UKH

Working as a Field Guide for BAS is a unique and unforgettable experience. While BAS employ a wide range of professions to enable deep-field science, the Field Guide role is one of the most challenging and varied. It offers the greatest opportunities for travel and freedom within the organisation. With this freedom comes responsibility. Working as a Field Guide involves a lot of demanding work but is extremely rewarding.

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I know it's an amazing opportunity to get to Antarctica, and I would bite your hand off for the chance to go there, but a starting salary of well under 30k for basically an experienced mountain guide, operating a wide range of heavy machinery, responsible for many lives, planning, logistics, in one of the remotest places on earth for an entire year? If it was an entry level position I'd get it, but it's obviously a fairly high bar to entry!

BAS/NERC is not known for generous salaries, my father worked for them and whilst he loved the job, the pay was certainly an issue. 

I'd jump at the chance - and, in fact, was interviewed for the job one year, but didn't subsequently get an offer.

If you don't fancy it, then just don't apply. But for God's sake don't grouse about the salary. 

I looked at this a long time ago (when I was still at school) and thought it sounded amazing. Nowadays I can see more of the potential negatives, however it would still be some experience. Just on the financial side, it seems reasonable if you consider that your outgoings will be much lower while you're away, and also IIRC, there is some sort of tax break if you're away long enough?

When I considered applying (maybe 5 years ago) there was no requirement to have any level of guiding qualifications, I think they said it was desirable. Maybe it's the reality that they mostly only take people with at least MIC (or whatever).

At the time as a 25ish year old with a fair amount of alpine experience and a job in software it seemed like a pretty good pay deal to go and do something that sounded like a lot of fun. £25k is to me quite a good salary when you consider that living expenses (accomodation/food) are paid for whenever you're away in Antarctica.

Any idea what the tax situation is? Does location in Antarctica mean BAS staff are exempt from paying UK income tax or is it still valid there?

Not sure sorry. When I was considering it I assumed I'd be paying tax. I would imagine that while you yourself aren't in the UK your employer (BAS in this case) is, so it would count as UK income, so according to this https://www.gov.uk/tax-uk-income-live-abroad would be taxable. You could always ask BAS, don't see why they wouldn't tell you.

Let’s not glorify bad salaries. Go and do the exact same job for Norsk Polar (assuming you speak Norwegian) and you’ll get paid double, and work much fewer hours.

I worked for BAS at Rothera last season (as a station support assistant, not a field guide) it was an amazing experience and a great place to live and work.

During my six month stint I was paying normal UK tax. Not sure if that varies if you are there for longer.

Given that you are provided with food and accommodation, pretty much all you slary can be saved.

To my mind the salary is surely almost immaterial.

How much do astronauts get paid?

So is the idea that only people living with Mum apply? Or that you sell your house when you get the job? Or put all the stuff in your rental flat into a storage container and become homeless? Do they only accept people living in a converted transit van? 

I'm not sure you are aware of the details. Some of the field guides I worked alongside were home owners. With the salary paid it would be perfectly possible to continue to pay a mortgage (in Sheffield, or Scotland or parts of the Alps where some were based). Although I'm sure some are renting out their house, or at least one or two rooms in their house.

As outdoor professionals they seemed quite used to these types of arrangements as they are often away from home for extended periods.

Possibly this is a position with the relatively rare quirk of being less suited to those who have got their shit together in life. Someone with a solid career and a mortgage and family to support is likely to think 'looks cool, but not for me'

Many a worthy profession is ruined by this attitude.

You tell me. My guess is that BAS couldn't afford them but I don't know.

OP: If the salary is below 30k than that is insulting although as a research institute it is probably not overflowing with cash. Also consider that you will probably save almost all of it, I can't imagine that there's much to spend money on in Antarctica. I know a couple of people who have worked there including one person who did 18 months, 2 winters and a summer. I don't know what they earned but they were scientific staff rather than guides. 

To be clear, that's my attitude, not one I'm assuming of BAS. Assuming travel, accommodation and food are taken care of, just getting to be in Antarctica would be payment enough for me. 
Likewise, in the even more unlikely event NASA picked me for a mission, I would imagine I'd be thinking 'salary be damned, I'm on the mutherfukin moon'

A quick google suggests that ESA astronaut salaries start at about 70kEuro. They also have the benefit of being exempt from national income tax due to the status of ESA as an international organisation.

To be fair to NERC they pay a lot of staff at well below market rates, field guides aren't being singled out here. If your in it for the money don't go into the public sector!

Tim Peake got C, D and an E in his A levels. £70k a year isnt bad for someone who is bit unacademic  

Regardless of the ins and outs of how much money you can spend in Antarctica and thus how much of that salary you will end up saving, a core principle that I feel is important is being paid appropriately for the responsibilities that come with the role you're performing. In this instance, that would be the responsibility for the safety of lay people in an unforgiving environment.

I'm not personally convinced that £30k covers having other people's lives directly in your hands like that. But that's just me, and I'm too jaded to be there "for the experience".

A Royal Marine officer only gets £32780 after a year on the job. In an ideal world like you say pay would reflect risk and responsibility, but in reality it reflects what people will work for on the whole.

I know quite a few people who do/have done this job and they've all had a great time. For most of them it allowed them to earn and save more than they would typically (outdoor instructing).

That's fair enough, but clearly other people do feel like it's appropriate pay, or at least not wildly inappropriate. Me for one.

In terms of having responsibility for the safety of other people, I think there a quite a lot of jobs have that responsibility and are not paid a lot, be that right or wrong. E.g. the people who hold up signs staying stop-go at roadworks, or teachers, I recently watched three teachers/teaching assistants supervising about 30 kids walking along next to a busy road and thought, I'm really glad I'm not responsible for that!

Indeed. What are the entry requirements as an officer in the RM? Or, for that matter, the Army or the other armed services? Are they comparable to what BAS are asking?

The entry requirements for being a BAS field guide are basically having a misspent youth, so roughly the same as the army I suppose key thing is the misspentness was done on some snowy mountains.

Seriously though, the essential list of stuff you need to apply for the BAS field guide job is very small, basically have done some winter mountaineering or summer alpinism and have done some glacier travel (or at least it was when I considered applying). Which I think is great, it's amazing and really good imo that they don't require you be an WMIC (or whatever the current equivalent is) or guide.

I spent a year there, loved it, and never once thought about salary.

You spend nothing so the salary feels pretty good.

And it's pretty competitive and hard to get a post. A higher salary would possibly make it even more competitive.

Yeah, in general I wouldn't defend the attitude that jobs can pay badly just because they're "a great opportunity" or whatever but this isn't the same as supporting yourself in London on a pittance while you work some "foot-in-the-door" media or politics job if it basically covers all your expenses while you do it.
 

Do you know if they still give the women’s clothing allowance?

Probably not a great representation of his academic ability if you look at his cv after joining the Army. Plus 30+ years ago straight As weren't the norm. 

yeah sorry it was supposed to be tongue in cheek! 

A young colleague of mine has recently returned from the best part of a year on South Georgia, working in a scientific role for BAS. There were nine of them there. He confirmed that it does things to your head being there that long with so few people and no possibility of escape. Lots of family-type bickering. He has a partner, and wouldn't do it again. I spoke to him of my memory of getting an application form for BAS when I was his age, and there being several pages of questions on your general handiness. Can you do this or that? Can you, for example, fix a broken radio mast? He said that he, a marine biologist, had been called on to help out to do exactly that, on a mountain ridge, in winter. He also said that the exit route begins with a five day, 1000 km boat journey to the Falklands on (I think he said) a shallow draft boat, often at whatever unpleasant angle you get to in the typical 6 metre swell of the southern ocean.

You can train for that bit on the MS Oldenburg to Lundy, I nearly wound up leaning over the back of it!

And can astronauts eat as many penguin steaks as they want?