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We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

cinder.co

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Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#121

Post by sarchertech »

cogman10 wrote: post #43
trentnix wrote: post #2

I had similar experiences at my last employer when hiring last fall. In both cases, the fraud was easily made plain when I asked details about their work history. In one case, they claimed to live in the same metro area I had previously lived for 18 years, but couldn’t answer any basic questions about the place. In another situation, they claimed a workplace that was in a community I was familiar with and that was fa…

> names that didn’t match their ethnicity The people I've known from China and Korea have a tendency to adopt traditional English names (Steve, Joe, Mike, etc) because their native names are hard to pronounce for English speakers. Further, the 2nd generation Asian Americans I've met do often have traditional English names.

My nephew’s last name is Brown but his mom is Vietnamese so he looks Vietnamese. Obviously a “mismatched” name isn’t red flag.

But someone named Sam Smith who supposedly grew up in an English speaking country, but barely speaks English is something that might trigger you to look further.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#122

Post by sarchertech »

Are people really hiring engineers who “can barely speak English” and can’t answer basic questions about their history.

Communication skills are at least as importing as programming skills, and I’ve never worked at a place where someone like this would have passed an FTE interview.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#123

Post by InitialLastName »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #119
carlmr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when they attacked SpaceX for not recruiting "refugees" to work on export-controlled dual use rocket tech. Sauce?

Lawsuit is still live.

In that case, I'd expect a source would be easy to provide.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#124

Post by kergonath »

tptacek wrote: post #88
kergonath wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone not living in Paris: this is the very first question one asks when meeting a fellow Parisian.

For anyone subject to United States employment law: you can generally ask questions about where a person lives if they're carefully constricted to determining whether they can reasonable get to the worksite. Otherwise, questions like these risk being interpreted as a proxy for racial discrimination, in large part because they historically have been one of the primary proxies for overt racial discrimination.

> For anyone subject to United States employment law

Dealing with both aspects is the joy of cross-cultural communication :)

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#125

Post by krick »

I don't really get why it's an "issue". I understand from the fist paragraph that USA government forbids you hiring North Koreans, for whatever reason, sure. But it's not like it's your job to investigate them, right? Anybody you are hiring could be a terrorist, drug dealer, ex-mercenary, whatever. If he has documents saying he is a citizen of USA and you are transferring money to an, uh, non-North Korean bank (how would you even do that?), you shouldn't care less if the documents are fake and if he sends money straight to al-qaeda.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#126

Post by krick »

Jolter wrote: post #117
asynchronous wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have any evidence except bogus applicants- this is just speculation at best. Sad it hit front of HN though.

“We” (the readers of HN) don’t have any evidence per se, just a blog post. But I also don’t see why anyone would make up this particular story.

I also don't see why anybody would boast being a "Trust and Safety" company founded by ex-CIA, but here we are. Who knows these guys.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#127

Post by Aurornis »

krick wrote: post #125

I don't really get why it's an "issue". I understand from the fist paragraph that USA government forbids you hiring North Koreans, for whatever reason, sure. But it's not like it's your job to investigate them, right? Anybody you are hiring could be a terrorist, drug dealer, ex-mercenary, whatever. If he has documents saying he is a citizen of USA and you are transferring money to an, uh, non-North Korean bank (how w…

They're not lying in the interview so they can get a job and put in honest work.

They're lying so they can get into your company and give their government access to your systems when convenient in the future.

The paycheck is barely scratching the surface of why they want to get into your company.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#128

Post by krick »

Aurornis wrote: post #127
krick wrote: post #125

I don't really get why it's an "issue". I understand from the fist paragraph that USA government forbids you hiring North Koreans, for whatever reason, sure. But it's not like it's your job to investigate them, right? Anybody you are hiring could be a terrorist, drug dealer, ex-mercenary, whatever. If he has documents saying he is a citizen of USA and you are transferring money to an, uh, non-North Korean bank (how w…

They're not lying in the interview so they can get a job and put in honest work. They're lying so they can get into your company and give their government access to your systems when convenient in the future. The paycheck is barely scratching the surface of why they want to get into your company.

In this case I'd recommend you to reject everyone who speaks English fluently, since he might be from NSA.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#129

Post by rpdillon »

tptacek wrote: post #88
kergonath wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone not living in Paris: this is the very first question one asks when meeting a fellow Parisian.

For anyone subject to United States employment law: you can generally ask questions about where a person lives if they're carefully constricted to determining whether they can reasonable get to the worksite. Otherwise, questions like these risk being interpreted as a proxy for racial discrimination, in large part because they historically have been one of the primary proxies for overt racial discrimination.

I think the interviewers were asking about the metro stop where the candidate worked as a method to assess the veracity of the resume item. Same thing for the question about what division the candidate worked in at Uber.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#130

Post by tptacek »

rpdillon wrote: post #129
tptacek wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone subject to United States employment law: you can generally ask questions about where a person lives if they're carefully constricted to determining whether they can reasonable get to the worksite. Otherwise, questions like these risk being interpreted as a proxy for racial discrimination, in large part because they historically have been one of the primary proxies for overt racial discrimination.

I think the interviewers were asking about the metro stop where the candidate worked as a method to assess the veracity of the resume item. Same thing for the question about what division the candidate worked in at Uber.

Yes, and everybody who has been forced to settle out a discrimination case where the alleged facts included questions about the candidate's zip code had a reason other than "we don't want Black folks working here" answer, and if they were dumb enough to take that case all the way to court, they might even have prevailed with it, but in employment law it's the ride not the rap.

I'm assuming everybody who's been a witness (or god forbid a party) to a protected-class employment lawsuit had their eyebrows shoot up all the way off their head at the premise of this article, which is "rooting out secret North Koreans from an incoming flow of candidates, in part using forensic interview questions".

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