Salary Story: A £30,000 Pay Rise Got Me Through The Cost Of Living Crisis
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: 28 Location: Bristol Current industry and job title: Product marketing manager, technology Current salary: £63,000 Number of years employed since school or university: 10 Starting salary: £15,000 Biggest salary jump: From £34,000 to £63,000 in 2022. Biggest salary drop: From £24,000 to £22,000 in 2016.
Biggest negotiation regret: When taking a job abroad, I stupidly thought I was getting a pay rise when I was actually getting paid much less than my previous role. Although I converted the salary in euros to get a rough idea of what it would be in sterling, I failed to realise that the higher percentage of taxes I would be paying abroad meant that I ended up with less money in my bank account each month. When I moved, I was willing to take any job I could find as I didn’t speak the local language. So when I got offered an English-speaking role in marketing, I was just so happy that I accepted it without negotiating at all. Once I had been in the job for a while, my manager mentioned that she was really surprised I didn’t negotiate the salary.
Best salary advice: Depending on the industry you’re in, switching roles every few years means you gain lots of different experience to increase your salary potential. If I’d stayed in any of my previous roles, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to earn the wage I have now. I think keeping your experience fresh, up to date and not becoming stagnant is a good idea.
I got this job after finishing my apprenticeship. I’d taken on more responsibilities to help the brand and marketing team.This was a promotion and a raise. I’d switched roles to move to a different team within the business, the marketing team. This was my first official marketing role, which I was thrilled about. After being made redundant (unfortunately the small company hit some bumps and had to lay off most of the workforce), I found a temporary contract that paid better than my previous role. I had to commute to a different city to go to work and I didn’t like the uncertainty of being a temporary worker so I started job hunting for a permanent role soon after starting this contract.I was happy to take a bit of a pay cut when I found this job as I was working in my home city (saving on commuting costs) and it was a permanent role so I had job security. I found this new role as there wasn’t much work that needed to be done in my last role, I was very unmotivated and wanted to work for a bigger, more modern company. This job change also came with a bit of a pay rise but that was not my motivation for switching. After an internal restructure, I had to reapply for a new role within my team or take a redundancy package. I chose to reapply and got a new role within the same team. This came with a pay rise, too. I’d taken an internal leadership course to prepare for this promotion and just generally had worked hard and stepped up unofficially within the team beforehand. When I moved to Germany, I found an English-speaking marketing role, which I was happy about. Even though the figure looks higher, after taxes this salary was lower than my previous role in the UK. My employer was surprised that I didn’t negotiate this salary — I was living in the most expensive region in Germany and just had no clue what the going rate was!
I had several pay rises while I held this job so I was earning €49,000 when I left. Since I moved back to the UK, I was employed by a “middleman” company so I could get paid in sterling, meaning my earnings were £34,000.
I am now employed by a company based in the UK. I was tempted by this new job to get new experience and to make sure I could support myself through this cost of living crisis.
This is quite an average salary for product marketing roles in the tech industry, which made me realise I was at the lower end of the salary bracket in my previous role. The company is London-based, which means the salary is probably higher than I would get if the company were based outside London.
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