You could go the other way as well, without knowing the limits to your future compensation, you were still hanging on to your position. You had expectations of

You could go the other way as well, without knowing the limits to your future compensation, you were still hanging on to your position. You had expectations of a bigger pay day but it sounds like that was not formally offered to you. When you knew your true pay and future pay you were able to move up to a better compensated position. To me that sounds like things working correctly. Companies will suffer when employees look around and see what their neighbors at other businesses are making and what they could be making elsewhere. But employees will benefit. In many Asian cultures everyone knows what everyone else makes. In many cases it shakes out that the most deserving end up being the highest paid. Companies can’t benefit from employees keeping their pay from one another. There’s probably a game theory explanation as to how western and eastern cultures could both land on these two different states.