darren2000's comments

It can be good and bad:

good: a company tries hard to pay well, and welcomes being proven wrong by an offer letter so that they can correct the pay scales for everyone.

bad: by default, management won't review salaries or give pay raises for anybody. Every single employee must go interview with other companies -- and waste both their times -- to get an offer letter and then a pay raise. This rewards disloyalty, as the employees who don't waste time interviewing elsewhere end up paid the least. It also encourages employees to be disingenuous (or dishonest): some engineers (myself included) refuse to be disingenuous: if another company made a much better offer I'd take it, and would refuse counter offers.

Of course, there's a third possibility: companies that do not welcome being proven wrong about salary, and don't want to have money conversations or pay raises at all.

I'd guess lying for financial gain can be prosecuted as fraud.

Same as lying about your previous salary.

You want the Hare PCL-R for psychopathy/sociopathy: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Psychopathy_Check...

Interesting that it has now been deleted from wikipedia...

This is also good: http://www.wikihow.com/Spot-a-Sociopath

"12. Establish dominance by staring at people, never blinking."

"14. Humiliate people in public."

Sounds like a personality disorder, possibly anti-social personality disorder. See: http://www.wikihow.com/Spot-a-Sociopath, in particular:

"9. See if the person makes uninterrupted eye contact. Sociopaths are known for giving intense uninterrupted eye contact. The person stares because he or she is completely comfortable staring at people to make them uncomfortable. Staring at others intently is a way to further his or her own means."

"1. Look for a lack of shame. Most sociopaths can commit vile actions and not feel the least bit of remorse. Such actions may include physical abuse or public humiliation of others."

Right, just look at August! Although I wish there were numbers on that graph. Was there a conference talk? Glad to know there'll be lots of fellow devs using it anyway.