I like how it works at big tech companies nowadays. Publicly, you know what level you and other employees are, and the bands for the levels are mostly known (a

I like how it works at big tech companies nowadays. Publicly, you know what level you and other employees are, and the bands for the levels are mostly known (at levels.fyi). This means you have an idea of where your salary relates to others, but not a perfect idea. You can coherently talk about when you should be earning more, and have a direct conversation about how your ability compares to employees at other levels, but you don't know the pay amounts so precisely that you can be disgruntled by a single other person, or worried that someone else will be secretly annoyed with you. I think it's a healthy level of transparency.