Comparing your characters to others

[Raldo]

Yes (levels) and no (gear/items). If you right-click someone's name in a player search window (or linkshell, party, free company list) you can select an option that'll show you all of their job levels. Out of game, you can look up anyone's character on the lodestone and see what they have leveled, but the only gear you'll see is whatever they were wearing the last time the Lodestone took a snapshot. Stats are also present on the Attributes tab, but like the gear, it's just a snapshot of whatever they were wearing at the time.

There's no interface to compare yourself against them, though, and I'm not sure why you'd want that.