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The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

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Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#41

Post by misnome »

ljm wrote: post #31
defen wrote: post #11

While I don't doubt this sort of thing happens, the following line leads me to believe that this is an exercise in creative writing by someone: > In the meantime, legal approved security to put a trace on John’s computer to review if there have been outside messages or if his work is being completed with outside help or on a different computer altogether.

Most management software on a company laptop (or endpoint in jargon-speak) will be set up to allow this and your company's policy will allow them to activate monitoring software if an investigation is required. It probably won't be used unless you're already in deep shit, which the person in TFA pretty much was. It's not that unusual.

And, it explicitly mentions concerns about getting the equipment back. So it's a company owned computer.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#42

Post by vladvasiliu »

kccqzy wrote: post #36
bink wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty uncommon scenario, though. Making everyone work on-site on the off-chance that someone will fake an interview seems like a severe over-reaction.

A strategy I've seen is that you can make only the new hires work on-site for their first year or so. Once they've proven themselves in their first year, they can start working remotely.

I've seen this strategy adapted for remote. A friend of mine started using IntelliJ's Code With Me for remote pair programming sessions.

I guess it's possible that if the new hire isn't legit, they might send a better person, but since those sessions were quite regular, plus they were also doing "remote stand-ups", it would be tougher to always be able to send the same replacement and / or not get caught.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#43

Post by nevi-me »

defen wrote: post #11

While I don't doubt this sort of thing happens, the following line leads me to believe that this is an exercise in creative writing by someone: > In the meantime, legal approved security to put a trace on John’s computer to review if there have been outside messages or if his work is being completed with outside help or on a different computer altogether.

I worked at an audit+consulting firm, and our laptops had at least 5 different "security" applications, most of them spyware. Then 2 anti-viruses (eew).

They actively MITM TLS traffic, getting some Java applications like IntelliJ to work was a mission.

___

I once interned at a defence company where it was common to hear folks saying "if your PC keeps on freezing, it's IT taking screenshots". This was in 2007-2009, so a while ago.

___

My colleague's spouse got sabotaged by their former employer, to make them break their non-compete. The employer spied on their laptop (not a work one, as they'd left). One day the cursor started moving, files getting copied, kind of vibe.

They also sent "customers" to their business, legit and otherwise, to make them err and break their non-compete. Then with some legal muscle, they enforced the non-compete, forcing them out of business. This is a recent thing of 2020.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#44

Post by PragmaticPulp »

defen wrote: post #11

While I don't doubt this sort of thing happens, the following line leads me to believe that this is an exercise in creative writing by someone: > In the meantime, legal approved security to put a trace on John’s computer to review if there have been outside messages or if his work is being completed with outside help or on a different computer altogether.

Could be, or they could be referring to some of the heavy-handed remote monitoring software that gets installed on a lot of corporate laptops.

It's common for companies to lock down corporate laptops and have records of communication from the approved software. These companies also, wisely, don't let just anyone pull up those records on employee computers. You have to engage with HR and/or legal at minimum.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#45

Post by hourislate »

This is especially true with Indian H1B's. A company I was doing work for complained that they were burned at least 3 times. They got someone else who wasn't the person they interviewed. Wasn't a big deal since they would let them go immediately. What's funny is folks were asking are you sure? The manager would say yes I'm sure, I'm Indian and I know who I spoke to during the interview and it wasn't this guy.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#46

Post by linsomniac »

I once hired a guy who had no experience, but seemed like a good culture fit for our company and seemed very interested in learning.

We interviewed him and made e-mail communication a large part of the interview, because it is a critical part of our business. And his communication was great!

After hiring, a recurring problem we had was his e-mail to us and to customers were terrible. Bad grammar, bad spelling, uncorrected typos... It got so bad that we had to have someone review all e-mails he sent to customers.

We had regular "improvement plan" meetings with him, but after a year of paying him, we had to let him go. As part of the exit interview we went back and looked at his interview e-mails, and compared them with his current e-mails. So we asked him:

"During the interview, all your e-mails were great! Why was that?"

"My wife wrote all of those."

I guess we should have hired his wife!

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#47

Post by thrower123 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40

I've been a hiring manager for remote positions for a long time. If your recruiting channels are good, most of your candidates are going to be honest and good intentioned. But interview enough people, and you'll start encountering people trying to abuse remote work. They're not interested in contributing to your company. They're only interested in collecting paychecks while they do as little work as possible for as l…

> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue.

I can't imagine it's much worse than it was in the before-times. Wally has always been able to skate along with a certain amount of meeting-attending.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#48

Post by throwawayboise »

hui-zheng wrote: post #39

> HR is going to send up a quick red flag and John is likely to resign claiming a poor fit rather than get caught committing or admitting fraud. Though at this point they all know John is committing fraud, they still decided only to approach this guy claiming a poor fit for his resignation. I don't know why they do that. They have discussed a lot and considered many things. I am sure there are many reasons to do so.…

If they terminate for fraud, they might be asked to prove it in some kind of wrongful termination claim, or risk being charged with libel or slander. Though the possibility might be remote, and the employer likely would prevail, the legal team and HR will not want to take any chance of having to spend time on that. They will want to take the lowest risk approach.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#49

Post by starwind »

jimmaswell wrote: post #22
simmanian wrote: post #5

Practices like this are hilariously common in the industry. Right out of college I accepted a job offer at a small consulting company on the east coast. They promised they would give me free housing at their luxury apartment for the first few months and give me all the training I need to excel in areas of my interest. I flew across the country and found out the whole thing is not as advertised. Their luxury apartment…

> They promised they would give me free housing at their luxury apartment for the first few months and give me all the training I need to excel in areas of my interest My training at a consultancy company, first job out of college, was like this but actually legit. Nice hotel with a free breakfast, transportation to their facility, and actual (paid) training on a few things, lasting a month. At the end I was put on a…

yeah that was what it was like with my first job. Subsidiary of Accenture. Got set up in a hotel, had some training (that was kind of useless but whatever).

But I got so many spam emails from companies that sounded like a nightmare. Crappy corporate housing, getting sent anywhere, probably shady

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#50

Post by eh9 »

hui-zheng wrote: post #39

> HR is going to send up a quick red flag and John is likely to resign claiming a poor fit rather than get caught committing or admitting fraud. Though at this point they all know John is committing fraud, they still decided only to approach this guy claiming a poor fit for his resignation. I don't know why they do that. They have discussed a lot and considered many things. I am sure there are many reasons to do so.…

Legal knows what they’re doing. Their entire purpose is ensuring the business is free from undue risk. Confronting this man as a liar could unravel a nice little bag of legal hurdles that end up with the company paying this person to settle X or Y claim.

Also, they confronted the evil, but the company had no reason to show their hand and they way they did it keeps them a bit safer from litigation.

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