I don't work anywhere where NDA's apply, but I go out of my way not to find out what anybody else gets paid (and for my own team, I only let HR tell me within c

I don't work anywhere where NDA's apply, but I go out of my way not to find out what anybody else gets paid (and for my own team, I only let HR tell me within certain bands). Here is a non-cynical explanation (not that I believe that the cynical view that it is for salary suppression is necessarily wrong) I realise a lot of people here work in startups or other kind of hothoused environments. The reality elsewhere is that a company needs people with all kinds of ability - they need the reliable but unimaginative person (let's call them the plodder programmer) that will come in and tie up all the lose ends that the hero programmer left behind before they got distracted by the latest shiny. The hard truth is the hero programmer will get paid much much more than the plodder, for obvious reasons. If the hero goes around telling everybody what they get, that is demoralising to the plodders - it just rubs their face into it, because they will never be the hero. But they can offer a company years of valuable service and dedicated work. As a geek herder, just because my HPs are worth more, it doesn't mean I value my plodders less. So I would prefer not to discuss renumeration, though in my world that would be done out of politeness rather than contractually enforced.