Just applied for a new job which is £12K less than my current job.
Current job is unsustainable in terms of pressure and working away from home etc etc

new employer is in public sector and from speaking to friends who work there, my quality of life will greatly improve. Job is equally intersting but more specialist and actually achievable.

Question is – will am i doing my medium term career prospects harm by taking a cut in salary and responsibility? And should i hold out for a new job which is closer to my current one.
Cut in salary will have significant impact on lifestyle but am currently too knackered and stressed to enjoy the money anyway.
So current thinking is sod it and sod them (current employer), lets enjoy life for a change and spend more time with family and less in airports/trains/hotels.
Just nervous that now is not a good time to be starting a new job in the public sector esp as only the first 12 months is guranteed.

Any thoughts…………….?

Live to work dont work to live. Remember that the better terms and conditions you get in the public sector is worth a considerable amount. Maybe 10- 20% of your salary ( decent leave and pension)

What does your family think?

OK.

I used to work private sector. *very* long hours. Trust me, you can not begin to imagine the dedication this job took. 24 hour days? Just standard stuff round this place. We worked 100 hour+ weeks on a regular basis. The pressure was insane. People were going off with stress all over the place. Crazy.

So I quit and took a job public sector.

Bad bits.

1. WTF are people doing with out tax money? It gets pissed down the drain in quantities you would not believe.
2. Frustration. Do not expect decisions you make to actually happen. Do not expect anything to change. Do not expect your private sector experience to have any bearing on what you find. It's a different world.
3. Bored out of your tree? You will be. If in the private sector you did seven jobs, public have seven people to do the same job.

Good bits

1. Free time. Hell yeah. I work 37 hour weeks. I actually do a lot more hours than that but it's public so I take flexio time.I currently have almost a full week left to take. I just up and off and take a ride when I feel like it.
2. Stress? What's that? Oooh, my coffee cup fell over, I'm feeling stress. That's 3 months off work please.
3. Training. you have to give it me.
4. Unions. You have no idea how powerful these guys are. CRazy.
5. Benefits. It's limitless. Name a shop, any shop, and I'll tell you the discount I get for being a civil servant.

So my advice is do it. You'll be bored at first but your work life balance changes overnight.

edit: And oh sorry. I took a financial hit of losing all my overtime (probably £10k per annum) and I lost my car allowance, that was £4.5k per annum. I lost my bonus which varied from nothing to 1k on an annual basis. I lost my free health care on bupa.

When your kids recognise you and you can spend time with them you'll remember that more than the new sofa/tv/bike/car upgrade that you couldn't stretch too. Time is priceless really so take what you can when you can IMO.

I'm hoping to soon take a 25% pay cut and give up school holidays to get my weekends and evenings back.

Just taken about a 95 percent pay cut…

But I am now a volunteer with VSO, earning an Ethiopian wage!

In the long term I hope that by doing my VSO placement work within very different areas will open up to me.

As everyone else has said, It's not always about the money…

It's not going to be £12K net though is it?

More like 6-8

Only advice I can give is look before you leap. I switched from private sector – oil industry with 36-48 hr days (start job, keep working til you finish) and have now done various flavours of public sector.

You don't say which bit of public sector you are moving into and it's a big place with plenty of variation – civil service, nhs, local authority etc etc. I work for a metropolitan council and we're a loose conglomeration of at least 100 'small businesses'

Also in my experience the 'perks' are disappearing fast. Job security – 2000 redundancies at Birmingham city council, good pension – not for much longer if you believe the papers, steady salary – pay freeze this year with 3% inflation and single status may take a chunk, training – we're on no non-essential spend, it's been decided training is non essential.

Work life balance can be better but might be worth asking the questions above?

my quality of life will greatly improve. Job is equally intersting but more specialist and actually achievable.

is that worth 12k to you??

to be fair I think you've made the desision to go already…good luck

Thanks everyone – I have burnt my bridges in the past and not regretted it.

I hear what you are saying about the public sector – i worked briefly for a Local Authority which was interesting………..

Salary cut will be £10K (gross) plus car plus BUPA, gulp.
I will be able cycle or train to the office, and we have a 2nd car so not fussed.

Public sector disadvantages: What pay you are on now, you'll be on in 3 years, plus many so-called "safe" public sector jobs won't be safe by the end of the year.

Advantages, yes, possibly a better work life balance, but what I'll say id that it took me nearly 21 years of public sector employment & significant illness to achieve that balance.

So long as you're not setting yourself off down a finacial river of doom & gloom due to the pay cut, then really only you can decide whether this move is right for you.

It's not going to be £12K net though is it?

More like 6-8

There are also benefits which are not immediately obvious – death in service, proper pensions (obviously depending on precise role / employer) etc. etc.

I'm taking an £8k pay cut from the 1st April, working more hours with less holiday…I can't wait, I wish I could start tomorrow.

In my experience it's better to be happy/content than rich.

If a £12k cut is from £65k to £53k, then it's perfectly doable, and you can quickly adjust your life not to notice it. If it's £30k to £18k, then the adjustments will have to be very big.

The general view is that whichever flavour of central government we get, the wider public sector is going to get a bit of a kicking. Of course, those not in the public sector have already had a kicking ("enforced" pay cuts, pay freezes, redundancies with no prospect of a replacement job, loss of all sorts of benefits, no more final salary pension schemes).

All the above comments are good, and there is risk putting yourself into the public sector when all the talk is of upcoming cuts, but think of it like this: those cuts have already been happening, and will continue to happen, in the private sector. This time, you get to have more of a life and delay those cuts while government and the unions fight it out.

I'm hoping to soon take a 25% pay cut and give up school holidays to get my weekends and evenings back.

What you up to then? 😉

you said you've applied, thats a wee bit different to it been offered…

IME if you've not worked in the public sector before, its like FS, very hard to get into

What you up to then?

It's a secret 🙂

It's a secret

'pparently so..! 😀

Time will tell if my reduced wage and hours job works out, but I'm hopeful. The commuting and driving for £30k plus turned me into a monster, children not liking me wife at full stretch. 17 months sabbatical have produced a likeable person who realises money isn't everything, some helps as I have had no income for 11 months!

'pparently so..!

Flexitime and no work allowed out of office. Decent holidays and pension. Still public sector and still "making a difference" but no 11 hour weekend marking sessions.

I've just taken a voluntary cut in salary… 100%. That'll concentrate the mind for a bit 🙂

After the flight into the public sector last year for job security, I'm expecting a flow the other way as private sector starts to pick up and public sector gets stuck with paying for the banking bailout through pay freezes/ cuts and job losses. Is there another option for the OP to improve work life balance in private sector? Different company, location, role in same company. When they are talking about cuts in NHS and Police before an election then you know it's not going to be any better afterwards

Still public sector and still "making a difference" but no 11 hour weekend marking sessions

Interesting. Look forward to learning more in due course.

Richcc – are you for real with your "and public sector gets stuck with paying for the banking bailout through pay freezes/ cuts and job losses" comment?

Where I work we're into the second year of a pay freeze combined with compulsory redundancies where statutory minimum payments are made, a recruitment freeze (i.e. if people leave they aren't replaced) and due to our pensions being money purchase and the stock market having taken a dive our scheme is now borked. Across the region this pattern doesn't seem at all unusual – lots of friends have lost their jobs and many have yet to find new ones.

Do you really think that the public sector is going to get stuck paying? Haven't the rest of us have already been paying for the last 18 months> Isn't the only real difference that the public sector has yet to take an equal share of the pain caused by recklessness of the city spinners?

Interesting. Look forward to learning more in due course.

You got Twitter DM. Keep it quiet though.

Keep it quiet though.

Yes boss!

If a £12k cut is from £65k to £53k, then it's perfectly doable, and you can quickly adjust your life not to notice it. If it's £30k to £18k, then the adjustments will have to be very big.

Nail – head.

It's better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to be on than halfway up one you don't

TJ summed it up in the first sentence

So what is the %age cut?

I'd love to find a job close to home and would take a 20% cut for the right job/location I reckon. I don't think that's likely though so also wonder if I could go to a 4 day week on my current job. But then I think that in the future the salary I could earn might be a lot less so maybe I should just make hay while the sun shines….

Samuri's post sums up pretty much my experience of moving private to public sector. (2 years ago for me)

However good points 3,4&5 aren't in evidence where I am….

We also had a round of voluntaries last year, with another suspected round this year, however the long termers all attempt to get it as it's like winning the lottery (I was hearing the max payouts were in the region of £300k) Which creates a weird culture of people actually wanting voluntary and thus trying to make sure they appear disposable…..

My public sector experience was one of some good colleagues and some lazy/incompetent/useless people who THINK they are at the cutting edge of commerce but really are in a total backwater. The place was staffed with people who cared much more about life and their benefits than they did about work, which meant that the actual job was bloody frustrating – which lead to some stress I have to say. If you don't want to have to give a shit about what you do, then you'll be fine…

You might have a lot of time for other things, but you might also find yourself stumbling aimlessly towards retirement through timeless mediocrity.. wake up one morning and you're 65 and have achieved nothing.

Swings and roundabouts. I wish people on here wouldn't assume that anyone trying to build a high paying career is just greedy for a new widescreen telly. Personally, I'm working hard (kind of) to build security, to give me and my family the ability to do things that are important to us but would be otherwise out of reach.

It's all about ambition really – both at work and out of it. That's not to say that ambition is necessarily a good or bad thing…

Surely if you move to the public sector and find that you hate it 1 year later, your skills/experience will still be fresh enough to hop back to the private sector again? Non?

Job hopping looks bad on your CV tho…

geoffj – Member

It's not going to be £12K net though is it?

More like 6-8

There are also benefits which are not immediately obvious – death in service, proper pensions (obviously depending on precise role / employer) etc. etc

Agree that public sector is often blessed with some very nice T&C's, but these take a long time to accumulate, and if the OP already has a private pension one decision he'll have to think about is whether to keep a private pension up, or take on a public sector one, can all depend upon age to retirement etc.

if the OP already has a private pension one decision he'll have to think about is whether to keep a private pension up, or take on a public sector one, can all depend upon age to retirement etc.

You are having a laugh!

Private pension, only I pay. Public pension, I pay and the employer pays more – plus the pension has nothing to do with the actually amount paid…

You are having a laugh!

Private pension, only I pay. Public pension, I pay and the employer pays more – plus the pension has nothing to do with the actually amount paid…

OK< I must be having a laugh then. ❓