[hardwaresofton]

You can use sites like Glassdoor to get around this (I'm not affiliated with them in any way). Or start your own glassdoor, more as a public service (even if you don't make money from it) -- let people post their company and salary, so others can see.

Glassdoor is a site that lets you view reported salaries from different companies. They're doing lots of things now, but that was the original value prop for that site, IIRC.