The state of California releases salary info for all kinds of state employees (which has shown up on HN before : http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/ http://www.sacb

The state of California releases salary info for all kinds of state employees (which has shown up on HN before : http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/ http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/). When I first found out, I spent 30 minutes looking up the salaries of all my old UC Berkeley professors, and comparing them to prison doctors and state troopers. I was saddened to see that salaries and talent/research output/prestige are often very unrelated, even in the presence of total transparency. George Smoot, who's a Nobel laureate only around 150k! I also wondered whether (for example) Martin Wainwright and Michael I. Jordan, who've collaborated on papers, classes and a book on my to-read list, ever experience friction as a consequence of salary, given that Jordan appears to earn roughly 85% more than Wainwright. I know that state employees and academic salaries are subject to a lot of forces that aren't present in tech companies -- but this makes me doubt that transparency is enough to bring about reasonable, equitable salaries.