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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

#81

Post by MrVandemar »

exclipy wrote: post #73
gfaure wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adoption makes it entirely possible for an Asian-presenting person to have a European first name _and_ surname and, frankly, is not something you should be asked about in an interview.

You'd expect an adoptee to have perfect English

You can make no such assumption I'm afraid. You might expect a native speaker to have perfect English, but you'd be wrong.

There are people with issues like dyslexia and people who don't fit the education system and perform poorly.

I've met non-native speakers who have far better spelling, grammar and an enlarged vocabulary than people who have lived in my English-speaking country for their whole lives.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#82

Post by Kiro »

gfaure wrote: post #62
brookst wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly someone of obvious Asian descent and accent who introduces themselves as “Simon” is not a red flag. As you say, some people understandably prefer not to hear their real name mangled every day. But someone of obvious Asian descent and accent who introduces themselves as “Simon Cartwright” and has vague tales of growing up in London… again, it’s possible, and we should treat each individual with respect and a…

Adoption makes it entirely possible for an Asian-presenting person to have a European first name _and_ surname and, frankly, is not something you should be asked about in an interview.

Of course, in theory, there's a possibility that someone named Simon Cartwright, with a North Korean accent, who has amnesia and can't remember a thing about the place they claim they grew up in, is actually not a spy. I personally don't think that's a situation where an employer is required to give the benefit of the doubt.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#83

Post by kergonath »

tptacek wrote: post #72

‘What was your Metro stop in Paris?’ You're potentially getting into dicy employment law waters with questions like these.

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

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#84

Post by [deleted] »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #54
rcakebread wrote: post #42

"Cinder is part of a growing list of US-based tech companies that encounter engineering applicants who are actually suspected North Korean nationals. " Actually suspected? There's nothing in the article that shows they were from North Korea.

You missed the key word.... > Actually suspected I actually suspected my grand kid ate my icecream. The icecream was in the fridge, grandkids use the fridge. The icecream was not in the fridge, grandkids take things out of the fridge. The icecream was likely eaten. Grandkids eat icecream. I actually suspect the grandkids ate the icecream. (Turns out grandma ate it with her friends on top of some apple pie.)

[deleted]

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#85

Post by ggm »

jprete wrote: post #34
ggm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very large investment in time which you think would pay back better as an employment assistance company above board.

A huge part of the arbitrage here is cost of living and cost of labor across national borders. They'd never make the same aboveboard doing employment assistance because their clients would all get locally competitive salaries, which are very low compared to getting hired under the pretense of being in the US.

I guess if they put "cheap competent DPRK programmers available for hire" they wouldn't get enough takers.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#86

Post by _cenw »

Andrex wrote: post #65
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing that the internet is as rife with abuse as sneakerspace, I cannot see how there could not be. If such an industry had spawned a decade earlier maybe The Algorithm would have less unchecked and would not have resulted in so much societal destruction this century.

Are you advocating for techno-authoritarianism?

The problems of spam and fraud exists regardless. We're not going back to better days where this only happened sometimes and a few tweaks to your config shut it down for good.

So maybe you could suggest a better answer instead of asking boring questions.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#87

Post by callalex »

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…

I’m mixed race in a visually non-obvious way. I was born and raised in the bay. What is the “correct” ethnicity that I should try to project with my name?

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#88

Post by tptacek »

kergonath wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #72

‘What was your Metro stop in Paris?’ You're potentially getting into dicy employment law waters with questions like these.

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.

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#89

Post by Terr_ »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #69
sfink wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your grandma is into cannibalism? How big was this apple pie? Something about this story doesn't add up.

Yes, she murdered a bunch of apples, her friends, and she ate them, with my icecream. (English is weird language. :D )

To continue with a deliberate misunderstanding of slang:

> Turns out grandma ate it with her friends on top of some apple pie.

"That's now how I expected to see grandma go, but hopefully she was doing what she loved."

Re: We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

#90

Post by callalex »

brookst wrote: post #55
cogman10 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Certainly someone of obvious Asian descent and accent who introduces themselves as “Simon” is not a red flag. As you say, some people understandably prefer not to hear their real name mangled every day. But someone of obvious Asian descent and accent who introduces themselves as “Simon Cartwright” and has vague tales of growing up in London… again, it’s possible, and we should treat each individual with respect and a…

There is simply more noise than signal with this style of racial profiling and I implore you to do some soul-searching and reconsidering because you are probably harming people without even intending to with your current behavior.
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