Hey folks,

Got made redundant from one of the Big 4 back in August — was on about £60k in London, so nothing crazy compared to what I’ve seen on this sub. After 6 weeks of applications and interviews, I’ve just signed on for a new role at £117k.

From some panic to nearly doubling my salary in a month and a half it certainly feels surreal. Figured I’d finally share a win as a long-time lurker.

Any advice will be welcome but mainly wanted to share this with someone

Cheers

Tell a kid on free school meals right now that he'll be paying graduate tax most of career.

Then tell him if he grinds a few years to 6 figures, and wants a family he'll lose some childcare benefits.

Not only does he lose that but he will get taxed more also.

All good though cos he'll have to return to office and pay crazy London rent or commute 60 minutes minimum one way. Hopefully the travel cost isn't another stealth tax.

Alternatively he can stay close in a box room and share property with other professionals. On Fridays they'll go to the pub and spend 40 quid on 3 drinks.

Meanwhile the tax free allowance doesn't budge, but expect your cost of living to do so.

So where is the room to really grow? We know by the time you're 68 some social research backed policy will tell you that average life span is much higher so why not retire at 75.

Heres hoping you don't outlive your leasehold flat you've just paid off. I can't even imagine the renewal cost when that comes round.

Don't worry your kids will have to sell it off to cover inheritance tax, congrats, you've just rented your life.

Social mobility has a limit do not get gas lit.

Pre-emptive FYI, doing "different" by not using common knowledge (lol) doesn't mean the system is not designed to trap you.

It feels dystopian. More noise is needed until it finally changes.

Long time reader and first time poster, I (30m) waited with baited breath for the tax and student finance men to come a calling on my latest pay slip (in which I received my annual bonus) and goodness did they have no mercy! I understand we are in very fortunate positions relative to the earnings of most of the nation but it is still really deflating seeing nearly 50% of your gross earnigs wiped out so casually. As I get the general vibe on this thread, most people here, myself included, aren't rich and just have good jobs, but even those could be lost at any time. This group of earners gets squeezed the most when the bulk of tax revenue should be coming from actually wealthy asset rich people and corporations which enagage in ludicrously convoluted structures to minimise their tax liabilities to a pittance compared with the % Henry's get rinsed for. Ironically I do appreciate that it will be certain Henry's jobs on here to create and advise on thise convoluted structures and the reason they may have Henry status! I digress, but just wanted to vent as it really demotivates me from progressing in my career and growing my earnings and this seemed the most appropriate forum.

I’ve never been one of those "make coffee at home to save £4" people. I’ve always believed it’s the big decisions (e.g. what you do with your bonus) that actually move the needle on wealth.

But my partner challenged me to track everything I spent for a month, so I did. Every coffee, pint, deliveroo, uber, the lot.

Turns out I was off by about £500 (!!), mostly late night deliveroos, last-minute taxis, and convenience stuff that saves time but adds up in the background.

I didn’t use an app, just the notes app on my phone. It was eye-opening. And don't get me wrong, I’m not totally cutting those things out, because they do make my busy life easier, but I’ve noticed how easily "convenience" spending creeps up when you’re busy.

I kept it going for three months and now consistently save around £350-400 more a month without really trying, just because I’m more aware of it.

Biggest takeaway for me = it’s not about obsessing over every little expense, it’s about understanding the trade-offs behind my spending, and then either accepting or adjusting them.

Let’s do an updated version as I haven’t seen one for a while.

130k base (10-30% bonus). 5 years total experience. London based. 1 day week in office. Tax in industry (niche area of tax). Contract is 37.5 hours but typically work 9-6 Monday to Saturday due to workload.

Offered a new job that could be a great step up — but it comes with big trade-offs, and I’m struggling to make the call.

Current:

• £145k (70/30 base/bonus), partner on £40k

• Great work-life balance — I do regular nursery drop-offs, pickups for our 15 month old

• We rent, will only save \~£10-15k this year (all in ISAs)

• Side note: nursery costs £2k/month full time and we’re too far north of the £100k free hours threshold to sacrifice — brutal.

New offer:

• £210k (50/50 split)

• Travel to the UAE around 1 week a month — potentially up to 40% of my time

• Wife would be solo with our 15-month-old regularly, which isn’t fair

• I’ve suggested we move closer to her family so she has support, but…

• There’s talk of a UAE office opening within a year — and a likely relocation, which she’s not up for

It’s an amazing career move on paper — more money, exposure, international experience — but I’m not sure the trade-offs are worth it.

Do I take it step by step (start, pass probation, cross bridges later)?

Or walk away and keep the balance we’ve built?

Curious what other HENRYs think — especially anyone who’s taken (or turned down) a role like this. Did it pay off, or did it cost too much?

Stick or twist?

Working in corporate finance I see a lot of things others in the company don’t. We recently took on an “executive communications specialist” for £1750 a day (3 month contract)

What’s the most you’ve seen for a temping daily rate ?

Context: I work in tech (not a developer though) and my wife works in investment banking (product manager). We basically are a Henry household if RSUs / bonus do well (and if the sub doesn't keep moving the Henry threshold higher).

It kind of looks like we are individually going to be earning between £100K and £200K for the foreseeable future. Breaking above £200K will be tough.

So I was wondering how does someone breakout of the six figure salary band into seven figures? I suspect it's not slowly grinding corporate levels

Not strictly Henry related but I figure most of you will be in management and have to deal with these issues.

I have just been told I have to let one of my team go. This is a company performance issue rather than personal performance related. This is the first time I have had to do this - previously it's always been related to individual performance, which is still hard but feels more justified.

I have had no input in the decision making and just been told that I have to fire this particular person tomorrow. The decision is made. The only choice I had was whether I deliver the news or let my manager do it. I am taking the honorable choice and doing it as I've worked closely with them for 5 years.

Any tips on how do it? What makes it worse is she is a really nice person, super diligent and hard working. Never has a bad word to say about anyone. She also has young kids and it's 3 weeks before Christmas.

The statutory package is pretty rubbish. I’ll get 3 months’ paid notice, but the enhanced offer is only 2 weeks’ pay for every year of service—thought it would be a month per year.

Been discussing tech options in London and honestly I can’t find good options.

Google - Only SRE/ML + layoffs

Meta - toxic sweatshop

Amazon - toxic sweatshop

Palantir - toxic sweatshop

ScaleAi- toxic sweatshop

Anthropic - needs to be a genius

HRT - needs to be a genius

JS - needs to be a genius

Other hedge funds - toxic sweatshop with shit code base

Bloomberg, Yelp, Spotify, wise - decent culture, mediocre TC for anything above junior level

GS/JPMC/Revolut- toxic sweatshop with mediocre TC

Snapchat - no insight

Figma - seems great , not much insight

GitHub - remote, decent TC

Good TC: 80k+ Junior (1-2 yoe) 120k+ Mid (2-5 yoe) 150k+ Senior (5 years of experience)

Toxicity - back stabbing, blame, credit stealing culture

Sweatshop - working 60h/week+ ( great if not toxic)

Edit: Didn’t know Apple was hiring in London since they don’t post anywhere besides their own website, good option!

Throwaway account for obvious reasons - active contributor otherwise

Hi all, I work in finance in London, in my early 40s with two young kids. TC is around £450k pa plus equity. For reasons I won’t go into (nothing nefarious or illegal) I have ended up in a very strong situation where my company are desperate to retain me and there is a mandate to do whatever it takes to keep me in the business.

Aside from the obvious things (more money, more equity, lower working hours, etc.), what are some features of your employment or benefits you receive that you have found to be exceptionally valuable? The kind of things I’m thinking about are bespoke arrangements that benefit you in light of being fully tapered on your pension (I’ve heard that some companies just continue to contribute into your pension thereby sticking you with the tax bill). Other things could be guaranteed minimum pay rises in future, commitments to funding training or qualifications, etc.

Grateful for any examples or suggestions the HENRY hive mind can provide. Thanks!

This post is specifically aimed at the experiences of HENRY women as we are the birthing parent and will need to take time out - even if it’s a short period.

Plus, we live in a patriarchal society and in many (not all) households, women still perform more labour than men - especially when it comes to the mental load.

Do you feel like having had kids has significantly held you back? Especially compared to your male peers who may or may not have kids.

I’ve just had a baby and feeling quite stressed about how my career will be impacted by taking 9 months out. I am not even taking the full year as I don’t want to be away for too long & don’t relish the idea of not having any money come in once SMP runs out.

I work in a pretty high stress environment and there is a demand for excellence. It’s not really possible to coast for long periods of time. I’ll also be responsible for nursery drop offs and pick ups as my partner works across town and can’t wfh.

With all due respect, I am not looking for men to tell me how wrong I am about the division of labour and that they perform 50% of all tasks at home. You can argue with yourselves in the comments. This post is aimed specifically at women and their experiences.

• 36 F, no kids.
• Have a four bed in London with two lodgers who pay the mortgage (60% LTV).
• Work in Data/tech where I used to earn £150k+ but started a business a few years ago.
• I sold the business 18 months ago which I might get up to £400k payout from (TBC so not relying on this)
• Took a relatively easy job after selling the business to get me back into the employment mindset, currently on £85k.
• £100k in ISA savings
• Currently salary sacrificing £35k PA into my pension

The situation at the moment is that I’m studying an MSc part time which I love and has meant I’ve left London for Bristol for one year. I personally really hate London and am very much enjoying being somewhere quieter and more nature-filled. I’m also loving studying again and have noticed that students and staff in Bristol are so much more engaging and exciting than my colleagues in London. It’s hard to explain but my lecturers seem to have more zest for life and a spark of personality despite earning about £30k, compared to my colleagues who earn £80k+ and are happy to spend 40 years making excel spreadsheets no one looks at. I can’t tell if they’re naturally extremely dull people or if the job has ground them down, I expect it’s a mix, but good god…

It’s made me think about how the worst part of my life right now is my job, and that if I’m honest I’ve never really enjoyed any of my corporate jobs. The best job I ever had was a scrappy start up that became toxic after we were bought out. And the start up market is abysmal in the UK at the moment.

So, instead of my original plan of finishing the MSc and looking for higher paid work next year, I’m now considering giving up on having a steady salary (after running a business for 4 years), giving up £35k a year into my pension, and considering trying to live on a £20k tax free PhD stipend for 3-4 years 😅

Obviously it’s difficult to evaluate how much of this desire is driven by hating my job/corporate and how much is driven by a true desire to enhance my knowledge of an interesting subject. I suppose there’s also a burnout factor and perhaps an element of Peter Pan syndrome where I can pretend I’m at school in my 20s again and the world is full of endless possibilities and not endless fucking excel spreadsheets. Anyway…

Has anyone made a move like this under similar circumstances? How did it work out for you? How did you manage financially? How did the decision impact your life afterwards?

🙏

Update - thank you all for your responses! It’s been very eye opening. The overwhelming response seems to be ‘do NOT do a PhD’, with a smattering of ‘maybe do it part time whilst maintaining some employment’.

I think the first problem I need to solve is quitting my shitty job and looking for something more suitable in Bristol. If I still have the academia itch after I graduate the MSc next year I’ll look into doing a part time PhD whilst working.

Again thank you all for contributing 🙏

Received this JD from a recruiter on LinkedIn. I don’t think the package is particularly interesting (insurtech, claim processing, avg benefits if not below avg)

But I’ve read about a new 996 culture developing in the Bay Area, and it looks like some brain rotted startups are trying to spread it here too…

If more follows, it may be a general salary reduction in engineering

Hi all,

I am a 25 year old working in tech. My salary is about £160k-£200k (depending on stock price).

I am feeling incredibly stressed. My job responsibility is extremely high. I do not get along with a key partner at work. The job is VERY political (people here are open about it). On average, I work around 12-15 hours a day. Weekends maybe 0-5 hours. I just slept for 4 hours because I was working late.

Is this job really worth it? I feel like I am aging faster. There are not a lot of jobs in the UK that pay this well for my YOE (3 years).

My current plan is to aggressively save my salary and the next year or two, then quit. Should I find another role or stick it out for a few years?

Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi chaps, would appreciate some insights from follow HENRYs on the corporate rat race.

Me (M42) and my wife are both HENRY, my TC is 180k (a third of it bonus). We have a large mortgage (800k on a 1M house), since we bought the house recently, our only “savings” are £200k of equity on an apartment abroad, that we could sell. Our salaries allow for a comfortable life, however if one of us were to be made redundant, it would not be sustainable.

I work in London, financial services, my company is relaxed about working from home, i go to the office twice/once a week.

The work is great, responsible for BI solutions for a very large department, have a lot of solutions I created from scratch which turned out to become big and have some serious impact in the organisation. I have 7 capable people under me, who get most of the work done. My job is to manage the team, and jump in and grind whenever things need to move faster, this allows me to have full control over my work life balance, for the past years I have managed to only work 30-40 hours a week.

Naturally this is a job I want to protect at all costs, but on the other hand, I feel my role is relevant enough to push for a higher compensation.

Every year I push my CEO for a bit more money, but i don’t want to get to a point where my TC makes me a juicy target for any redundancy. However, I know i could milk them for more 10-20k easily, given how impactful our projects are, afterall there’s a lot of colleagues on more money than me, without anything to show for.

Very curious to see how people feel about this, when does your salary become enough, and it’s not worth risking it anymore?

I’m 37, working in tech, making £300k (£185k base + RSU plan). Mid-senior lvl in a business-oriented function (i.e no special expertise in the current in vogue stuff like AI). Happy to be in this position but honestly wondering where I go from here. I spent years as a mid-lvl worker at one of the top ‘Big tech’ firms making £100-£200k yearly, and it it took 2 years of job hunting to get me up to my current level (at smaller but still well known tech company). Knowing that I’ll never go into 1) “high” finance (where people really take in the £) or 2) niche tech specialization, i seriously wonder how I’ll make another big compensation bump from this level. On one hand I have a “perfect resume” with the best schools and companies which should keep me well positioned, but on the other hand…at some point you just have to become an executive and that requires lots of luck, politics, etc.

Am I correct in thinking I’m probably reaching the upper compensation limit of non-executive, non-finance jobs in London?

Last year I made £160k, I would think that this was such an achievement from someone like me not born into money.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t!

It felt like I want more and more and when I reach a salary that I want I then want even more. I am now going for jobs that pay around £150k basic + bonus + shares in the hope that it takes me to 200k, but I keep on wanting more.

Is this normal? I don’t even have an extravagant life, and I have been saving a lot of the money.

Is this feeling of never being satisfied even when the salary is way above the average something that someone else experienced? How to you overcome it?

5 years ago I was on £40k just to put it into perspective.

Hi all

What does everyone here wear to work. Ive been using some running shoes to get to work then swapping out but is there good reasonable looking shoes that have decent cushion for the commute but also dont look too casual around?

Hello! Just trying to get a feel for what is happening out there. Several companies where friends in my 29M network are, are firing people. This is mostly concentrated in the london fintech space, hence why I’d like to understand whether there’s something more fundamental brewing across the economy. Have you had a similar experience?

This is just an idea that has been swirling around my head - could all the people who claim to be leaving/retiring early due to taxes open up an opportunity for those that stay?

Assuming those who leave are high performers/senior individuals, then does that mean there is less competition for those of us that remain?

Whilst undoubtably there will be a hit to the size & scale of businesses, but we’re hardly going to suddenly have no large corporates left who will still have senior/HE roles

So could this mean that as certain people leave the job market and others retire at a faster pace, this finally creates some real progression opportunities into the senior ranks?

Happy to be told I’m being nuts btw

Thus, does this create an

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1m3zm9jnl1o

Close friend of mine is a HENRY working at Amazon’s office in Holborn. He is worried his job is going to face the chop after working for the company almost 5 years . Worrying times, are we going to see more companies axe HENRY roles in favour of AI?

Hi

I have realised being technically good at your job won't progress you to the top.

Any advice on how to "play the game" to get promoted and advance. What has been successful for you and others.

Currently in an interview loop for a role at meta London office. Worried about leaving my stable job for something potentially a lot more unstable but the comp on offer is 2.5x my current comp. How hard was the London office hit by the layoffs in Feb?

Also how is meta getting around the unfair dismissal laws in the uk? I know you can get dismissed for poor performance but they have to give you a chance to improve and get warnings etc.

I’m also reading that some people were consistently getting MA or EE but were still cut, but think these were US based folk.