r/HENRYUK

A fair few HENRYs work in industries where part of your pay is in RSUs, generally being stock in your employer which you get up front but only vests properly over to you after a period of employment. That way there's always an incentive to stay at the company as each year some of the past RSUs unlock and transfer over.

I'm curious what people in these jobs tend to do with the RSUs once they vest? Do you like to sell them immediately, so you can move the funds to something more diversified? Is that even possible, or are many RSUs in private companies and have no secondary market until a takeover?

I’ve spent most of my adult life living and working in five different countries. It’s been an amazing experience and I wouldn’t change it, but one consequence is I’ve never really put down roots.
I’m now based in London and rent a 2bed in Bermondsey for £3k a month. I earn around £230k before bonus, and if I bought I’d be roughly looking at a £190k deposit.

Part of me feels like I should finally buy somewhere and have something that’s actually mine. I’d only really want a two-bed period conversion, ideally in a neighbourhood with a bit of life to it. I work long hours, travel a lot for work and often spend weekends on my own - but always take myself out for lunches / dinners etc. The other part of me wonders whether buying is actually the right decision and whether it is something I feel like I should have done my age.

Has anyone else been in a similar position? Particularly if you’re single and bought in London in your 40s. Keen to give myself some security but also don’t want to lose money on a new build or move far out of london.

I’m not a UK native.

Thanks!

I've had a SIPP for a couple of years now but its relatively low considering my age £25k, 34 years old. I work through a Ltd Co and debating how much we should be putting into our SIPPs.

My wife and I both currently put approx 10% of our income into each of our SIPPs (we actually earn the same).

Is this too low? I feel like because of the tax benefits of SIPPs it may be worth increasing our ltd co contributions to our SIPPs (we take out £50k each in form of salary and dividends, which at the moment is enough to live off and put a little into our ISAs).

I'm acutely aware of not wanting the tail to wag the dog in terms of tax. My concern I guess is the government messing with SIPPs incl ever increasing age of retirement/access.

I’ve been offered a new role with a significant pay increase (£60k) but I’ll be going from completely remote with unbelievable freedom to hybrid 2/3 times a week. The role is also a next step upwards in my career and I’ll become a HENRY. (80k - £165/170k including bonus)

Should I take the jump?

For those who have gone from remote to hybrid, how was the transition? Alright or insufferable?

EDIT: I used to go to the office pre-covid (5 days a week off). Been completely remote for 6 years

Commute door to door is 50 mins ( 7 min walk to station - 1 line underground (36 mins) - 7 mins walk to office)

No kids and single!

Hi all,

I’ve worked at my company for the past 5 years, I am currently remote for the past year. I’ve received a 15% pay rise to £115k per annum but if I come into the office (3 days a week mandated but could potentially get away with 2 days a week), the pay rise is £175k.

I am confused really whether to take the 2 days in the office or not for a £60k pay bump, when I work it out there’s about a £2.5k difference in take home pay per month. Any advice?

By way of background - I’ll probably be on maternity leave at some point next year, maternity policy is pretty good at 50% pay for 6 months.

The commuting costs from where I live in the U.K would be more expensive to London (talking £100s per month) plus I’d be looking at staying overnight somewhere in London every week. My pension is currently sitting at 22% via salary sacrifice to keep me under the £100k threshold. My pension currently has £150k in it so I’m also wondering when I start dropping this percentage.

Any advice in general would be much appreciated.

I’m a global marketing ‘leader’ (senior manager) working in big 4 and have been for nearly 7 years. Over the past decade I’ve moved through agency → large corporate → global professional services, with steady progression into leadership roles across abm, GTM, and marketing operations.

I’ve got a job offer due to land today (they confirmed verbally on Friday that they would offer) from a boutique specialist risk advisory consultancy and am anticipating £125k-£135k, subject to how well I can negotiate. Don’t know rest of the package yet. Would ideally like to get them to £135-140k but doubt it’s possible.

For life context, 35 y.o., no kids, in a strong position property and pension wise.

Do I move from £110k base, decent benefits (big 4 standard) and lose my bonus (£10-15k) this year, from a role that is completely chilled in a big firm (wfh, boss that trusts me, all v straightforward. There are politics of course, but no promotion or progression, 2-3% last few years, lots of down time) but boredom, 0 challenge or progression, to a role that would be less strategic, more hands on, potentially hard work (but still 9-5 marketing lets be honest), but a new challenge, slightly better job title (vp), and better pay, with the chance for future progression/ using the role as a stepping stone?

Could be a next step to kick start my career progression, or more of a side ways move that makes my life a lot more difficult. Thoughts welcome! Options as I see: a) stay put, internal transfer, build experience and network with stability and coast of I want b) jump and take the risk or c) do a, but continue to look externally for next step at higher profile firm and a role that feels more of a step up

Trying to genuinely understand the market segment for Product Management Leaders ag FAANG/Banks/Startups etc that yields a total comp in the £500k-£1m range in UK?

New to UK, worked at a FAANG before, know that US can already hit 2x of where I am at, but trying to understand if London has a potential to reach a £1m TC ever.

Looking to learn from people who made it in Tech strategy/Program Management roles here.

Used to think that a GCB3 and above at HSBC or JPMC might pay you a lot for running a big program.

Started new job as a director in another Consulting firm in a newly set up practice focussed on AI Strat. Extremely top heavy with only partners and directors, mostly external hires. Toxic culture with a lot of infighting between partners, one client propping up the practice and a behavioural issue filed against a new partner due to the way they mistreat juniors and belligerence towards others.

Every day is chaotic for no good reason - lack of structure and planning, I’m the most junior person who ends up getting dumped with loads of work that would normally go to consultants and managers (that don’t exist in our team), and no real direction. We continue to sell to the one client but a range of tech consulting work.

Need direction on whether I’ve given it a fair chance or not yet. And how do I proceed from here

I'm low end HENRY in cybersecurity at a senior management level and see here ever day people talking about 'should i move to x job that pays like £150k base or so with crazy stock options / rsu that probably lets then pull in like a £million over four years or something'.

Where on earth do you find these jobs? Im on job boards and linkedin and never have spoken to a recruiter with such pay or seen these jobs. Is it the field im in that never pays this or am I doing something wrong?

Other question is, why do people come here asking if they should take it?! Ofcourse! Do the 70 hours per week in a toxic place while knowing you can completely take your foot off the gas within a few years and be ahead of majority of the UK population!

Edit: replies saying the type of job (tech sales etc) or what company (FAANG etc) but I mean, where and how do you actually find the jobs? I've looked at FAANG job boards but nothing ever shown in these money terms people talk about here.

Hi all, long time lurker, I work in fintech product strategy and on low six figures. My question is more for people who have had similar experiences. On a skilled worker visa, is it just me or does it seem impossible to switch jobs to something more relevant to your previous work experience? Does the UK market just simply not value international product experience? Sorry if this sounds more like a rant, but honestly a genuine question.

I'm a single HENRY in my late 30s working at a biotech scaleup. Previously, I completed a PhD at Oxbridge. My background is in machine learning and statistics, but I also have significant biotech know-how, so I'm tailored for ML x Bio companies. I have decent savings (£180k) but no equity.

For a variety of reasons, I'm quitting my current job and I am unsure what to do next. I have an offer to join an aging moonshot as a senior IC, but I'd need to relocate to Singapore, and the offer is not spectacular (S$180k).

I've also applied for faculty positions in academia. The rationale is that these might let me develop some IP, position myself as a founder or principal scientist, or qualify for a US O-1 or related visa. I have an offer from Oxbridge for a fixed-term, faculty-ish position, but the pay is low (£60k). I also have a real faculty offer in Scandinavia that is a bit less prestigious but pays better (€95k) and offers more independence.

Alternatively, I could reject those, spend more time interviewing, and perhaps land a mid-level position at a frontier lab, if I'm lucky, like Isomorphic Labs. The problem is that interview processes are extremely long and uncertain.

What are your opinions? Is a short faculty stint worth it? Or are the risk, toxic academic politics, etc., not worth it? Is moving towards founding or principal roles worth it? How did you manage similar decisions?

Hey Software eng Henrys at late 30s. if you are currently on 200k salary, would you grind to increase it to 400k

I am asking because I am currently working with a SaaS startup company, all my stock options have vested on my 4th year (this month). I still have 190k base salary, but the natural next move is to start looking around for new opportunities, but I just can’t find enough motivation to start it.

I know that my field and my skillset (backend SWE), practical ceiling in london would be 400k, but it needs so many grinding on interview preparations to get a FAANG or trading firm offer.

I used to care about maximising my income in early 30s, but now it feels not worth it anymore. I probably have 10 years of career left, I can see the end coming, and the extra after tax income doesn’t feel life changing anymore.

Is there any Henry at this point of career and getting your salary doubled, how does it feel and is it worth your effort in the end ?

Currently using the free BA Amex but thinking about switching to either Amex Platinum or HSBC World Elite (eligible for both). What are you using as your daily driver?

Given a bunch of politics at work, I have a strong suspicion my job will be gone soon. For complex reasons, there’s not much I can do to salvage it, despite it not being remotely related to my performance.

I’ve been there less than 2 years, so I expect to get my notice period and some extra pay, let’s say £60k total if it’s 4 months in all.

I’ve started applying for other jobs, especially in the shockingly quiet days I’ve been having waiting for the doom. But, I’ve also seen many people hunt for jobs for 1-2 years.

I assume others have been in this situation before? What can I feasibly do to accelerate finding another role? LinkedIn applying seems to get almost nowhere when I’ve done it in the past.

I'm a software engineer at a fintech company on a HENRY salary that only speaks English. I've recently started to learn Arabic and want to start learning Mandarin too at some point. These things take up time that could be spent working on outside projects or stuff more directly related to my actual core skills though, which led me to wonder: people in other fields e.g. tech consulting, tech sales, PE - have you seen being multilingual unlock opportunities for higher compensation? Is it a skill that businesses pay a premium for in the market?

And what do you think about that for the future? I had a half baked thought that as we get a proliferation of auto translation hardware, being able to converse without that technology might make one more personable and could actually be uniquely valuable eventually. Alternatively (and perhaps more likely) it could just become worthless economically.

Starting job search and boy am I rusty at this. If you’re going through this now or has been recently, what do you think made you stand out?

I make around 135k total per annum Software Engineer Lead in FinTec in London.

I sometimes think I am not competitive enough to be in FAANG ( fast coding and leet coding is not my thing), but I believe I have great understanding or better than most in architecture scalability, system designs etc.

What are my options to get into a 200k club. I am currently under a skilled worker visa sponsored by a big bank, just in 6 months I will get my ILR.

What I can do to move myself to a 200 k club is that having ILR is going to help me anyways.

Like most people, I’m not a fan of bridging finance, but we’ve found ourselves in a situation where we may need a short-term solution.

In short, our buyers have withdrawn, but the sellers of our onward purchase still want to complete next month.

We’re now facing an £800k funding gap. That was originally going to come from our ported mortgage plus the equity released from our current home, with the remainder of the purchase funded by cash and shares.

Had everything gone to plan, we’d have been moving into what we hope is our forever home with around a 30% LTV.

As things stand today, we need to put our house back on the market while securing an £800k bridging loan for around 2–3 months until we complete the sale.

Has anyone been in a similar position? Any experience with bridging loans, recommendations, pitfalls to watch out for, or general guidance would be hugely appreciated.

Working at a large company and currently MD of one location, £8m turnover. I’ve been approached to move into a sales director role covering 8 locations, including the one I’m MD at now (8 locations are around (£40m). A small pay rise but not life changing.

I’ve never worked directly in sales before, but it’s a huge part of my role so I sort of have. My question is, does anyone have experience of moving from ops to sales? What did it do for your career long term? Ideally I’d see this as filling a gap and paving the way to a bigger role, such as VP.

The sales team needs help, there will be more pressure as I’m fairly comfortable in my current role. Is it worth it?

TLTR: consulting is boring me to death and want to get closer to product, but may lack experience so looking for transitional roles.

Apologies for the ambiguous title; keen to get the perspective of someone who’s been in the same situation.
I (32M) used to be an early career academic (engineering) before moving to strategy consulting. It’s been nearly 5 years and found a way to make it work. I have a tremendous WLB for the industry that is notoriously intense and a TC of around £180k; of which the vast majority base. I work almost exclusively with B2B software companies.
However, lately it has been a dread. While I don’t work long hours, the idea of spending my day reviewing power points and arguing with partners kills my soul every evening and every weekend. I want to get closer to building things.

Has anyone transitioned from consulting to new roles like AI strategist? It seems at the intersection between strategy, gtm and product and could be a good stepping stone towards something that would engage my brain again. Some of the leading AI labs may be too big a stretch I fear. I don’t code anymore albeit I build a fair bit with Claude.
Any suggestions from someone who’s considered this before? Any obvious stepping stone to get where I want to be, which is closer to building things.

Edit: a critical piece of info I forgot. I believe it would be impossible to sustain this balance as the next promotion is the role pre equity and only granted to those that show the potential for partnership. Ultimately this would need sacrificing my balance for greater client engagement.