If you work in a government or state university staff job, your salary is already publicly available. It's not really a big deal, since those types of jobs have

If you work in a government or state university staff job, your salary is already publicly available. It's not really a big deal, since those types of jobs have rather strict salary ranges based on position classification and job responsibilities. So you pretty much know going in that everyone doing the same thing is probably making in the ballpark of the same salary. It's also a good place to look for baseline salary information when you're negotiating. You can pretty easily find out what software developers in your state government or nearest university are making. The numbers will be on the low side compared to the private sector, but benefits and time off in those jobs are usually quite generous so consider that. And layoffs are almost unheard of.