The company I work at have a completely opaque approach to salaries, I don't get to now anyone elses salary and no one else gets to know mine - the only people

The company I work at have a completely opaque approach to salaries, I don't get to now anyone elses salary and no one else gets to know mine - the only people who would be privy would be my employer and the external company accountant, but my last job had a pretty open attitude, so I know both sides of the coin: This is both a positive and a negative in a few ways: A couple of positives: Nobody else knows how much I earn, there isn't any envy for the people junior to me and it doesn't make them feel undervalued - as someone who used to work for less than minimum wage, I know how demoralizing it can be to know how much less valuable to your employer you are than other people. I don't get jealous of the people above me, I know they have nice cars and bigger houses, but I'm not constantly thinking about this figure and trying to work out why in the hell they are £30,000 per year better than me. A few negtives: Negotiating a higher wage is much more difficult, I don't know that A co-worker of equal level gets £2,500 more than me per year just because he negotiated, so I'm more likely to stick with the status quo. It becomes taboo to speak openly about wages, the boss hides it from us, so we hide it from each other. Any questions to each other are effectively met with "none of your business." Feeling uncomfortable talking to my employer about wages and increases in salary makes me more likely to leave a company - it's far easier to go to an interview and negotiate with a stranger you don't care about than potentially having hard feelings towards someone you have to work with daily if they refuse you a raise.