Salary Story: I Trusted My Gut & Left A New Job I Hated. Now I Earn 65k
In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions and job loss, with the hope it will give young women more insight into how to advocate for themselves — and maybe take a few risks along the way.
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Age: 29 Location: Hampshire (thanks, WFH!) after having spent the first four years of my career in London. Current industry and job title: Head of research, information services Current salary: £65,000 Number of years employed since school or university: Six
Starting salary: £17,000 Biggest salary jump: £49,000 to £65,000 in 2022. Biggest salary drop: Luckily I haven’t had any salary drop in my career so far.
Biggest negotiation regret: Letting employers determine your worth (and feeling grateful for it). It took me a few years to realise that if I wanted the career I had envisioned for myself, I had to be the one making the case for myself, asking for the raise or negotiating for a better offer. I wish I had known much earlier in my career that if you are good at your job, employers find a way to pay you more money, even in organisations with small budgets.
Best salary advice: I actually have two pieces of advice:
If someone out there is willing to pay you more for what you are currently doing, you’re probably being underpaid. Don’t waste any time once you have that information otherwise it’s like negative compound interest on your career.
Sounds cliché but do always negotiate your salary. Once I started being on the other side and recruiting people for my team, I realised how much power prospective employees have once the offer is made. As the hiring manager you’re way more willing to negotiate their salary up rather than go through the recruitment process again.
I was very lucky to find this internship almost straight away after university. It was a six-month position on £17,000 a year in an advocacy organisation in London, where I was doing research on a policy area related to universities. It was an interesting enough job and a good learning experience for six months but not what I wanted to do long-term.I landed my first permanent job on £24,000 at the end of the internship, this time working in a London think-tank doing research and policy work on economics and labour markets. Being in a small organisation meant the day-to-day work was super dynamic, the work environment was fun and I was learning a lot. Seemingly out of the blue I received a pay rise to £28,000, approximately a year into the role. I knew my employer was happy with me but I hadn’t considered asking for a raise. In hindsight, the raise coincided with one of my colleagues leaving so perhaps it was a way to prevent me from leaving as well. I had been with the think-tank for about a year and a half at this stage and I was adding quite a lot of value to the team but getting frustrated that this wasn’t being recognised. After a while, with quite a bit of resentment, I started to look for other jobs and received an offer that would pay way above my current salary. I didn’t believe in myself and chickened out after the offer but I did talk with my current employer, who decided to give me a promotion. The new salary (£38,000) was nowhere near the salary the other company offered but it was a big jump from my current salary so I figured I could stay a bit longer, build up my confidence and get to spend more time with my colleagues. I really loved the work environment there.I really pushed myself hard after the promotion in 2018 and had a stellar year in 2019 in terms of research outputs, external engagements, networks and presentations. This time the effort was appreciated and at the end of the year I was promoted again, with a pay bump to £41,000. At this stage I was absolutely loving almost every aspect of my job and growing a lot, learning new things every week. The COVID pandemic completely changed the dynamics of my role, making it in some ways more exciting (loads more media interviews and presentations) and in some ways more boring (I was back doing very reactive research and the job became much more repetitive). I had a good year however and at the end I received a pay rise to £45,000.The excitement of the new parts of the job introduced by the pandemic soon faded while the repetitiveness of the job got worse. I felt I was no longer growing in my role and I wasn’t sure there was much left to learn. Plus, the working environment was getting quite toxic and it wasn’t as fun anymore. I had moved out of London during the pandemic and I was sure I wanted a remote job. So I decided to look for other opportunities and got an offer for a 90% remote job in the public sector, looking at similar issues from a policy angle rather than a research one. This paid £49,000.I didn’t last long in the public sector job – it was all the stereotypes I had in mind about working in a public sector organisation (and sometimes worse). The work was quite slow and not particularly stimulating. After a couple of months I spotted an opportunity for a different job through my network and jumped for it. I’m now working for a private company in the information services industry, doing economic research on a topic I’m super passionate about, in a very dynamic and growing team, on £65,000. Plus the job is completely remote.
Not salary advice but definitely career advice: if you find yourself in a job you dread, don’t feel afraid to start looking for something else, even if you are still at the beginning of the job. Having had the fortune to have a job I absolutely loved for many years before getting one I really did not like, I can tell you it makes a huge difference to your attitude to work and your wider mental health to do a job you enjoy.
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