sarkozy

That undermines my assumptions. Thanks for the link. I'm very surprised a company of Walmart's size has such low profit per-employee. I would have assumed some accounting tricks were responsible but maybe it's the nature of their business.

I think it's a good idea to encourage everyone to try to get paid more, since (a) corporations make massively disproproportionate wealth relative to employees and (b) programmers are bad at the type of social and interpersonal skills that are required for negotiation.

That said, as someone who has been through this, I think your advice is a naively optimistic oversimplification of the forces that hold programmers back from getting paid more and, for the most part, people who follow your advice will still end up getting paid less than business analysts and project managers for cultural reasons expressed by some of the answers on that page.

The only difference is, with your approach, they may feel as if they have done everything they could, rather than suffering in quiet resentment (and, from a psychological perspective, this is not to be underestimated).

I agree on the importance of caution when applying statistical conclusions in individual cases - especially hiring decisions. I don't deny that there are, as you said, "mean women and caring men". But I don't believe in denying the existence of gender differences simply to avoid supporting the status quo. It can be useful to be aware of these patterns because, with a broad brush, we can cautiously identify where people's skills are most likely to reside.

Apology accepted. It's been an enjoyable discussion and I appreciate that you feel strongly about the issue.

The study indicates women, on average, have higher empathy scores than men. But other studies have demonstrated similar results. Such as this one:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2k31831780w417w/

On the "Empathy Quotient" test, the average female score is 47 while for males it is 42.

So, no, I'm not using "a slight statistical association to rationalize" either (a) "a cultural prejudice" or (b) "bigotry" (which you unfairly accused me of in an earlier comment). I could just as easily accuse you of denying the weight of the scientific evidence because of misogyny but that would be silly. The fact is, there is room here for reasonable debate and your attempt to paint this issue in black and white is unjustified.

Down below I posted a study below backing up my point but I will re-post it here in case you haven't seen it.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7075/abs/nature04...

Why are you calling me a bigot? Is it possible you could find a less offensive way of engaging in this discussion? I would appreciate it. I also disagree with you, after all, but have not resorted to calling you names.