• Question: what is most amount of money you can make (per anum) if you are a top level scientist?

    Asked by Rasik_npl to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 14 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      This is a difficult question. It depends what sector they are working in (e.g. at a University or at a company), what country they are working in, what you mean by “top level”.

      If by top level you mean something like a professor at a university in the UK then probably about £70000 a year, maybe more.

      But you have to remember, most scientists are not “top level”. Also, I don’t know many scientists who have chosen their careers based on the expected salary, I didn’t. I wanted to do something that interested me.

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      Theo makes good points – scientists don’t tend to do their jobs for the money, and at some point, as you get more important, you start to do less of your own science and more and more administration, sorting out other people. If you’re up for that, though, you can get jobs that pay a lot of money!

      The University of Exeter has their pay bands online if you’re interested, and the top one they have for a professor is £109,000. That’s a huge amount of money, but interestingly you can get the same if you’re an excellent school head teacher and do it for a long time! But, as Theo says, it’s different in business than universities – I’ve met someone who’s a big big deal in a huge pharmaceutical company, and he earns several million dollars a year!

    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      Theo and Oli both nicely point out that while the max for scientists is pretty high in universities, and much higher outside universities – termed “industry” usually. I just wanted to emphasise that most people don’t earn nearly the max! People often say “if you learn X subject you could earn £70k a year (or whatever nice-sounding target)” but neglect to mention that most people… don’t. To get there you usually need to work a _lot_ of years at much lower wages, and you probably need to be a good negotiator, or just plain lucky. People often also perceive white men to be more competent than their counterparts, which is frustrating, too, so they may be more likely to reach top-level jobs than their colleagues.

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      As the others say, for most of us, it isn’t loads considering the hours we work, but it’s enough to get by on, and it doesn’t feel like working somehow.

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