i.e another junior role) hopefully the new place will have more scope for progression - try and look for places that specifically cite investing in/developing their employees etc. It doesn't sound like your current job has the slightest interest in ever promoting you if they can get away with not doing so.

Even try a slightly different sector if you have to, if its easier to get management experience in, say retail or hospitality, then swap back to banking after a year or two.

Thanks, definitely willing to get a second job in short term. I guess was just thinking in long term how to improve my prospects. A second job is just a small buffer but doesn’t solve root issue that my main job doesn’t pay enough

I’m also not that young anymore so scared my age will continue to work against me

I would look at moving to another role in financial services that can use your experience but offer better prospects. For example a paraplanner in a financial adviser firm, good ones are in short supply and then there’s the potential to continue training to become an adviser if you fancied that.

Can you take further CISI qualifications or similar alongside work; do they pay for study?

You need to move companies. You can raise your salary quicker by moving around. The cost of living is very high and the salaries offered don’t reflect this but your industry is reasonably high paying so you should focus on job hunting

Resenting your employer is pointless.

The only way out of this is to secure another role, whether that be internally or externally. Put your energies into that & good luck.

Agree with others that it is worth looking around at other employers, you can often bump your pay by moving around.

31k isn’t a horrendous salary, it’s not far off the average salary which is around 35k, but you want to live in the most expensive place to live in the country. You could double your income and still be feeling very tight if you wanted to stay in London.

I agree with others. Sideways move to a better company. Then if there are no opportunities there, by choosing a more prestigious firm or different sector in a sideways move will give you more opportunities for the next move

This.

What are your transferable skills?

I thought you'd say you were on less than that.
Could you move somewhere a little further out?
Some places are only half an hour from central London but it would be cheaper rent.

Definitely apply for higher roles in banking. FS is a notoriously tough industry but usually lucrative if you sell yourself and your skills and have confidence to move up.

If you're unhappy in FS, what other careers interest you? If you're very money driven then could you do re recruitment in the professional sectors, maybe finance as you do have experience in that industry.

I think you should keep going with applying for similar jobs with better firms, particularly US ones! You’ve got close a couple of times which shows you have the right CV and skills to what you’re applying for- you just need one to work out. A single move could get you a good couple of K salary rise and in the US firms you’re much more likely to get a rise each year at least in line with inflation as long as you keep your performance up!

It is a tough industry though. Can you go to some industry networking events or recruitment evenings to help you?