That’s why we created https://levels.fyi to collectively help people understand compensation and leveling across companies. While individually sharing data points is great, our goal is to help bring all this information completely into the public sphere so even people that don’t have a network or are starting their first tech job have a resource to ensure they’re not getting lowballed.

I do believe anonymous pay transparency is very different from full individual pay transparency too. Anonymously contributing even partially can mitigate a lot of the social stigma around attaching your real identity to compensation figures. That said, it’s still always a good idea to discuss these things with friends!