My manager told me that when they interview a candidate, they already know how much they currently earn because companies voluntarily share salary data with each other in my country (in Europe). The recruiters still ask candidates for a salary expectation, but they only use that to know how much of a jump the candidate is expecting, or how much extra they expect to get to actually consider a switch... and because positions are nearly never advertised with a salary range, this makes employers have a huge advantage "negotiating" salaries as they have all the information, the candidate has none (it's tabu to ask other people for their salaries, so I, as most people, am almost completely in the dark regarding whether I am being fairly compensated or not).

The only information about salaries I know of is published by the Unions... which is sub-divided into profession, then ranges of years of experience. But because most software developers are not in Unions here, the data they have seems very skewed towards lower pay rates. It's really a nightmare as it seems that when I am looking for a job, all companies pay the same (which you only find out after several interviews to get an actual offer). IT really pisses me off that such an open country as this has this attitude towards salaries.

I wish every position had a salary range and an indication of how much you would expect to earn a certain experience. That surely would be beneficial to employees, who would know whether they could expect to get a better salary, but also to employers who actually want to find the best people and are willing to pay more, I think, as they wouldn't need to pay large amounts of money to join this "secret club" where they share salaries with each other, basically colluding to keep salaries low.