A few reasons (I say this as someone who generally speaking knows my company's pay scale because of well organized compensation transparency): 1. People aren't

A few reasons (I say this as someone who generally speaking knows my company's pay scale because of well organized compensation transparency): 1. People aren't encouraged to share this information, there's no obvious place to do it. 2. The value of doing so is minimal 3. People are bad at it. It's difficult enough getting people to share the information correctly when you work at the company and can give them screenshots of what numbers to copy. Without that it's even harder. (Granted much of this is only hard if you're doing multiple roles and currencies) 4. The numbers that the companies share often aren't the entire scale. For example, as far as I know [disclaimers: not a lawyer, this is from indirect experience], if Google hires you as a new grad L3, you aren't given the L3 scale. You're given one number. They don't negotiate on this number. Because while you're hired into an L3 position, you're being hired as a new grad, which is a different pipeline with different comp and rules. I expect other companies are somewhat similar. 5. Salary is one, and only a small, part of compensation, and the law only requires you to share salary. Salary is also usually the most difficult part of the package to negotiate. 6. A lot of the information is public, if you know where to look (levels.fyi, /r/cscareerquestions salary surveys, etc.