I started my career in the public sector where salary is published and set in stone before you even apply for a position. Everyone knows everyone's pay grade. I

I started my career in the public sector where salary is published and set in stone before you even apply for a position. Everyone knows everyone's pay grade. I never once saw any kind of jealousy about someone making more than someone else for doing the same job title. This has two effects (1) Saves me a lot of time on the negotiation front. If the announcement doesn't pay what you want, don't apply to it. Saves me and the hiring manager a lot of wasted time if I were to apply to a post thinking I'll get paid $X when it will really pay $Y. And (2) Since it's all public anyway, everyone knows that if you want to make $X then you need to train into position Y and you have a pretty concrete list of knowledge/skills that you can hack away on to achieve that. None of this blind guess work.