&#62; There's a reason most companies don't talk pay with people - if somebody else makes more, it's going to bruise feelings and ruffle feathers and screw up morale.<p>I don't think thats quite right... The reason most companies don't talk pay with people is because most companies fall into the "pay as little as we can get away with" category.  In that category, some people are bound to be getting paid unfairly when compared to others, so its not surprising that feelings would be hurt and feathers would be ruffled if the truth came out.  If everyone is paid fairly to begin with (regardless of whether or not pay is usually public), then by definition no-one should get upset if they do find out the pay of others since it would be fair.<p>The real difficulty is getting everyone to agree with the same idea of "fair."  For example, software engineers should be able to fairly evaluate their relative pay against other software engineers doing similar work, but they may have a difficult time fairly evaluating their pay relative to sales people.