[PragmaticPulp]

Public institutions do this in a lot of places. Apply for a job at a state University or other state-run institution and depending on where you live you might be able to look up the exact salaries of everyone who works there, including your future boss and coworkers.

Sounds great, but it doesn't really work out in favor of higher salaries. It becomes too easy for hiring managers to say "that's the salary band, can't go any higher". A lot of people hate negotiating and accept it as-is. Compensation at these institutions tends to be lower than what you get elsewhere, not higher.

The real negotiation just gets moved to a different discussion: If you say you need $150K but the salary band for the job listing is $100-120K, you can try to get them to create a separate, new opening at the higher salary band. Or they might already have multiple job openings at different salary bands and they'll quickly switch you to the other opening in the system, which doesn't actually change much at all from the hiring perspective.