This squares with my experience.

In 2007 I had a social conversation with a well known and successful operator / VC in the valley about new ideas. Having just gone through negotiations for a raise at my corporate job, the information asymmetry between corporations and employees about salaries was huge.

So my thinking was that it was only a matter of time until salary information became more open. He was adamant that it would never happen. Sharing salary information between employees was heresy. Mind you, I was also 30 and he was in his 50s.

12 years later Glassdoor, levels.fyi, etc are all things.

For whatever reason - he hadn’t gone through a salary negotiation in a long time, generational culture, etc - this was a major blind spot for him.