I prefer not to discuss compensation - so will answer this indirectly. Few SDE3s definitely make principal salaries, Principals make millions and so on. I remember there was an ex amazon guy putting up the top end numbers on twitter which seemed more along these lines. It sadly comes down to your managers and VP decisions.
FWIW it is kind of a future investment IMO. You come out with a ton of knowledge and contacts that your future jobs can definitely be highly rewardd if that's what you're going for. Some find joy in the company of like minded peers instead of chasing the gold, everyone unto their own!
I guess I have old school compunctions against discussing it, probably comes from generations of folks not talking about it and considering it impolite.
I also have seen how people react when they realize there might be a huge pay variation for same titles - it's not good for anyone. I avoid conflict as much as possible nowadays, so it makes me more reticent. I pretty much redirect direct questions even from family because of that. None other than me and my wife knows how much I make - that's the max comfort level I'd ever get to I suppose.
I'm generally of the opinion that the tradition of never discussing salary is entirely pushed by management to prevent underpaid workers from asking for more.
If nobody knows how much they could be making, they can never really be sure of what they are worth.
At a company that size, it probably saves Corporate billions, while serving the average employee not at all.
If it was "entirely pushed by management" then most employees would ignore it, especially those making several hundred thousand or millions a year. On the contrary, a lot of employees at all salary levels discuss their salary.
Management absolutely has an incentive to hide salary writ large so that is definitely part of it. But employees who earn more than their comparably-titled peers also have an incentive not to disclose their salary. If position X gets paid, at the median, $200k a year with a $20k SD, and you get paid $275k a year in position X, the only things that will happen by you publicly discussing your salary are: 1) you'll be called a liar; 2) your peers will get jealous; 3) the best peers who may have been content prior, will either negotiate a higher salary and leave less in next year's budget for you, or leave for other positions making more money, resulting in a brain drain from your team.
Salary discussion overall only benefits low and mediocre performers. High performing ICs have very little incentive to discuss it.
#3 is called "fairness." It's the part where the rest of your team -- especially the women, who, statistically, are almost certainly making less than the median -- realize what the median is and have the opportunity to demand that they are paid for their contributions. Yes, that might come at a cost to you personally, if you were making more than others on your team who were adding similar value. Would you rather scam more money from the system for doing the same work as your peers?
I'm not trying to convince you to reveal what you make, but I don't think "it's not good for anyone" is right. It might cause a bunch of conflict and I can definitely see wanting to avoid that, but that doesn't mean the outcome isn't ultimately beneficial...
I see things the other way - if it's all in the open, there is no possibility that it can cause issues down the line.
The absence of this allow employers to employ people below their true value, which is not only unfair working conditions, but also unfair in that some people get paid vastly more for equivalent (or worse) performance, depending only on awareness of worth and negotiation skills.
Public pay figures will not only tell you what you can expected to be worth, it will also tell you what the company truly values and rewards (as opposed to PR bullshit). Opening up salary figures means a company must face its own contradictions, if any.
I'm contrary on this. I see salary level as a negative, not a positive. I want to be paid comparably to my peers.
I don't think I'm unique. I think just about all workers want to be paid comparably to their peers. They get upset if they discover others doing the same stuff with the same levels of skill and experience are making more than they are. (And here I mean a lot more, not just "been with the company longer and got regular raises".)
Value is relative. Something is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it, and that includes the workers labor. And focusing on pay can be misleading. I saw an IT salary comparison a while back. An IT staffer in San Diego might make more than double what a staffer doing the same job in Wheeling, WV made. The reason was simple. It cost far more to live in San Diego. Employers there had to pay far higher salaries so their people could afford to live there. And the chap in WV might actually being doing better, relative to peers in San Diego, because even at half the salary, his living expenses were a lot lower, and more of what he made was disposable income, instead of just covering his rent.
If the salary you make is your main focus, I think you are doing it wrong. Money is a means to an end. Having money lets you buy things you need. Having more money lets you also buy things you want. If all you have is money, you have problems. You can't eat it, wear it, or live in it. All you can do is exchange it for food, clothing, and shelter.
And if your main focus is salary level, you are like the character played by James Garner in a film called The Wheeler Dealers. Garner was a Texas entrepreneur, buying and selling, being followed around by a breathless female financial analyst trying to understand what he was doing. He stated it very clearly. "It's a game. Money is how you keep score." If that's the game you like to play, you probably shouldn't be in IT.
I had an interchange a while back with a chap elsewhere who was folding a startup that had not proved out. That's the normal outcome for a startup. Most fail. Too many people think "Oh, I'll go work for a startup! I'll put in 90 hour weeks for shit pay. But the startup will succeed and IPO and I'll get filthy rich" No, you won't. Even in a startup that succeeds and IPOs, only the founders are likely to get rich.
If you found a startup, the goal shouldn't be getting rich. You should be doing something you love to do, and will continue to do regardless of whether your startup succeeds and you IPO. If the startup succeeds, you may get filthy rich, but that will be a side effect, and not the point of the exercise. The chap I was talking to agreed completely with my notions.
The OP's complaint wasn't money, it was inability to make a meaningful contribution. The company was too big, with too many little cubbyholes where folks could get tucked away and not have an opportunity to contribute. His challenge was to find another place in the company where he would have an opportunity to make a contribution, or to find another company to work for that would provide the opportunity. If I were him, I might even accept a starting salary that was lower than my current one, simply because I could do stuff that made a contribution, and I saw potential for growth and making more money later.
FWIW it is kind of a future investment IMO. You come out with a ton of knowledge and contacts that your future jobs can definitely be highly rewardd if that's what you're going for. Some find joy in the company of like minded peers instead of chasing the gold, everyone unto their own!