Meh. I took a 15% paycut when I got my new job after being laid off. I'm pretty sure my new peers who've been at my new job longer are making close to what I used to pull in.<p>And I don't care. My new co-workers are awesome, my commute is 1/3 the distance, and I feel like I'm making a real difference rather than being a tiny cog whose only purpose was to make the red part of a pie graph get very small.
I personally don't know how it feels when you know your colleagues salaries. In all the companies I worked it was forbidden to reveal one's salary. But I can't think of any rational reason why I would want to know it.