This was just for one department (eng) but it applied to the entire department, all the way up to leadership. This was at a smallish startup (~25 developers), I could definitely see how this might be harder to maintain at a bigger company when you get into very senior leadership.

Obviously in practice the more senior you were, the more influence you had over what the bands were, so in that sense I suppose the very top had some degree of negotiating power, but it was all still opaque and public, and the entire department knew what everyone in the department was making.