There's a now deleted comment that touched upon some of the issues on making compensation information public; I have very similar views as above so I'll write my own:

1. There are skillsets/capabilities that the organization finds difficult to get on the market, as well as brings disproportionate profits to the organization. For example, a database company may need to hire two software engineers, one writing CRUD apps or infrastructure automation, and the other one for distributed systems implementation. In such a setting, while both people's titles may say "software engineer", the reality is that one is paid much higher than the other, both because the database is the bread and butter for that company, while the CRUD/infrastructure thing may be a very small part used by an internal team or by a few customers.

2. People usually like to believe that they're at least better than average and bring the same level of contributions to the team. This is most definitely not the case, and an engineering manager, VP, sales manager who simply appears to talk to people all day long may actually have important contributions such as overseeing key projects, talking to customers etc. which may be the thing that the company needs to lock that large sale or prevent customer attrition, or whatever the case may be.

People will often jump to favoritism or bias or another explanation, and in some cases, they absolutely do happen. But that is not the only explanation, and without data to distinguish between the two, people will gravitate towards the uncharitable interpretation, which allows them to paint themselves in the most positive light.

That’s a very good point you make. In that spirit, I’ll also restate my original comment in a way more charitable to CEOs: When you factor in trust and leadership/persuasion skills, which are typically misunderstood and undervalued by orders of magnitude by junior staff, compensation structures are highly meritocratic. It’s the perception part that creates the headaches.

> People usually like to believe that they're at least better than average and bring the same level of contributions to the team. This is most definitely not the case, and an engineering manager, VP, sales manager who simply appears to talk to people all day long may actually have important contributions such as overseeing key projects, talking to customers etc. which may be the thing that the company needs to lock that large sale or prevent customer attrition, or whatever the case may be.

As an engineer I have constantly heard throughout my career complaints that "We make the product, without us the sales wouldn't have a job, so we deserve better compensation"

To which I have always replied - speaking as an engineer, I struggle to sell a product, and I have seen multiple products that were technically superior to their competitors fail (Beta vs VHS!) - sales and management are vastly more important than engineering.