I believe it works like this: it’s criminal fraud, and you’re the patsy
How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits. That’s… not really true.
Yeah not my experience at all. I am an at will employee and I can wake up tomorrow to a locked laptop.
I said "without risk of lawsuits", and that phrase is doing a lot of work. Also, you're looking at it only from the employee's side.
Multiple statements can be true at once:
An ordinary employee who is just doing their job and hoping to continue doing their job can be laid off for any number of reasons that are outside of their control. The most common of these is company financial performance, which is both completely invisible and completely uncontrollable for an ordinary employee. Behind the scenes, the decision-makers in these layoffs have very scrupulously designed them to ensure that the people deciding who is laid off have no knowledge of an employee's membership of anything that might be construed as a protected class. This is why they often look so illogical.
A manager who has a problem employee can have a terribly difficult time getting rid of that employee in a way that is legal. My boss had one such problem employee, who did literally zero work after being hired. When my manager had an experienced engineer pair program with him, he literally had to be told what to type, keystroke by keystroke, to get him to produce anything. When my boss called him on this, he produced a doctor's note saying he was depressed and went on disability. Short-term disability can last up to a year, and you cannot fire someone on disability without a paper trail that says "You fired someone on disability, you knew they were on disability, and that is a protected class." Now your lawyers have to argue in court that the fact they were on disability had no bearing on why they were fired.
A person who takes the law as a tool with which to screw others over will do a better job screwing people over than the employee who is just trying to do their job and incidentally wants to keep it, or the manager who is just trying to provide a supportive environment for their reports to do their best work. Because that's what they're paying attention to. If you've got a lawyer combing over case law and statutes to understand the fine points of what you can and cannot be fired for, you can act in ways that ensure that you will win a big payout if you are ever fired. These ways probably bear no resemblance to what our notions of a "good employee" or even a "decent human being" are. But they are effective at collecting a paycheck, potentially from multiple employers at once, and being able to collect a bigger paycheck if your employer tries to get rid of you.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#33Just playing devils advocate but don’t companies already do this to their customers, silently outsource to another company or contractor? What’s the difference here if people do this but still make sure that the work is done properly?
Corporates provide insurance and some liability protection and usually have contractual agreements.
For individuals, The threat of criminal convictions only works in very limited circumstances, and is limited to people within the same jurisdiction as the buyer.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#34Basically you're lending your name and identity as a front for someone with malicious intentions. There are a few different angles to this. Other people have already mentioned the North Korean state-sponsored espionage, but honestly I think this is a small minority of this market. The other two big ones are visa fraud and employment fraud. With the first one, you have a developer, possibly even skilled in a low-wage…
I think the most wrong thing about this is the disability thing.
In the US, you don't just get paid for disability. No. The closest thing is FMLA, which:
- is unpaid - only granted after 1 year of work, and - does not guarantee your position
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah not my experience at all. I am an at will employee and I can wake up tomorrow to a locked laptop.
I said "without risk of lawsuits", and that phrase is doing a lot of work. Also, you're looking at it only from the employee's side. Multiple statements can be true at once: An ordinary employee who is just doing their job and hoping to continue doing their job can be laid off for any number of reasons that are outside of their control. The most common of these is company financial performance, which is both complete…
> I said "without risk of lawsuits", and that phrase is doing a lot of work.
It is like saying that it is hard to go swimming without risk of shark attack.
Mostly wrong until you share a bunch of cherry-picked scenarios to support your own beliefs.
“Well yes I knew a guy who liked to splash around in the ocean at sunset wearing his seal costume after ladling chum into the water all afternoon.”
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah not my experience at all. I am an at will employee and I can wake up tomorrow to a locked laptop.
I said "without risk of lawsuits", and that phrase is doing a lot of work. Also, you're looking at it only from the employee's side. Multiple statements can be true at once: An ordinary employee who is just doing their job and hoping to continue doing their job can be laid off for any number of reasons that are outside of their control. The most common of these is company financial performance, which is both complete…
I've gone on disability, its insane the loops one has to jump through to get it, especially if you want the private disability insurance to kick in. It took months of paperwork and re-filing appeals. I'm in a state with a better safety net, but I had to work at my place for several years to qualify to earn what amounted to be around 45% of my salary while on short term disability.
Sadly people really do think that your story (which I'm sure is true) is more common.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I said "without risk of lawsuits", and that phrase is doing a lot of work. Also, you're looking at it only from the employee's side. Multiple statements can be true at once: An ordinary employee who is just doing their job and hoping to continue doing their job can be laid off for any number of reasons that are outside of their control. The most common of these is company financial performance, which is both complete…
I've gone on disability, its insane the loops one has to jump through to get it, especially if you want the private disability insurance to kick in. It took months of paperwork and re-filing appeals. I'm in a state with a better safety net, but I had to work at my place for several years to qualify to earn what amounted to be around 45% of my salary while on short term disability. Sadly people really do think that yo…
Those are all huge hoops for an individual that just wants to live their lives, and trivial for an organized crime operation with a lawyer and doctor on staff that can amortize the disability paperwork across multiple employees and potentially hundreds of jobs.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#38Basically you're lending your name and identity as a front for someone with malicious intentions. There are a few different angles to this. Other people have already mentioned the North Korean state-sponsored espionage, but honestly I think this is a small minority of this market. The other two big ones are visa fraud and employment fraud. With the first one, you have a developer, possibly even skilled in a low-wage…
I think the most wrong thing about this is the disability thing. In the US, you don't just get paid for disability. No. The closest thing is FMLA, which: - is unpaid - only granted after 1 year of work, and - does not guarantee your position
This is employer-by-employer. There's no mandated minimum, however many large corporations will give you full benefits. Mine, for example, pays 100% of your salary and your stocks continue to vest during that time.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits. That’s… not really true.
Yeah not my experience at all. I am an at will employee and I can wake up tomorrow to a locked laptop.
Can one negotiate a different type of permanent contract? (e.g. with a France-like job security)
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#40Basically you're lending your name and identity as a front for someone with malicious intentions. There are a few different angles to this. Other people have already mentioned the North Korean state-sponsored espionage, but honestly I think this is a small minority of this market. The other two big ones are visa fraud and employment fraud. With the first one, you have a developer, possibly even skilled in a low-wage…
>It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits.
This is absolutely not true. The amount of remote tech jobs with right to work protection is so close to zero to be a rounding error.
You can sue anyone/company at any time for any reason for like a $20-75$ filing fee. The case will be dismissed if it has no merit but there is no way to stop the filing aka "suing" which is why legal departments exist.
Government jobs are basically it and are again so rarely remote to make it non existent.
I suspect that the reason people think this is that so many companies are brazenly breaking laws that when they fire someone it is easy to sue them.