Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

Edited: Added link

Fining them is a way, I agree with you on that. But it's far from the best way.

The paper you provided[0] also goes on to talk about the future actions of an offender who has been caught in the act previously.

> It should be noted that being caught cheating in the past does not necessarily provide an accurate measure of high perception of being caught cheating in the future.

I'll concede to cherry picking for my arguments, but even anecdotally, cheaters will cheat, cost is an afterthought. People negatively affected (caught cheating and fined) will only remember the part about being fined. From their perspective, the organisation has just exploited them more, and you have just bred more resentment for your organisation within this community.

[0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/46025357/bf0...

One of the first jobs I had was in a small call centre (doing cold calls). I had to read a script asking random people questions about their financial situation. I think it might have been a scam but I'm still not sure to this day; it just sounded like a standard insurance questionnaire but I don't know what they did with the answers that were collected. I got fired after 2 weeks because my conversion rates were not good enough.

I think that these kinds of jobs are morally acceptable. You can't expect the poor to behave ethically while the rich are screwing them over 24/7. You can't have a fair society without some degree of chaos and allowing people to take matters into their own hands.

If we accept capitalism, then we must accept all the nasty things that come with it.

Many people pretend that capitalism is just a matter of rewarding intelligence over stupidity and hard work over laziness, but it's just as much about rewarding selfishness over selflessness, deception over honesty, short-term thinking over long-term thinking, etc...

I'm always shocked that these IRS scams ever work, let alone consistently enough to make them viable businesses. Someone with an Indian accent and really bad phone connection calls you up and tells you they are from the IRS and you need to pay them "taxes" with an Apple gift card, and people fall for this?? First off, the government will never contact you by phone. I thought everyone knew this but if not the FTC is here to remind you [1]. Second, even if they did, wouldn't you require some kind of written evidence before you paid? Third, Apple gift cards? Seriously??? I guess a fool and their money are soon parted, but this is a pretty unbelievable level of gullibility.

1: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2013/08/whos-calling-not-g...

While we dint exactly hire but we had an even worse situation. A particular developer from our team was conducting "real time" training outside office. He referred two guys for a particular job opening.

While interviewing the first guy, in-person interview, we asked about process flows at his last job. The answer was uncannily similar to what we were doing. We were intrigued and dug deeper. It became apparent to us that he was describing our process back to us. When we asked about what OS his current employer was using for prod systems, he folded. So, we ended the interview.

The 2nd guy, again in-person interview, repeated the same process flow. And he came prepared. He said the prod systems were Windows. When we pushed about the Windows flavor he answered Windows 10. He had never heard of the server version of Windows like 2012 R2. The best part was that he somehow thought the job was already in the bag. So whenever we asked a difficult questions his answers were pretty passive aggressive.

Though I complained to both HR and developer's US manager, nothing came out of it. All reports were ignored.

> I've heard many arguments about how its a cultural thing, old people in the west (more weighted towards N-America) are treated as a burden. A burden on the economy, a social burden (damn those annoying grandpa's and grandma's). Isn't that why the 401k and MediCare/MedicAid exist? (excluding the set of population that doesn't qualify for them) to pay them(selves) back for their 40+ years of service? I'd like to hear some fresh arguments/data on why they are treated as such. I'd be grateful to anyone who points me to more reading material on this topic.

Usual disclaimer: This is my opinion, yada yada yada. I am probably wrong on some (if not most) of this.

The elderly, especially in America, have an incredible amount of sway over national politics. Nearly 1/2 of voters are 50 or older [1]. As such, they generate a lot of ire in the US among the less-elderly because it feels like their needs are often met at the expense of the nation.

Medicare, for example, represents a huge amount of US entitlement spending [2] - though this is somewhat of a misleading number because Medicare funds quite a few things besides strictly healthcare expenses (like it funds most physician residencies, IIRC). Coming out in opposition to Medicare is often viewed as a bit of a political death sentence, because your primary goal as a politician is (at least it feels this way sometimes) to pander to older voters.

Additionally, steadfast conservatives tend to be elderly [3], which often puts the elderly in opposition to younger generations. Since politicians tend to listen primarily to their actual voters, you can sort-of understand the young liberal's decree that "things will be better when all the old people die."

Now, none of this is really the elderly's fault (aside from maybe that last part). Medicare is a reaction to an out-of-control healthcare system, and that's not necessarily your grandma's fault. If politicians listen to the people who vote for them, the logical answer would seem to be "go out and vote", not "get angry at the people who do vote."

But, if you're someone who does vote but feels like your voice still isn't being heard, you can probably start to understand some of the animosity.

1: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2011/05/04/U-S-votin...

2: https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...

3: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/09/the-politics...