[Finance] What salary would this job command?

Westdene Seagull · Mar 3, 2021

Goldstone1976 said:
The way I get round that is to publish all employees salaries on the intranet/notice board (you need each employees permission, of course - we don’t hire them unless they agree). Obviously, you have to be able to defend why each employee gets what they get - but then, you should be able to do that anyway...

I kind of agree with this method but not to the point of publishing an employees exact salary. I prefer the way corporates do it in that every role has a banding / grade and each banding / grade has a salary range and these are published rather than the individual employees salary. Each individual can then have the discussion as to how to get to the next banding / grade in their 1-2-1.

Westdene Seagull · Mar 3, 2021

spongy said:
I have a video interview tomorrow. I'd love £46k. Would solve nearly all of my problems.

That's the ballpark figure I had in my head.

This is how I read it.

But the salary on offer is £25‐30k DOE.

I think its on the low side but from what I've researched it seems average for national salary. But this is the South East. I get the feeling with the engineering and manufacturing sector already on its knees due to competition from Eastern Europe and China (not even bringing Covid into the discussion) that companies are chancing their arm and advertising for the lowest bidder rather than what the job is worth.

I'm fully aware that there are lots of people unemployed and desperate for work, particularly in manufacturing/engineering as there are lots of small/medium firms going under. So companies like this are able to drive wages down as its an employers market right now.

I just want to earn enough to go to work to pay a mortgage and still have some kind of reasonable work/life balance.

With the wife still on part time wages and until we qualify for the 30 hours free childcare to allow her t go back to work full time I need to earn as much as I can.

Right now I'm on £28k. With 8 hours o/t a week guaranteed so bring in more than whats on offer here. But I will bring commuting costs back down to £0, and save £50pw on petrol commuting.

Although I will have more disposable income I still can't reach the LTV to get a mortgage.

Hopefully I'm not too late with my advice. As others have said, ignore salary for now but also make sure you have some probing questions t ask ( download the accounts from Companies House is always a good idea - then you can ask about loses etc ). But there is a killer question to use but make sure it's your closing question - "If you have any doubts about offering me this role what are they ?" - often stumps the untrained interviewer but if they do come back with issues then you can address them there and then.

Goldstone1976 · Mar 3, 2021

Westdene Seagull said:
I kind of agree with this method but not to the point of publishing an employees exact salary. I prefer the way corporates do it in that every role has a banding / grade and each banding / grade has a salary range and these are published rather than the individual employees salary. Each individual can then have the discussion as to how to get to the next banding / grade in their 1-2-1.

Yep - seen it done that way too of course. Large corporates tend to have very wide salary bands, even at lower salaries, and the bands can often overlap extensively. eg I've seen:

Band 1: £22k-32k
Band 2: £25-35k

This makes the exercise futile, imo.

It could easily work if the bands were much narrower and there was only a 10-20% overlap. I just chose to go the full monty, s'all.

Springal · Mar 3, 2021

Goldstone1976 said:
Yep - seen it done that way too of course. Large corporates tend to have very wide salary bands, even at lower salaries, and the bands can often overlap extensively. eg I've seen:

Band 1: £22k-32k
Band 2: £25-35k

This makes the exercise futile, imo.

It could easily work if the bands were much narrower and there was only a 10-20% overlap. I just chose to go the full monty, s'all.

How does it work with acquisitions out of interest? I work in the Tech industry for a vendor / manufacturer that typically acquires a company every 18-24 months. These companies we acquire can come from different areas, so some might be high margin, big ticket business, others lower margin, smaller deal run rate type business. I suspect that the sales people salaries are all over the place - but they all move onto the same kind of OTE plan at least.

I'd be much more onboard with a grading type system but wonder what happens if you get acquired, move into a new company and are paid higher than the banding system for a role? Or have I answered my own question and this gets re-aligned during restructuring every now and again

sydney · Mar 3, 2021

Goldstone1976 · Mar 3, 2021

Plooks said:
That just seems like a clever way of being able to claim you are transparent and fair but actually leaves you room to discriminate by placing minorities and women at the bottom of the brackets.

That's one the accusations that can be levelled at such disclosure, yes; and one of many reasons why I rejected doing it this way - total transparency defeats any accusation that one is trying to be clever or spinning the data. A simple list of every employee's salary leaves no such room.

Paulie Gualtieri · Mar 3, 2021

I’d focus on a diplomatic response to why you are leaving your current employer first!

Negotiate if they offer you the job

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Munkfish · Mar 3, 2021

£25,000-£32,000

Goldstone1976 · Mar 3, 2021

Springal said:
How does it work with acquisitions out of interest? I work in the Tech industry for a vendor / manufacturer that typically acquires a company every 18-24 months. These companies we acquire can come from different areas, so some might be high margin, big ticket business, others lower margin, smaller deal run rate type business. I suspect that the sales people salaries are all over the place - but they all move onto the same kind of OTE plan at least.

I'd be much more onboard with a grading type system but wonder what happens if you get acquired, move into a new company and are paid higher than the banding system for a role? Or have I answered my own question and this gets re-aligned during restructuring every now and again

My experience, on the both the buy side and the sell side is that employees' T&Cs are one of the first areas in the acquired company that an acquirer seeks to 'harmonise' with those they have already got in place. Depending on jurisdiction and unionisation, there may be restrictions on what you can do without employee consent. In the UK, for example, TUPE regulations are pretty strict. Also of relevance is whether a specific term is contractual or not. However, over a couple of years, I've found you can get pretty close to where you want to be, providing you're both reasonable and fair, and clearly explain why you want to get to where you wish to be.

As a specific example, a company I ran had death in service benefits (DIS) pegged at 3x annual salary - which is pretty standard in the industries in which I operate. One company I bought had DIS at 10x salary, which is off-the-scale generous - and very expensive (it's provided by an insurance policy). Over 18 months, I brought all bar two employees onto 3x - by offering a salary increase equivalent to 50% of the savings I would achieve by reducing the benefit to 3x. The employee got extra cash now, and still had industry-norm DIS, I saved the company c£1.5m pa cost. Most employees favour salary over DIS, in my experience, providing the benefit provided is industry-norm. Win/win.

The same approach can be taken to commissions/bonuses/all other benefits. Salaries are harder, but they too can be adjusted over time into alignment - though some tough conversations may need to be had (as well as many easier ones - for those who appear underpaid).

WATFORD zero · Mar 3, 2021

Springal said:
How does it work with acquisitions out of interest? I work in the Tech industry for a vendor / manufacturer that typically acquires a company every 18-24 months. These companies we acquire can come from different areas, so some might be high margin, big ticket business, others lower margin, smaller deal run rate type business. I suspect that the sales people salaries are all over the place - but they all move onto the same kind of OTE plan at least.

I'd be much more onboard with a grading type system but wonder what happens if you get acquired, move into a new company and are paid higher than the banding system for a role? Or have I answered my own question and this gets re-aligned during restructuring every now and again

I did a lot of Acquisitions (coincidentally in the Tech sector) and, where required, the 'levelling' of salaries across a group of companies can take a long while to address, often years, and any sort of 'banding' only adds complexity.

There is not always a need to level across the group though. Where markets, product groups etc are different, there may be no need and I believe that Goldstone1976's policy would work in a single company type organisation or if there is a divisional structure (by product, market etc). It's one of the issues for businesses that do a lot of acquisitions that should be investigated and planned at due diligence..

I also didn't like the 'banding' idea as I have always had examples of good techies earning more than their respective managers and quite justifiably so. I'm sure most people in tech industries can think of similar situations

*edit* And while I was typing you got a far better answer above :blush:

timbha · Mar 3, 2021

zefarelly said:
THis, plus time, car costs etc etc . . . . . I have this issue . . . petrol is expensive at the moment. costing me over £50 a week . . . . . If I was allowed to work from home one or two days a week . . . an above inflation pay rise, plus over an hour a day.

But won’t help with getting a mortgage

Westdene Seagull · Mar 3, 2021

Plooks said:
That just seems like a clever way of being able to claim you are transparent and fair but actually leaves you room to discriminate by placing minorities and women at the bottom of the brackets.

Utter rubbish - it's the ROLE that is placed at a grading not the person fulfilling the role. So for example let's take an IT Technician Grade 1. The Salary is likely to be £24k - £30k. A departmental manager would have a set number of IT technician Grade 1 roles - it matters not what gender, race, religion, sexual orientation the person is that fills the role - it's based purely on their skill set. It's one of the fairest ways to do things. You could do it the other way - which is often the case in jobs I take - and base the salary on negotiation - now that really does put some people at a disadvantage - namely the people that are too shy to push for more money.

Goldstone1976 · Mar 3, 2021

WATFORD zero said:
...I have always had examples of good techies earning more than their respective managers and quite justifiably so. I'm sure most people in tech industries can think of similar situations

In no company I have run over the last 20 years have I ever been the highest paid employee. In most I'm not even in the top 10. Sales folk often earn more than me, as well as, as you say, seriously good techies. I'm just a businessman; I'm not the most important person in the business.

However, I have always had a lot more share options than others. If the business is sold, I make money. Given I tend to run PE/VC-backed businesses, selling them tends to be pretty high up the list of priorities of my shareholders. Aligning my compensation to the shareholders' interests provides all of: comfort to the shareholders as they know that I'm as motivated as them to achieve their goals, reduction in cash outflow, and not pissing off the key staff who have got the business to the point where employing someone like me makes sense (ie 1-3 years pre-sale).

Westdene Seagull · Mar 3, 2021

WATFORD zero said:
I also didn't like the 'banding' idea as I have always had examples of good techies earning more than their respective managers and quite justifiably so. I'm sure most people in tech industries can think of similar situations

The banding should be based on function though .... or at least good banding. So a managerial role would have a managerial banding - not linked at all to the techies roles. I used to manage a team of third line network engineers - all earning £80k+ while I was on £55k - didn't bother me, they were being paid for their skill set as was I.

clockend1983 · Mar 3, 2021

spongy said:
After my cluster**** of employment for the 12 weeks I have been approached by an agency about another job.

I havent been actively looking as I'm just still glad I've got a job right now but I left my profile on CVLibrary open.

This role sounds right up my street and is effectively what I was doing before I got royally ****ed over by the last bunch of Complete And Utter Shysters. And the bunch of Complete And Utter Shysters I then joined at the back end of last year.

To me it looks like a "supervisory or 'go-to" role as it reports to a Works Manager.

The thing is that I know the company. At my last engineering place I used to make a lot of their products and they are less than 100 yards down the road from the first Complete And Utter Shysters.

I know a few of the people who work there due to my dealings with them for the past 10 years.

I purposefully haven't added the salary offered and would like some input from your good selves before I think its worth going for....

JOB DESCRIPTION

Job Title: Production Engineer

Location: secret

Reports To: Works Manager

PURPOSE

 Carry out a wide range of assignments to improve the efficiency and quality of the production areas whilst also supporting the achievement of daily business goals and drive long term technical and cost reduction projects.

 To assist the Works Manager in all areas of day-to-day operations in accordance with Company standards

Duties and Responsibilities

 To manage and oversee the manufacturing process to ensure that it is run in smooth, lean and efficient manner.
 Support upfront data/software management of production processes.
 Undertake additional tasks and other reasonable duties as directed by the business from time to time.
 To be involved in and support all aspects of the factory production process including design, manufacturing, stock control and distribution.
 To input into the product design process to ensure that products can be produced in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
 To ensure that materials are researched and selected to ensure the right balance of quality and cost.
 To research, assess and implement improvements and efficiencies in the manufacturing processes.
 Train and develop colleagues and trainees as directed by the Works Manager.
 To ensure that any issues with the manufacturing process are investigated and fixed and to co-ordinate between departments to ensure any issues are resolved.
 To undertake quality investigations and to lead and ensure an ongoing culture of continuous process improvement.
 To ensure that all requirements under health and safety legislation are actively adhered to
 To ensure that the energy consumption and pollution levels are kept to a minimum
 Exercise own judgement and initiative.
 Work with limited supervision and to ensure all deadlines are met.

Person Specification

• Previous experience of working in a Production Engineering role
• Good communications skills and an ability to develop and maintain good working relationships.
• Good organisational skills and an ability to prioritise tasks.
• Maintain good level of accuracy and attention to detail when under pressure
• Self-motivated, able to use initiative and work effectively and responsibly without supervision.
• Awareness of confidentiality issues, including a sense of discretion.
• Ability to demonstrate a commitment to own personal development within the role.

Qualifications

The following are preferred and/or required:

• Ideally, have recent experience in a production environment or a related industry.
• HNC/HND in Mechanical/Manufacturing/Production Engineering or related subject
• Kaizen or Lean Manufacturing techniques
• Experience with CAD/CAM/Solidworks and CNC machine use
• Experience around Automatic Powder Coating lines
• GCSE English
• GCSE Maths
• Computer literate: ability to use varying internal systems.
• Experience of welding processes

Over to you.....

Don’t they tell you how much the salary is?

Barnet Seagull · Mar 3, 2021

If this is your field, i'd definitely be looking at development opportunities when you get your offer.

If you can get in for 30k and get them to fund Lean Six Sigma or similar (as its *cough* "on your existing development plan") you can then also make yourself more desirable to the market for your next move as well as benefitting them. Once youve saved them some £ due to your skills, you can then talk salary again.

Goldstone1976 · Mar 3, 2021

Barnet Seagull said:
If this is your field, i'd definitely be looking at development opportunities when you get your offer.

If you can get in for 30k and get them to fund Lean Six Sigma or similar (as its *cough* "on your existing development plan") you can then also make yourself more desirable to the market for your next move as well as benefitting them. Once youve saved them some £ due to your skills, you can then talk salary again.

Great idea. :thumbsup:

spongy · Mar 3, 2021

zefarelly said:
THis, plus time, car costs etc etc . . . . . I have this issue . . . petrol is expensive at the moment. costing me over £50 a week . . . . . If I was allowed to work from home one or two days a week . . . an above inflation pay rise, plus over an hour a day.

I will have more money in my pocket. I had no commuting costs at my old job as it was so local.

Then I got the job at globe energy for a massive rise and thought I'd finally made it.

Then Lockdown 4 happened and I was released, the old company refused to take me back (covid, cost cutting, "you chose to leave us so tough shit attitude").

I took this one out of sheer desperation as I needed to get back into work quickly. I'm on a slightly higher basic than the old place but overtime is only paid at x1.3 not x1.5

Due to sheer volume of it I am down slightly and the commuting costs means I'm effectively down £200 a month.

This place is weird. It's a family run firm. But they're Plymouth Bretheren. Very strange people. Radio is banned as its against their religion to listen to music, won't do blood transfusions like JW etc.

They've even taken all the radios out of their company cars and lorries so the drivers can't listen to the radio when out.

They got me there on the premise that they needed someone with experience and the knowledge of lasers to get them more efficient. I've been there about 6 weeks as an operator looking at what's happening. Its an awful set up. They spent £0.5m on it with no knowledge at all. So I came on board.

Spent the last 6 weeks analysing it and wrote a report for them. They're going to (with my guidance) implement most of what I've suggested. But I'm here as an operator. With my experience and knowledge I should have come in as a bloody consultant!

But I'm here on not a great wage telling the people who don't know what they're doing how to do their jobs with none of the benefits of being a director or manager.

I only have 3 goals in my life right now.

Spend as much time as I can with my dad.

Spend time at home with the wife and kids, (working 12 hour days is bad enough but I'm currently on "lates" so 9.30am start, 6pm finish but all overtime has to be done after the shift to avoid doubling up with the other guy. This means I'm not finishing until 8.30pm or later). Then I'm up with the kids for breakfast school run as the wife has been able to start earlier at work and finish in time to do the s hool pick up. Sounds great but I have absolutely no down of free time whatsoever.

I just want a job doing normal hours like normal people and buy my own house and spend time in it doing it up.

I dont earn enough to buy anything I would consider a decent family home despite having the deposit. I know I'll be saving money with commuting costs but what I need to improve is the income figure. Its just not enough to get the LTV. There are options in different areas but I've already moved 5 times in my life (only 2 by choice). Due to me working in Horsham currently and the Mrs in Shoreham we need somewhere at least in the middle.

I was looking at Hailsham the other day but means a 70 mile round trip and would cost more for both of us.

Haywards Heath puts me closer but her further away. Lancing was an option but I'm now looking at working back in BUG.

It's a bloody nightmare.

Our 6 year old still goes to school in Hassocks and due to start primary in Sept. I want to pull her before then so only have one school change but unless we know where we're living what school do I try and get her into?

It's a bloody nightmare.

Sorry for the essay, a lot of it is general stuff and not aimed directly for you.

As you were gentlemen. Quite a good discussion going on here.

Justice · Mar 3, 2021

I’m amazed at the amount of tasks they want you to do whilst barely parting with £100 a day.

DJ NOBO · Mar 4, 2021

spongy said:
I will have more money in my pocket. I had no commuting costs at my old job as it was so local.

Then I got the job at globe energy for a massive rise and thought I'd finally made it.

Then Lockdown 4 happened and I was released, the old company refused to take me back (covid, cost cutting, "you chose to leave us so tough shit attitude").

I took this one out of sheer desperation as I needed to get back into work quickly. I'm on a slightly higher basic than the old place but overtime is only paid at x1.3 not x1.5

Due to sheer volume of it I am down slightly and the commuting costs means I'm effectively down £200 a month.

This place is weird. It's a family run firm. But they're Plymouth Bretheren. Very strange people. Radio is banned as its against their religion to listen to music, won't do blood transfusions like JW etc.

They've even taken all the radios out of their company cars and lorries so the drivers can't listen to the radio when out.

They got me there on the premise that they needed someone with experience and the knowledge of lasers to get them more efficient. I've been there about 6 weeks as an operator looking at what's happening. Its an awful set up. They spent £0.5m on it with no knowledge at all. So I came on board.

Spent the last 6 weeks analysing it and wrote a report for them. They're going to (with my guidance) implement most of what I've suggested. But I'm here as an operator. With my experience and knowledge I should have come in as a bloody consultant!

But I'm here on not a great wage telling the people who don't know what they're doing how to do their jobs with none of the benefits of being a director or manager.

I only have 3 goals in my life right now.

Spend as much time as I can with my dad.

Spend time at home with the wife and kids, (working 12 hour days is bad enough but I'm currently on "lates" so 9.30am start, 6pm finish but all overtime has to be done after the shift to avoid doubling up with the other guy. This means I'm not finishing until 8.30pm or later). Then I'm up with the kids for breakfast school run as the wife has been able to start earlier at work and finish in time to do the s hool pick up. Sounds great but I have absolutely no down of free time whatsoever.

I just want a job doing normal hours like normal people and buy my own house and spend time in it doing it up.

I dont earn enough to buy anything I would consider a decent family home despite having the deposit. I know I'll be saving money with commuting costs but what I need to improve is the income figure. Its just not enough to get the LTV. There are options in different areas but I've already moved 5 times in my life (only 2 by choice). Due to me working in Horsham currently and the Mrs in Shoreham we need somewhere at least in the middle.

I was looking at Hailsham the other day but means a 70 mile round trip and would cost more for both of us.

Haywards Heath puts me closer but her further away. Lancing was an option but I'm now looking at working back in BUG.

It's a bloody nightmare.

Our 6 year old still goes to school in Hassocks and due to start primary in Sept. I want to pull her before then so only have one school change but unless we know where we're living what school do I try and get her into?

It's a bloody nightmare.

Sorry for the essay, a lot of it is general stuff and not aimed directly for you.

As you were gentlemen. Quite a good discussion going on here.

spongy , FWIW, I read this and hope that only good things come your way. Although you already have the most important thing - a good family. That doesn’t negate the real challenges you have , but don’t forget that many millionaires crave the home set-up you have.

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[Finance] What salary would this job command?

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