Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#251

Post by vintermann » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #192

atrettel wrote: post #40

The FBI and other US federal agencies have attributed similar tactics to North Koreans looking to infiltrate particular industries [1-3]. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korean-crypto-job-cand... [2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/fbi_korea_freelancers... [3] https://www.wired.com/story/north-korean-it-scammer-alert/

There is no reason an intelligence-gathering operation has to use someone who is totally incompetent at the job and comes across as suspicious.

Yes, there is. The reason is that they aren't superhuman, and aren't very popular anymore.

This is something I've argued before: In the 40s, the US intelligence services could call up famous, brilliant people like Claude Shannon, ask him to fix some problem and never talk about the problem or his solution to it.

If they tried that today, most would tell them to go fuck themselves.

Now you may think things would be different in North Korea. In some ways they might be, but they obviously have a lot less top talent to commandeer in the first place, with their lack of modern technology and childhood nutrition. And even then, there are less confrontational ways to say no where open defiance is out of the picture. In North Korea, if you're very competent at anything, you might be quite careful in who you reveal that to in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#252

Post by moritonal » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #177

actually_a_dog wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The damage an individual can do by being overemployed.... What "damage" does being "overemployed" do in and of itself? If the person is meeting expectations, as long as they're not moonlighting for a competitor, who cares what other things they do to make money?

They’re referring to people who are incompetent and take roles in which they are not qualified to take. In the case I was referring to, the developer who showed up for the job couldn’t even write a single line of code. We caught this quickly, but not immediately. There were certainly monetary damages from onboarding costs and time wasted, and non monetary damages from reputation with our customers.

Just to be specific in case you didn't know, "overemployed" refers to the practice of having multiple jobs both secretly and simultaneously.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#253

Post by strken » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

ImaCake wrote: post #227

SavageBeast wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, next time I'm on a 30 minute screening and end up getting left with 10 minutes to show them I can write a functional program they will be too worn out to ding me for silly stuff like concatenating Strings instead of properly using StringBuilder. "You really should have used the enhanced for loop for that .." or "You really should have used a Lambda there" etc. After years of tech screens like this…

I get the feeling from this comment that tech interviewers would be very upset with how I write scripts in research. Part of the reason I will never shift to developer as a job is that the interview process is ridiculous. In universities, the uni hiring process is so imposing on the researcher's time that they just hire people they meet through informal processes outside the formal system. The informal system is usua…

This is frequently how it works in smaller tech companies as well, although it's usually just getting sent straight through to the same final interview as everyone else.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#254

Post by badpun » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #170

iaaan wrote: post #128

Earlier this year, I interviewed this guy who gave me really strange vibes. He would stall for a good 15-20 seconds after each question I asked... and then spit out a perfectly worded answer. I google'd some specific, peculiar phrases I remembered him saying after the interview and found that the phrases came straight out of places like the Kubernetes documentation, word for word. He was googling my questions and the…

My favorite bit is this: "4k+ ACTIVE CLIENTS, 35+ PROJECTS DONE...10 GLORIOUS YEARS" I imagine then, there's at least 3965 clients that aren't super happy. At 3.5 projects completed per year, it's going to be a long road.

Clearly, they forgot the "k" in the "35+ PROJECTS DONE". Would be even funnier if they misplaced it, and instead said "10k+ GLORIOUS YEARS".

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#255

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

> We've wasted a significant amount of time on comms and interviews with over a dozen of these candidates.

this is what happens when you filter people based on keywords. they game the system.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#256

Post by godmode2019 » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:06 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #175

iaaan wrote: post #128

Earlier this year, I interviewed this guy who gave me really strange vibes. He would stall for a good 15-20 seconds after each question I asked... and then spit out a perfectly worded answer. I google'd some specific, peculiar phrases I remembered him saying after the interview and found that the phrases came straight out of places like the Kubernetes documentation, word for word. He was googling my questions and the…

I do feel that if its possible to google interview questions in 20 seconds they are bad interview questions.

I was that thinking of a cool idea, where the conversion was translated in real time and gpt3 was giving you answers to common questions like give me an example of when XYZ

You could also do interview questions.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#257

Post by jackblemming » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

SauciestGNU wrote: post #181

sicp-enjoyer wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who wrote nested loops What is this supposed to be the connotation here?

This suggests runtime complexity will be O(n^2), which is rarely an optimal solution to a problem.

Unless they verify the source code of every library they use and verify the entire call stack; it probably has a nested for loop somewhere. Good thing computers are fast!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#258

Post by hackernewds » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #251

closeparen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason an intelligence-gathering operation has to use someone who is totally incompetent at the job and comes across as suspicious.

Yes, there is. The reason is that they aren't superhuman, and aren't very popular anymore. This is something I've argued before: In the 40s, the US intelligence services could call up famous, brilliant people like Claude Shannon, ask him to fix some problem and never talk about the problem or his solution to it. If they tried that today, most would tell them to go fuck themselves. Now you may think things would be di…

Don't think I agree. You really just need 1 smart person per country to pass a meager interview process post learning the questions.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#259

Post by tomp » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

EddySchauHai wrote: post #193

csa wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes me wonder if they are just getting into a completely different program with the "American university" name. Not op, but I can answer this. Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Most non-terminal Masters degree programs are degree mills, even at well known universities. These are almost always pay-to-play with few opportunities for scholarships, TAships, or whatever. Most “real” students will enter a doctoral p…

I interviewed at Oxford for an MSc in Software Engineering with no bachelors degree lol. There are sneaky gateways into a lot of top universities.

I don’t know, I got an MSc in Math/Finance from Oxford and there were tough exams, the selection process was very strict (only 30 people got in), classmates seemed high quality, …

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#260

Post by hackernewds » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:22 AM UTC

givemeethekeys wrote: post #136

aliqot wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is partly asia as well.

I hear you. Generally when Americans say, "Asian", they mean, people from China, Japan, the Koreas, and to a lesser extent Filipino, Thai, Indo, Malay.. but mostly. Basically, if you have smaller eyes, then you are Asian. Otherwise, you are Russian or Indian .. etc, sort of like how some people consider people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as "brown". Continental unity doesn't mean much for Asia as m…

Just because it's accepted widely doesn't mean its right - else we would be wrongly using "its" forever like I've just done. Indians are completely and wholly Asian.