Salaries, job-titles, and all things related to hiring are _INTRINSICALLY_ subjective and that's the way it should be (and really the only way it can be). Even

Salaries, job-titles, and all things related to hiring are _INTRINSICALLY_ subjective and that's the way it should be (and really the only way it can be). Even though the stackoverflow folks are using "a formula", there's still a lot of subjective judgment in scoring the skill-levels and stuff like years of experience (5 years at company-X isn't necessarily the same thing as five years at company-Y). As far as I can tell, stackoverflow is successful at their mission, has a good reputation and doesn't have retention problems. That's great for stackoverflow and the folks that work there. And while it is better than most places, other companies are doing just as well and don't have transparency in their salaries. Is transparency _really_ that important? I don't think so.