Pulaski

Mrs P was a PA at a well known firm of consultants when we lived in London.

Far from £50k being low, in my direct experience £50k is quite high. Sales and executive staff at several of my employers in London in the 1990's paid base £20k, plus each month an "advance" against their year end bonus (obviously £20k pa wasn't enough to live on even back then). At the year end they received their bonus net of the advances already paid. I know this to be true because I was authorised to review the payrolls. ..... If the declared year-end bonus wasn't enough to cover the advances, you know what the result was, don't you.

christmasoompa

That was the 1990s though, you may be surprised to know that things have changed in the past 20 years or so.

A good PA/EA can earn £100k or more in London these days particularly in the private rather than corporate world, £50k or so isn't considered high and is more legal secretary level than top PA.

I've been a PA for 20 years and my salary now is 5 times what I started on, although that's probably due more to my experience/seniority than just the rise in the market.

Pulaski

No, that doesn't surprise me at all, .... but it has nothing do with high bonus/ high commission sales jobs with a remarkably low base salary, of which you seem to completely unaware.

christmasoompa

Because it's not the norm in London.......which was kind of my point.

Pulaski

But it IS the norm for SOME businesses in London. It was at several well known businesses that I worked for, and I have no doubt that most if not all other completing businesses in the same.sector, covering many thousands of people, are on the same sort of compensation package: low base salary plus monthly advance on bonus plus y/e "totting up".

christmasoompa

'Many thousands of people', in a work force of millions in London = exactly, it's not the norm!

My opinion still stands, that £50k isn't a good enough salary by London standards for an executive/manager like the OP, regardless of bonus structure. He says he lives in Central London, so a higher base salary would be needed to fund that.

srefre

I would say £100k for a PA is high, even in London, I'm sure there are quite a few PAs who earn that type of money, but I would suspect the majority of PAs are on far less, hitting somewhere between £25-40k.

As for the OP's scenario, I think we also need to know whether the US company wants to set up in London. If the company wants to set up in London, then it will need to pay a London premium, if the US company doesn't want to set up in London, but the OP happens to live there, the dynamic is a little different.

christmasoompa

£25k, they're probably administrators, £40k, they're probably secretaries. I've done all three jobs, and there's a big difference in pay scale between them, particularly in London.

Very true.