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Someone is pretending to be me

connortumbleson.com

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Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#301

Post by f1shy »

dont__panic wrote: post #107
mrandypratt37 wrote: post #86

I'm a US-based accountant who is currently interviewing for his first job in software and I was approached by someone on on LinkedIn about an opportunity. Seemed fishy, but figured I could risk 15 minutes. The person set up a meeting between me and a Taiwanese Developer for this exact thing. He said he had 7 years experience and had a contract drafted for he and I to become "business partner" where I would take the m…

If I can play devil's advocate for a moment... if the company gets decent work, the non-US participant gets better (and fairer, globally) pay compared to what they'd get locally, and the US participant takes care of the "soft" side of the operation... who's getting hurt? I can't deny that something smells skeevy about this and I don't think I could ever trust a random foreign developer who I haven't built up a solid…

Is not this, more or less, what all consulting companies do? Take 30% and let someone else do the job?

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#302

Post by devwastaken »

dctoedt wrote: post #17

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. 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…

Unless their moral karma somehow bypasses keyword filtering, leetcode, and discrimination, unlikely.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#304

Post by braingenious »

radarsat1 wrote: post #181

This is amazing. I wanted to add one thing. I noticed after reading the full blog post, and scanning through all the HN comments here, that there has been actually no mention, as far as I can tell, from any parties involved, or even any commenters, of any intention to make a police report. Now, I understand not trusting the police, and often it's more trouble than it's worth to deal with them. But this is a situation…

>These people are organized to perform identity theft, which is literally organized crime

This seems hyperbolic (though not impossible.)

If I were to attempt this scheme, would I have created an organized crime entity?

I think this whole thing is a novel example of grift, which is by definition bad. The idea of every bad act being turned into an excuse to necessitate federal police action is… weird.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#306

Post by ralphael »

EamonnMR wrote: post #30
iBotPeaches wrote: post #26

I submitted my own blog here, but then my intentionally configured HN timeouts locked me out. I was wondering why my little Linode was dying. Yeah this was an incredibly odd and creepy experience that I continue to investigate here and there. I really appreciate the interviewer for letting me stay on and confront the imposter.

The Darknet Diaries guy will probably want to interview you after this.

highly recommend that podcast too!

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#307

Post by vertis »

weard_beard wrote: post #279
google234123 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this could be a good question. There’s nothing wrong with a candidate giving some less effluent answer and then progressing up to a better solution with some small hints or discussions

Effluent is poop

It should be a "more effluent" answer and then working up to less effluent :)

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#308

Post by girvo »

dont__panic wrote: post #107
mrandypratt37 wrote: post #86

I'm a US-based accountant who is currently interviewing for his first job in software and I was approached by someone on on LinkedIn about an opportunity. Seemed fishy, but figured I could risk 15 minutes. The person set up a meeting between me and a Taiwanese Developer for this exact thing. He said he had 7 years experience and had a contract drafted for he and I to become "business partner" where I would take the m…

If I can play devil's advocate for a moment... if the company gets decent work, the non-US participant gets better (and fairer, globally) pay compared to what they'd get locally, and the US participant takes care of the "soft" side of the operation... who's getting hurt? I can't deny that something smells skeevy about this and I don't think I could ever trust a random foreign developer who I haven't built up a solid…

It's the impersonation of real people that is the danger here. If they were generating fake people, then perhaps it might not be so bad, but as it stands there is legal, reputational, and possible other types of damage at risk to the people being impersonated

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#309

Post by frank_nitti »

stewarts wrote: post #41
hinkley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once pulled in to observe (in the “are you seeing this shit?” sense) an interview where someone off screen was answering questions and the person on camera was moving his lips. I’m not sure if they wanted me to share in the joke, or verify that there was no form of latency that would make lips and audio fail so badly to line up. I’m pretty good at pattern matching. There was no pattern. It was two guys pulling…

Had similar while hiring for a Sr Dev. The person who first joined the call was not able to articulate any of the frontend or backend work they had done at the previous contracted company. Call goes static, call drops. "Person" rejoins. Who is obviously a completely different person who was able to thoroughly fill in the previous details missed. We ended the call there. Mistake: didn't require video for the session w…

I’m floored by this. We have a sr engineer who conducted an initial technical screen and swore he saw this happening, the person on screen moving his mouth while someone else talked and wrote the code. My managers recounted this story to me, laughing because they thought the suspicion was ridiculous and that the interviewer was just being paranoid (they had not been on the call). Turns out he was not paranoid…

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#310

Post by [deleted] »

comboy wrote: post #143
blastwind wrote: post #125

Andrew 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…

This comment thread feels like a game of Mafia[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)

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