[owlbite]

If its anything like other UK government research bodies I've interacted with in the past, they started off with pay significantly below market rate for salaries and then failed to even hit inflation with pay raises due to UK government policies. Any fund injections are one-time capex for headlines and never any new recurrent funding for keeping the lights on, paying the staff or funding the research. The fact that these places produce any decent research is more a testament to the dedication of the staff (who have often been there since before the several decades of penny pinching which drove them into the ground) than anything the government does.

[roncesvalles]

That's the first thing that came to my mind as well. UK tech salaries are notoriously low.

Let this be a harbinger for the rest of the industry -- you can "get away" with paying far below market for talent, but you make yourself vulnerable to getting generationally leapfrogged like this because the cutting edge work in your art is happening under someone else's roof.