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Fun writeup. One note.
This is endlessly confusing to be people outside of finance but it's almost certainly not THE VP but A VP. VP is like a middle manager rank, one step above associate, and something your average striver should reach by their early thirties if they just follow a standard track. I don't know London pay scales but as someone angling to be a VP next year married to someone job shopping for a psychiatry job I can say the pay is comparable with maybe advantage to the doctor.
The absolute minimum for a VP in a first-tier London investment bank would be £100k including bonus, and that is in non-revenue-generating roles (quant, risk, IT etc.). Corporate financiers or traders are usually going to be earning £150-200k at the point of promotion from associate to VP. In both cases compensation will be rising fast if they continue to perform.
Compare a newly-promoted NHS consultant on £108k including a small London allowance, with no possibility of a large payrise for 3-4 years after that.
Both the newly-promoted VP and the newly-promoted consultant are going to be about 30 if they are on the standard high-performer career track.
Interestingly, a quick Google suggests that a newly-promoted attending in the US would be on an about $170k, which I would say is also at the low end for a newly-promoted bulge bracket VP - the difference is that the US doctor has much more upside potential and can reasonably expect their income to rise to the attending average of c.$300k after a few years. Still not as much upside as the banker, of course.
Even in a chiller workplace like the VA Attending psychiatrists start out at around $250k, Which is a little north of what newly minted Bank VP can expect. Bank VPs definitely have some more variability.
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I do actually know that there isn't just one VP haha, but yeah, that could be better phrased.
Really? My friend claimed that his sister, who isn't a VP yet, makes ~75k, I'd assume the guy would make significantly more. I make closer to two-thirds of that, and so would most psych residents.
I looked up figures for actual VPs, and the range seemed to be well north of 85k and if in investment banking, >165k! (not to mention bonuses greater than 225k)
Even accounting for COL, that beats me or most doctors senior to me.
I don't recall if you're British, or living there, so trust me, doctors here absolutely do not make as much as their peers in the States :(
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Medicine payscales in England are between half and a quarter of what they are in the states. Finance is usually between 70 and 90% of stateside equivalents. I can pretty much guarantee all but the most senior consultants (What the UK calls fully qualified docs, basically post residency/post fellowship) in the UK are nowhere close to what a VP in finance is pulling in.
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