This stuff only happens because of the huge discrepancy in salaries you can get based purely on geographic location.
Someone is pretending to be me
251–260 of 395 posts
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#252That's made me think.
Why the hell don't software developers have their own chain of trust?
(Well, professionals in general, but you'd think that we'd have gotten this shit working for ourselves first.)
It would kinda fix this shit - at least to the extent that it was actually used.
So then all you need to do is have "Company X" adopt the policy that all of their people must be connected to the trust chain.
From then on "A" of "Company X" fame can no longer be impersonated (except via theft of keys).
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In fact, down to two pointers, left and right, iterating over a list of heights to find how much rain water it can trap. Ah haha I hate that question It should be banned everywhere, oh well. I once saw a physicist (not even a coder) give a really cool answer to it though, I wish I could remember it.
I remember being asked this during my interview at Google. It was the first time I heard it and I gave an answer that iterated over the list twice. The interviewer said that it wasn't good enough and I am only allowed to iterate over it once. He didn't let me write my O(2n) solution down so he returned a strong no as feedback.
This type of interviewing style is bullshit. It means the interviewer knows a better solution that is "clever" and expects you to either have the same cleverness epiphany on the spot or to have studied this question. Neither is actually very useful as a hiring criterion.
Guy Steele gave an incredibly interesting guest talk[1] at google about four different ways to solve this exact problem, and the fact that it's an interesting enough topic for an hour long google talk should probably be a clue that you shouldn't be expected to invent the best solution on the whiteboard in 40 minutes.
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#254I hope Andrew [0] — the college junior with morals who blew the whistle on the attempt to get him to impersonate the author — gets an internship or job offer out of this; he apparently was having a hard time with that. The author's sleuthing is reminiscent of Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg from 1989. [1] [0] Andrew blogs at https://unfooling.com/ , according to the article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cucko…
> I hope Andrew [0] — the college junior with morals who blew the whistle on the attempt to get him to impersonate the author — gets an internship or job offer out of this; he apparently was having a hard time with that. Excellent point. I've been wondering about ways to test students on "trust/morals" and decided its one of the most valuable yet least well understood qualities. Employers generally rank skills, knowl…
A couple suggestions:
* take them on a tour of your chocolate factory
* ask them to pull a magical sword out of a stone
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#255Andrew here. Connor, thanks for releasing this on the orange site. This story is also more fun from my position. I've been applying to internships and interviewing every week. They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation (sorry to top comment for "impersonating" your comment style). My days are deteriorating from a colorful sphere down to two points. In fact, down to two po…
Hey Andrew, I am sure your integrity in this situation will be rightfully rewarded. You come across as a great hire not just in the matter of integrity, but also in the humble/honest description of your skill level and experience. I can see you finding that internship entirely on your own, by simply walking into the next interview confident of how valuable someone like you would be to any organization.
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody wins until the tax man comes knocking for all of the dollars owed, or when "Connor Tumbleson" gets flagged as a terrible employee when all those copy-pasted qualifications don't line up with reality and the work is mediocre. As reported elsewhere in these threads, the credentials and interview process are all worked out upfront, the interview no long becomes a valid test of qualifications for the position.…
>I'm not sure if these people are a small step up from the call center scammers because at least they deliver something or a small step down because they're supposedly capable enough to do better. This is what I don't understand.... They have the skills (supposedly).. I mean sure, if they are foreign developers they wont always be getting the best pay or opportunities in their own country... But I have never seen a s…
Could be competent but do a shit job at 3-4 places at once, wait for the onboarding to end and move on to the next target, then let the US counterpart deal with the fallout. Sounds like decent money for not a lot of work if you can swindle enough candidates.
And also let's face it - you can get away with 1/3 effective work time in most places - especially if you have someone making excuses, socializing, attending this-should-have-been-an-email meetings for you full time - and for a 30% cut.
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#257That's a nice bit of detective work you did.
What happened is fraud, and potentially harmful to your reputation. If you can afford it, consider seeking legal remedy. It sounds like the twits running this scam are amateurs and its possible services like Zoom could unveil better leads toward pinpointing the perpetrators if compelled. Google's impersonation policy seems particularly wanting. You could consider reporting to law enforcement as well, for what that might be worth.
Thanks for sharing and I hope your story serves as an example to those who are out there hiring to stay alert.
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha, when you put it like that, I can totally see why the interviewer was "awesome" and let the guy stay on. He was totally there for the drama.
Now that I think about it, I bet you could put together a pretty successful YouTube series of messing with zoom interviews in ways just like this. Get someone's identical twin to join the call and make them fight over who's the real one. Bring time travel into it. Make outlandish demands of the interviewer to prove that they're not a Zorblaxian spy.
Not Zoom interviews, but there are Youtube videos of people messing up with other people on Omegle, with a fake skip screen. From the point of view of the pranked, what happens is they get to someone that ends up skipping them, get a different person, and the previous person shows up in the background or something.
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, you're hiring a contractor off of Upwork, not from a reputable consultancy (to be clear, I'm sure established consultancies do shady shit too, but the risk profile is different), so I think the risk is pretty small. We're talking edge cases on a scenario that is already an edge case.
Even UpWork requires government ID verification. https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010609234-ID... I wonder what financial fraud they'll need to do to get the funds as I'm assuming UpWork has to deal with tax payments being pulled out.
> Even UpWork requires government ID verification.
I dont think it will be too difficult for a scammer to setup a bank account with a false name.
Re: Someone is pretending to be me
#260That's made me think. Why the hell don't software developers have their own chain of trust? (Well, professionals in general, but you'd think that we'd have gotten this shit working for ourselves first.) It would kinda fix this shit - at least to the extent that it was actually used. So then all you need to do is have "Company X" adopt the policy that all of their people must be connected to the trust chain. From then…
> Why the hell don't software developers have their own chain of trust?
Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
No, it’s BLOCKCHAIN!
This actually sounds like a possibility legit application for distributed ledger.