[HN Gopher] Someone is pretending to be me
___________________________________________________________________
Someone is pretending to be me
Author : iBotPeaches
Score : 1146 points
Date : 2022-09-27 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (connortumbleson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (connortumbleson.com)
| iBotPeaches wrote:
| 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.
| hmm-interesting wrote:
| Username seems familiar. I have spent a lot time with your
| apktool, few years ago. For the first time, I saw your real
| name and photo. Thank you for this amazing tool.
| archon810 wrote:
| That's exactly how I know Connor too. Wild to see him at the
| top of HN with this story.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| The Darknet Diaries guy will probably want to interview you
| after this.
| macintux wrote:
| I could sure use a flowchart to follow this story. Baffling level
| of fraud.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| This is the type of arbitrage that happens when developers have
| similar technical skills but not similar interviewing skills.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| If the other thread [1] is to be believed there is no
| guarantee that the developers on the other side has similar
| skills. No need to dig up arbitrage when it could simply be a
| scam.
|
| Even the person they hired here to pretend to be Connor said
| himself that's he's just a junior that would pretend to be a
| senior. Maybe the idea is simply to get a well-paid job, work
| a couple months, get fired (maybe even with a generous
| severance), and repeat.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32996457
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Yeah it could be "just" a scam though the arbitrage is
| really a scam too. The other thread's doesn't make sense
| because the dev is still trying to work despite being
| immediately id'ed as a different person on zoom. This scam
| only makes sense to me to be doing something like stealing
| the signing bonus but actually trying to be a dev is
| curiously naive or stupid.
| lazide wrote:
| If the scammers found a naive patsy to be the 'employee'
| and used an experienced dev to do the interview, it makes
| sense.
|
| At many companies, they wouldn't necessarily notice the
| difference right away too, if someone was pretending to
| work. Management is often overloaded or checked out.
| Depending on ethnicity, they might also be unwilling to
| bring up the issue.
|
| For example, if the patsy sticks with it, who is going to
| call the bluff - especially if no one took a picture?
|
| They could claim the manager was being racist by not
| being able to recognize them or something. If someone IS
| not great at recognizing/telling apart, say, Indians, it
| could sow doubt that would make it harder to address. And
| that is a lot of people in the US.
|
| The longer the delay, and the more legal buttons get
| pushed, the more the company pays out before the scam is
| over, and the more lucrative it is.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Pay out to whom? Surely the employment paperwork, the pay
| checks, the direct deposit forms would have to also be
| under the assumed name?
| lazide wrote:
| It's not hard to find local cut-outs in most areas. In
| most cases, those folks are also patsies.
|
| Another, different party who cashes checks written to
| their name in exchange for a cut, for example.
|
| As an example, there is still the old in the tooth
| craigslist 'oops, I sent too large a cashiers check, can
| you send me the extra?' scam, which is an even more
| obvious ripoff, and people fall for that all the time.
|
| If approached by law enforcement, their story would
| likely be they were working for X (different) company as
| an assistant or in finance, etc. The other company of
| course will be in a different state, country, or
| whatever, or maybe not actually exist, depending on the
| logistics of the money movement.
|
| The scammers could easily have 10-20 different paychecks
| going to one person without anyone being the wiser - at
| least until the IRS got the W-2s or the cut-out started
| thinking about the long term consequences.
|
| Scammers are used to a lot of churn with stuff like this,
| it's why these scams are hardish to run and aren't even
| more lucrative. Think breaking bad and 'Walt trying to
| ACTUALLY make money selling meth'. Lots of surprise
| expenses, people going sideways on you, competition you
| didn't expect, paranoia, logistics difficulties.
|
| That's assuming they aren't just forging/stealing SSNs or
| identities and using some kind of front somewhere, like
| payday check cashing places willing to look the other
| way, or whatever.
|
| There are plenty of folks running bad check scams or the
| like already, and they don't have the benefit of checks
| that will actually cash (all the time), like a big
| companies payroll check.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I wasn't even thinking about the fact that it leaves a
| paper trail. I was just thinking about the fact that the
| company who ostensibly hired "John Doe" is being given
| payment details for "Jack Frost".
| lazide wrote:
| It wouldn't be hard to have it be John Doe all the way
| through, at least for folks doing this. Setting up things
| like this is a common tactic in a lot of common financial
| crimes now a days.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Whenever I read these kinds of super-complicated scams, I can't
| help but think if the scammer would have instead invested all
| that time and effort into legitimate tech and interviewing
| skills, he/she could have just come in the front door! It's
| like the person who spends hundreds of hours putting together
| the perfect exam cheating scheme, where they could have instead
| put in half of that time actually studying!
|
| Or, in video form, the Kay & Peele Bank Heist[1]
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYYOUC10aM
| notahacker wrote:
| The guy organising it appears to be living in a lower middle
| income country with technical skills limited to badly
| installing WordPress plugins and doubts about his spoken
| English.
|
| Even if he actually has the capability to become a _really_
| good programmer, I 'm not sure he's going to beat getting
| half of potentially dozens of US-based developers' contract
| incomes for less effort than spamming job boards and running
| a Slack channel
| jeroenhd wrote:
| No matter how much work you put into setting up a scam,
| you'll never be able to beat the H1B lottery.
|
| Companies know that they can pay less money to people in poor
| countries because an American wage in a third world country
| would have them live like kings. Going the honest route
| significantly cuts your profits if you live in these
| countries.
|
| The "Plamen" person linked in this blog says he was educated
| in Sofia and Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. The average salary in
| Bulgaria ranges from $18k to $30k depending on the city
| (taking the optimistic route, here, sites like
| https://www.zaplatomer.bg/en/salaries-in-country give much
| lower numbers!); with an expected wage starting at $59k, they
| would be able to live a wealthy life earning twice the
| average wage just by getting lowballed by an American
| company. Spending that wage from a small California apartment
| wouldn't be nearly as profitable and comfortable as it would
| be living from a nice house in Bulgaria. All they'd need is a
| good internet connection and a shifted sleep schedule to take
| part in meetings.
|
| That's assuming the guy can actually deliver on his tasks. My
| guess would be that these scammers have limited technical
| skills and rely on waiting for the slow evaluation process to
| fire them and then moving on to the next company.
| treis wrote:
| In a lot of ways it's a convoluted form of arbitrage. These
| people "buy" developer labor in the cheap markets and "sell"
| in the expensive ones. Obviously bad when the developer labor
| doesn't get delivered as advertised. But if you can pull it
| off then mostly good for everyone.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _I could not stand this anymore listening to someone
| legitimately claim they were me...So I turned on my camera,
| renamed myself back and asked the individual what the hell they
| were doing... However, before I did that. I wanted to childishly
| email the address of the person impersonating me._
|
| WHY!? the undercover vicitm doesn't jump up and shout when the
| crime starts to go down, except to drive the plot in really bad
| tv series.
|
| This could have been the beginning of a new Cliff Stoll _Cuckoo
| 's Egg_ thriller! I am dissapoint, but I guess "who has time for
| all that?" Interesting story nonetheless.
|
| It brings to mind these immortal words (needs more line breaks
| but then it would be longer):
|
| _If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs
| and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men
| doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
|
| If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about,
| don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And
| yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise
|
| If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can
| think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with
| Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
|
| If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves
| to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life
| to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools
|
| If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one
| turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your
| beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;
|
| If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your
| turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is
| nothing in you Except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
|
| If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with
| Kings - nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving
| friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too
| much;
|
| If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth
| of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
| And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!_
|
| If: A Father's Advice to His Son -- Rudyard Kipling
| FpUser wrote:
| This post made me look up my name on Upwork. Luckily I am not
| there. Currently contemplating wiping out my info from LinkedIn
| dabernathy89 wrote:
| If you are a software developer, check to make sure you aren't
| being impersonated on Upwork as well. A couple months back
| someone (I think I know who, but have no proof) was posing as me,
| and a suspicious client noticed that the person they were
| chatting with on video did not look that much like me in real
| life. Two other PHP/Laravel devs had impersonators on Upwork as
| well around the same time.
|
| One of these other devs only noticed because the client sent a
| calendar invite to his real email, instead of the one provided by
| the impostor.
|
| [edit - I'm reading through the original post, and I see now that
| this was all done through Upwork as well. Yikes!]
| wildrhythms wrote:
| How might someone 'check' for this on Upwork?
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I actually have a weekly google alert that searches for my full
| name, which fortunately/unfortunately is basically unique. It's
| normally nothing but a handful of false positives, but the week
| I appeared in the local news lit it up like a Christmas tree.
| paraknight wrote:
| I knew immediately it's Upwork. This is extremely common on
| there. The main reason is because developers in Western countries
| can demand higher rates. Just watch out for the red flags:
| mismatching LinkedIn experience, no camera during interview,
| incorrect accent, etc. Don't trust the reviews because accounts
| are routienly shared and/or sold.
|
| I've had some fun with this before where a developer with a
| clearly Chinese accent, and of course no webcam, posed as German
| (mispronouncing his own name) and freaked out when I switched to
| conducting the interview in German. Of course I notified the
| person whose identity he stole and reported the profile to
| Upwork, but it's a drop in the bucket of the scams.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The main reason is because developers in Western countries
| can demand higher rates. Just watch out for the red flags ...
| incorrect accent, etc.
|
| At least in America, that's not a valid tell. There are tons of
| developers in Western countries that have foreign accents.
| rippercushions wrote:
| "Incorrect" here means the accent not matching the name. For
| example, it's unlikely that a person named Connor Tumbleson,
| who according to their resume was educated and has worked in
| the US all their life, would have a Chinese accent. (Not
| _impossible_ , of course, but unlikely.)
| jjslocum3 wrote:
| In 1996, my employer got a contract to work with AT&T to build a
| website that provided regular event updates from the Atlanta
| Olympics. In 1996, this was a very big deal, such a newish
| concept that the project was written up in AdAge or some similar
| industry magazine.
|
| A few months later a prospective junior engineer came in for an
| interview. My manager asked him the typical "tell me about an
| interesting project you've worked on lately." He then proceeded
| to describe in detail the very project we had just completed,
| even referencing the magazine article about it (he must have
| forgotten he was interviewing at the company mentioned in the
| article). At the end of his presentation, my manager said "That's
| interesting, because here at X, we just completed that project."
|
| Awkward silence. Then the interviewee got up and said "I guess I
| should go now." My manager said "Yes, I guess you should."
|
| Impersonation of this sort can be simultaneously disturbing and
| somehow comical. It isn't a new phenomenon; I'm not decided on
| whether I believe the information age makes it easier or more
| difficult.
| tg9000 wrote:
| What a small world! Unless you are also making up that story
| (which I would get a huge laugh out of) I'm 99% positive I was
| in the room with you when this happened. :)
| jjslocum3 wrote:
| I wasn't in the room, but my manager was. Is that you,
| Preserved Killick?
| codazoda wrote:
| Wait! Are you his manager or the imposter?!?!
| Aperocky wrote:
| There's a high possibility that he's the imposter of the
| imposter.
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| What the heck is going on in this thread?
| NonNefarious wrote:
| <click>
|
| Candidate 1 has left the chat
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| almog wrote:
| This story gave me an idea for a different kind of scam in which
| the scammer acts as a man in the middle between a candidate and
| an employer. The idea is that the scammer could pretend to be the
| employer, tempting the candidate to go through the interview
| process. Whether the employers decides the reject or extend an
| offer, in both cases the scammer "rejects" the candidate, and
| takes on the offer to cash out pay checks until they're being
| fired.
|
| The main technical challenge for a scammer would be to create a
| trustworthy looking email address so as to not raise the
| candidate's suspicion. It might not work with big companies but
| I've seen some companies using 3rd party services to send
| interviews invitation so it's not completely unlikely that this
| could work.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I wonder how widespread this really is?
|
| If it's reasonably common, there might be a place for a
| "reputation protection" service in the tech community - a service
| that watches various contracting and hiring sites for its members
| names, then notifies the real person when their name is used.
|
| I could see it being a real issue in the future if someone's
| professional reputation is tarnished this way. If a prospective
| employer searched for a candidate and found multiple profiles
| with very different skills listed, that would be a huge red flag.
| Worse, if the fraudulent person was hired and then fired, that
| information could find its way to places where the real person is
| applying.
|
| If they were able to successfully land a job like this, I could
| also see that messing with the real person's tax situation.
|
| ... I'm off to look for my name on Upwork, I guess.
| awb wrote:
| I had a similar experience back in 2008 when I started a fully
| remote digital agency.
|
| One of my first employees was doing fantastic work, until his
| performance fell to 0 - no communication, no deliverables,
| nothing. Turns out, he stopped paying the subcontractor that
| was doing his job for him.
|
| The subcontractor contacted me months after I fired the
| employee and confessed. Apparently, the long-pauses and loud
| typing during my conversations with the employee was the
| employee messaging the subcontractor asking for help answering
| my questions.
|
| So, in my case, the employee was still the front. In this case,
| they're attempting to eliminate that bottleneck by just having
| the subcontractor impersonate the employee.
| pnw wrote:
| This reminds me of the time I agreed to hear a seed pitch from a
| Web3 company and they accidentally showed a slide where they had
| copied text from my LinkedIn profile onto their team slide under
| an unnamed VP that was "soft circled". The text was distinctive
| enough that I immediately recognized it and it couldn't have been
| any other person. I'd never met them before that call and wasn't
| looking for a job.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Is any actual work happening here? Does someone ever sign an
| offer letter and start checking in source code?
| lazide wrote:
| Many (most?) large companies might take months to fire someone
| even if it was blatant and obvious. Process to follow, etc.
|
| Considering how distracted and overwhelmed many managers are
| right now, some might go _years_ before catching on.
|
| Even if no code got checked in. Chances are, they could also
| farm out a bit here and there to a friend to make it a harder
| problem to resolve for the company.
| fallat wrote:
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| There exists public information about me and yet I don't really
| expect people to impersonate me on interviews. I guess I'm just
| naive.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| As for motivation, maybe cash out one or two paychecks? Dunno how
| it works in the US, but where I live that would be hard without
| any ID or tax information. Maybe they'll request the first
| paycheck as a cashiers check? Paypal payment? Who knows. But
| 1-2-3 months worth of US-level salary would be a fortune in some
| parts of the world.
|
| In the days of remote work, it would not surprise me a bit if
| there are organized criminals doing this 24/7. Just churning out
| job applications, hiring people off fiverr, upwork, etc. to do
| the interviews, collect a paycheck or two and disappear. Could
| easily be worth $5000-$20000 pr. scam, if they manage to get
| hired.
| macintux wrote:
| Related active discussion in this thread. Ask HN: Have you
| experienced "hiring fraud?"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32996457
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Why didn't they make a up totally fake person with a fake history
| instead of using a real person? I feel like it's possible to do,
| even fake a github.
| sigio wrote:
| It't way more work to make a fake profile, with actual
| contributions to different (real) repositories, then just
| pretend to be an existing one.
| Gh0stRAT wrote:
| If they want to actually start and collect a few paychecks,
| then they'll need to pass a background check from HireRight or
| whoever. This'll probably include transcript checks, verifying
| past employment, etc.
|
| Much easier to just use a real person's identity.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Even for simple freelance gigs?
| sarchertech wrote:
| They would also need to steal the persons SSN and likely need
| to get through one of those identity check questionnaires
| from credit agencies. And they'd probably need to fake an ID
| as well.
|
| Non trivial stuff for a specific target.
| type_Ben_struct wrote:
| Wow. This is creepy. Props to the interviewer for allowing the
| real Connor to stay on the interview and observe.
|
| This is one of my big problems with LinkedIn. We put so much
| information out there in public, it's really easy for people do
| do this. That information can also be used for things worse than
| applying for jobs.
|
| I think small companies hiring freelancers are most vulnerable to
| this. In the UK at least companies have to carry out very strict
| right to work checks, including passports, National Insurance
| numbers, etc.
| djitz wrote:
| A company I was working for wanted to bring on a couple of
| freelance devs for a short-term project and I had to handle the
| interviews.
|
| I ended up uncovering a whole scheme where an experienced dev
| in the US would hop on the calls/video interview and then the
| actual work would be handed off to some other people based
| overseas.
|
| If you tried to contact the "dev" for something, your call
| would be routed to a google voice number and you'd receive a
| text message in somewhat broken English shortly after.
|
| Their scam only lasted a few hours with us, but I often wonder
| how well they are able to pull this off.
| hinkley wrote:
| 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 a fast one. Or at least trying to.
|
| This was an outsourcing group. In the grand scheme of things,
| "white people are stupid" is not entirely wrong, but there's
| a line you know. And there are lines beyond that line. And
| then there are these assholes off in the distance.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I did this for a friend to help him land a job. We got away
| with it.
| sicp-enjoyer wrote:
| Do you think you helped anyone in this scenario?
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| My friend, who is still earning a 200K salary 9 months
| later. He got terrible initial reviews, but they kept
| him.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Sounds like they're stealing that salary, not earning it.
| Hope they work at a place that will never affect me
| personally.
| bad416f1f5a2 wrote:
| > Sounds like they're stealing that salary, not earning
| it.
|
| On the contrary - if someone has been at a company for 9
| months & had terrible early reviews, the company had
| about ~6 months to deal with them. In my experience,
| truly bad hires get lukewarm 30 day feedback, negative 3
| month feedback, and are on a PIP soon after.
|
| If you're there after 9 months, it suggests you've
| demonstrated some level of value to your employer.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I can assure you there are plenty of underperforming,
| incompetent and even flat out absent employees cozied up
| in hidden little niches at all kinds of companies that
| don't let them go for a variety of reasons.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| (upvote) its encouraging to see real info like this here
| - especially when semi-anonymity supports that
| stewarts wrote:
| 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 when the first individual proclaimed they were
| having issues with video.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is one of the many reasons I don't dilvulge anything on
| LinkedIn and merely use it as a funnel to my contact page on my
| own site.
| stefanka wrote:
| What difference does this make if the information is on your
| own site? Or do you share upon request only?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's available upon request only.
| darepublic wrote:
| Legit worried about these shenanigans now. So much info is leaked
| via job searching.
| [deleted]
| tgbugs wrote:
| I had to review a number of developer resumes from a similar site
| back in 2020. Reading through them absolutely set off my "this is
| a fake person" detector. The resumes had similar formats, they
| all seemed to point to a real person, but there was a lingering
| sense of similarity between them which was too much to account
| for. I though it might have been because the site provided a way
| to create resumes and they were all choosing from some common set
| of options or something like that. However, reading this account
| makes me think that a scam like this is an equally likely
| explanation.
| enviclash wrote:
| This exposes the truth about showcasing who we are all the time
| all around the internet, why too many details are needed out
| there anyway? I will keep posting my CV online, but really, it
| makes me feel like I should not.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> discovered through Upwork_
|
| That's been my own experience with Upwork (as someone looking for
| work).
|
| 100% of the contacts I received _(100%, like in Every. Single.
| One.)_ was a scam (either trying to scam me, or inviting me to
| participate in a scam).
|
| I realized that Upwork is a sewer, and quickly bailed.
|
| It's sad, because I heard very good things about Upwork. Of
| course, these "very good things," all came from people who
| _hired_ through Upwork.
| bubblethink wrote:
| Isn't this the same modus as the North Korea scams that we've
| seen a few times before ? We've seen similar stories on HN and
| there was a darknet diaries episode about this too.
| victorclf wrote:
| These kind of frauds are really bad for legitimate remote
| workers. Hope employers don't get burned and start cutting back
| on remote opportunities.
| lazide wrote:
| A big reason why a lot of companies are trying to push people
| back to the office is they have low confidence that line
| managers will catch these kinds of problems, and many more -
| including 'the guys working 4 jobs and barely doing anything
| for us', the 'guy starting his own company that competes with
| us at the same time as working for us', the 'guy who farms out
| all his work to subs in India', etc.
|
| It's easy to say 'if they don't notice, then clearly it's not a
| problem' - but it has downstream effects, like broken products,
| huge legal liabilities for the company including often scary
| handling of customer data to make it work, and morale hits as
| other folks pick up on things like this happening and being
| uncaught.
|
| These are real, albeit currently low percentage/high risk
| things that happen. The more people get away with it, the
| higher the percentages of people who will try (people
| rationalize it to themselves as 'everyone else is doing it',
| and 'I'd be foolish to not do the same thing everyone else
| is'.).
|
| The biggest issue I've seen with remote work (in practice), is
| it makes it really hard for a manager to see and _actually_
| understand what 's happening (not just what people SAY is
| happening, which is rarely the same thing), and makes it easier
| for employees to hide things they don't want others to see.
| Which leads to more of everything from undiscovered-until-too-
| late burnout, to team members who have no idea what to do or
| how to do it, to opportunists grifting.
| mk89 wrote:
| > A big reason why a lot of companies are trying to push
| people back to the office
|
| Which is kind of useless for most of the points you described
| at the end. There are plenty of comments here really proving
| that you can scam even in person interviews. Let's say you
| are not scam, you pass an interview. You can still do all of
| those things while you work.
|
| The only way to prevent this is by having keyloggers and
| similar tools on the work laptop so that you can actually see
| what people do. And even then, if someone does "enough",
| would you really check? Probably most people nowadays
| wouldn't care, as long as you deliver.
|
| The truth is: most people are honest, they do "normal" work,
| they get a raise, etc. Then there is a percent of people
| which exploits the system. A system that let's be honest
| tries to profit from them too by giving lower wages, etc.
| dctoedt wrote:
| 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_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)
| javajosh wrote:
| Perhaps at the end of the day that's what the scam was about,
| getting Andrew an internship. I mean if I was writing the movie
| that would be the twist at the end
| lmarcos wrote:
| He he. For a second, that's what I thought as well. But I
| want to believe the story is legit.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > 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, knowledge, salary, even age/gender/race above
| dependability/loyalty, or barely consider the latter at all.
|
| Other than lengthy vetting and imprecise security clearance
| procedures this is such a hard quality to discern, and so
| costly when you miss the mark. The costs of defection,
| industrial espionage, and sabotage seem poorly quantified in
| HR. I think a corrosion of work relations has come about from
| devaluation of workers qua humans, and the corresponding
| disrespect people have towards their places of work. Is that
| inevitable under capitalism/efficiency?
|
| And, harder question... does it even matter? Especially once
| AIs and remote agents take-over many jobs? Does a corporation
| _care_ if the worker is an imposter and liar who abused a false
| identity to get the post, so long as they produce working
| results?
|
| Is there a kind of moral Turing test here? What do work
| relations have to do with human-relations in the limit of the
| present trajectory?
| vsareto wrote:
| >Does a corporation care if the worker is an imposter and
| liar who abused a false identity to get the post, so long as
| they produce working results?
|
| It's definitely a concern when you need to worry about spies
| infiltrating your company
| lazide wrote:
| Also - how likely are they to be able to continue doing so,
| and how much of my companies sensitive information is being
| leaked to who knows where by whom? Including data that
| opens up the company to some giant liability lawsuit or PR
| issue later?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm big on personal Integrity.
|
| It doesn't seem to win me any points.
|
| In fact, it seems to actually count against me, as I'm
| sometimes accused of being "snobby."
|
| Ah, well...
|
| STORY TIME:
|
| A few months after I had been promoted (the first time) to a
| manager, one of my new employees was hired by my boss' boss,
| while I was out on medical leave.
|
| When I got back, I found out that he had made a promise to
| the new (now hired) employee, that he was not "legally"
| allowed to do, and had to let the guy do it (because he
| promised).
|
| He asked me to sign it off.
|
| I declined, sure that my job was in jeopardy.
|
| Surprisingly, he took it well, and it was never mentioned
| again (until now). He actually had a lot of Integrity, and
| was uncomfortable with it (it was a mistake; not deliberate).
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| I've simply asked candidates 'tell me about a time you had to
| make a moral judgement'. I'm kind of surprised that it's not
| a more common question, but of course that makes it work -
| truly immoral people would have a made-up anecdote if it came
| up regularly.
| geekbird wrote:
| I would put it as "Tell me about a time when you had to
| take an ethical stand or make a choice based on ethics."
| dleslie wrote:
| I like "Tell me about a time you failed miserably,
| absolutely and unequivocally, and how you recovered from
| it."
|
| It's surprising how illuminating the responses are.
| laumars wrote:
| I remember in one job the company had a set of questions
| we had to ask candidates on top of the technical
| questions. One of them was "what would you describe as
| your biggest weakness?"
|
| I always grown when I have to ask that question because
| you always get some stupid answers where people say
| things like "I'm just too organised" or similar spin to
| make a negative sound like a positive. Frankly I can't
| blame them because it's a ridiculous question to ask.
|
| However this one candidate not only listed off one flaw
| but three of them. I remember thinking "shut up, shut up,
| shut up. You're not supposed to answer this honestly!"
|
| However this ironically turned out to be the reason I
| hired him. I figured if he is that honest and able to
| identify his flaws then he must have a good work ethic.
|
| He turned out to be one of my best ever junior hires.
| dleslie wrote:
| I tend to coach the question to prevent people from
| giving it a softball, with something like "I have
| certainly caused my fair share of crisis, what I'm
| interested in is the experiences you ..."
|
| It's an adequate test to filter out folks who are simply
| incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions,
| or who have yet to really shoulder enough responsibility
| to meaningfully fail.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'd have thought a lot of completely regular candidates
| would be a bit stumped by that (especially since many non-
| trivial moral judgements are personal life stuff that's
| _really_ off limits for interviews)
|
| Although maybe that's the point: psychopathic candidates
| end up making up fairly unconvincing heroic stories whereas
| regular people look a bit confused and maybe mention
| something they _didn 't_ do because they couldn't trust it
| was legitimate or ask if their decision to volunteer their
| time for $cause counts.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| I think it goes without saying that interview questions
| are asking about your work life,. altho it might help if
| the interviewer specifies that anyway, i.e. "Tell us
| about a time you had to make a moral judgment at work"
| notahacker wrote:
| The point is more that "moral judgements" like the time
| you pointed out that the company might violate the AGPL
| might actually be good stories to tell an interviewer if
| you've lead a drama-free working life building CRUD apps
| for regular employers, but are pretty hard to recall when
| the first thing the words "moral judgement" bring to mind
| are the time you had to stop interacting with X because
| they did Y.
| 101008 wrote:
| Slightly off topic, but
|
| > Thankfully I'm not sitting on a Windows machine and can just
| preview the document via Google without a fear of infecting
| myself.
|
| Is that true? Can you get infected by seeing a preview of a
| Google Doc from Gmail or even opening it on Google Docs? I
| thought the browser was isolated.
| darau1 wrote:
| Someone messaged me on reddit once, and straight up asked me to
| do exactly this. Below is the message, but I haven't included
| their name because I think they were at least trying to seem
| sincere.
|
| ---
|
| Hi, hope you're doing well.
|
| We are looking for a professional interviewee. I'm not sure if
| you've heard similar thing somewhere. We are a talented developer
| group specialized in web and mobile software development. We have
| partnerships with US people and deliver our service to clients by
| pretending to be US developers. And we share profits with them.
| Our partners are satisfied with this business model.
|
| Everything is perfect except on one thing. It's just the
| interview with clients. Normally in the interviews, the clients
| ask us some technical questions to see if we are able to deliver
| the service they expect. Because we are not native speakers, we
| are suffering from taking the interviews and many clients are
| passing by us even though they can get what they want. So we want
| a native interviewee and hope you are interested in this model.
|
| Please let me know if you're interested in further discussion.
| Thank you!
| jawns wrote:
| If it were really true that this development group could
| deliver according to client expectations, they would do what
| many other groups do: form a consultancy and hire an English-
| language speaker not as a fake interview candidate but as a
| liason.
|
| I worked with a firm that did this. Basically, they had one
| project manager who could speak decent English and about six
| developers who couldn't. The English-speaking PM was on calls
| with us, and then he'd farm out the work to the developers.
|
| It was a win-win, because their group was getting work, and we
| were getting decent results at a discounted rate compared with
| on-shore resources.
|
| But it's pretty clear that anyone looking for fake interview
| candidates is not actually planning to do that. They're
| essentially counting on the fact that it takes many companies a
| little while to get rid of a bad hire.
| darau1 wrote:
| I interviewed one guy that seemed to fit this description --
| he didn't speak much, and when he did his accent was strong.
| He had someone with him, that seemed to speak on his behalf.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the main factor that drives the _alternative_ model
| is that a lot of people with jobs that could theoretically be
| undertaken by offshore agencies advertise for an onshore
| individual (sometimes because they have very strong reasons
| not to want to offshore, but also sometimes because they
| haven 't considered it). So there's a bigger market of better
| paying gigs out there for a "candidate" than an "offshore
| agency" (considerably better if they can actually deliver the
| work). Not that this particular entity seems to have had much
| ability...
|
| In the grey area, there's still a big difference between a
| liason taking on a load of freelance contracts for the farm
| under his real name and intermediating comms without ever
| mentioning there's actually six other people he's never met
| doing most of the work and identity theft to take on remote
| full time roles involving work they probably can't handle.
| yellowstuff wrote:
| I've heard of large consulting companies that do a "bait and
| switch" where the client initially talks to a fantastic
| technical person prior to signing a contract, then never hears
| from them again.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Similar to large law firms; a senior partner closes the deal,
| and then they shuffle you off onto an associate fresh off the
| bar (who often still bills out at the full senior partner
| rate!)
|
| Sometimes law firms don't even really disclose who's doing
| the work, and sometimes in their invoices they'll have a
| paralegal's initials under the "Atty" column.
|
| This is sometimes true even for very large and reputable law
| firms.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| That is normal - you have to add to the interview a
| requirement that you interview and have to approve each
| person assigned to work for you.
|
| It is amazing how many managers I have worked for who don't
| do that.
| rippercushions wrote:
| There are some legal sensitivities here: the company is
| hiring a vendor to provide a service, and risks co-
| employment issues if they start managing the vendor's staff
| in any way, including interviewing them.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Email providers should publicly disclose how old an email address
| is, and email clients should warn about emails coming from brand
| new addresses. My gmail account is 15 years old, so any email I
| send is unlikely to be created just to impersonate someone else.
|
| This doesn't help though if your name happens to be Kevin Smith
| or something.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| Speaking of the "Kevin Smith" case, I know of someone with a
| very common name going into an interview for a job he applied
| for - he was underqualified for the role and was surprised he
| was selected. Turns out the company had mixed him up with
| another candidate with the exact same name and sent out the
| interview invite to the wrong person!
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Also just ratchets the value of "old email accounts" up a ton.
| Reddit has a similar problem with fraud coming from old tenured
| accounts with karma (upvote points similar to HN) becoming very
| valuable and targets for hackers and spammers.
|
| I don't know about new addresses, but it sounds like more
| robust vetting is needed on the interviewing side. Resumes and
| initial screens have become potentially stale and too easy to
| fake.
| madrox wrote:
| About 12 years ago, I attended a barcamp (blast from the past)
| where someone gave an SEO talk about how to hack search and
| adwords to provide no value but capture eyeballs and trick people
| into clicking on things to make money. I recall many references
| to a wider community they were a part of that did this, traded
| tips and tricks, and generally evolved their trade of grifting at
| scale.
|
| I can't help but feel there's a whole community of people out
| there with few morals who are trading tips on how to set up scams
| like this. The "web of lies" seems so deep and complicated I
| can't imagine this whole thing was built in a vacuum by one
| person.
| level wrote:
| Cached mirror, since I'm getting a gateway timeout:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220927155115/https://connortum...
| ajsharp wrote:
| I got an offer for something similar from someone recently,
| wanting to rent my codementor account that I haven't used in half
| a decade. Strange times.
| biermic wrote:
| Had this happen to me as a client on Upwork.
|
| Interviewed some Italian guy, but when the job started a Russian
| guy with Asian roots was on the cam.
|
| Somehow I understand his situation, but nevertheless ended the
| call after one minute.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| This seems similar to reports of North Koreans running deep fake
| interviews
| sebastien_b wrote:
| > _"The fake Connor Tumbleson immediately left the Zoom call."_
|
| I guess he felt the ultimate Impostor Syndrome.
| bluehatbrit wrote:
| Careful or he'll change his twitter handle to "thought leader"
| and write an self-help ebook about it.
| tylerc230 wrote:
| I had something similar happen to me a few years back. Someone
| using my photo and profile from my personal site and uploaded it
| to upwork to get contract work. I found out b/c someone hired
| them for a contract (thinking they were me) and got suspicious.
| The employer found my real email on my site and contacted me. Not
| sure what I can do to prevent it. I put a warning on my site
| saying to look out for impersonators.
| renewiltord wrote:
| How does this work in the end? You'll fail the background check
| when you send in your SSN.
| Zigurd wrote:
| My name is evidently hard to pronounce, even though the spelling,
| which is seldom right, is phonetic. It is specific to an obscure
| ethnicity. Except for also being my father's name, it is globally
| unique. I own the .com of my first name. Despite the occasional
| annoyances, I appreciate it as a security feature.
| vidalia wrote:
| I'd love to understand the legal/tax aspects of this - what SSN
| and addresses does the "middle man" use - I get that it's easy to
| get an SSN but within a matter of a year most of the work would
| be discovered come tax time. And IMO the best parts of Tech are
| the actual vesting and RSU/Option packages an employee gets.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| This is utterly creepy. Kudos to the college kid who did the
| right thing here.
|
| I've never had anyone try to impersonate me for a job, but I have
| had people steal my photos and create Tinder profiles using them
| in cities I don't live in (I've been alerted because people who
| recognized me sent me screenshots). I tried to catfish the person
| who was using my photos to catfish others, but was unsuccessful.
| I dreamed of doing what Connor did, which was to confront the
| person who was using my face on a video call.
|
| I'm so sorry this happened to Connor but am grateful he
| documented this sort of scam, which I fear is probably a lot more
| common than we know. I see people on TikTok all the time
| encouraging these sorts of outsourcing scams of taking jobs on
| Upwork or something else and then hiring people to do the work on
| Fiver or in markets where the cost of labor is much, much lower.
| Do this with enough volume and you could make decent money, I
| imagine.
|
| But how utterly distasteful for the victim.
| adamrezich wrote:
| what gets me about this story is that they chose a developer to
| impersonate who seems to have a pretty dang unique name. I share
| my name with only one other person in the world, but going by a
| quick google search at least, Connor is the only Connor Tumbleson
| in the world (or at least online). this seems like a pretty big
| liability--if I was in charge of running this nefarious group I
| would stay away from names like Connor Tumbleson, and instead go
| for impersonating Bob Johnsons and John Andersons or whatever.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| From the headline alone, I was hoping this would be someone
| writing about being the subject of Nathan Fielder's "The
| Rehearsal".
| ogn3rd wrote:
| Allow me! It was awful and Nathan should be done with
| television as he's incapable of empathy.
| burlesona wrote:
| So my guess is that the scam ends with the scammer negotiating a
| "deposit" to start contract work, and once the deposit is paid
| they disappear. Otherwise I think this scam would be a lot more
| work than just actually getting programming gigs and doing the
| programming work.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| The way I read it is: the scammer will secure the contract
| using the help of their industry-decorated accomplice, and then
| outsource the actual work-related duties to developers they
| find on Upwork, etc.
| fortran77 wrote:
| After seeing several stories like this on Hacker News, I've
| pulled down my LinkedIn profile. There's no reason to have your
| resume on-line.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| >So we can see the 35 members in this Slack, but I don't feel
| comfortable posting that list. I have no idea who is real or fake
| and who may be working for this company unaware of what is
| actually happening.
|
| >So I sent an email to two of them after I found them on LinkedIn
| to further help investigate this. One immediately responded
| unaware of this behavior occurring and left the group.
|
| Although I admire the authors restraint, I am more than a little
| unimpressed with one of the contacted being "unaware" of the
| behavior. "Excuse me, did you know you're in a group that is
| actively committing crimes?" How do you think they're going to
| respond?
| janandonly wrote:
| If your fake profile is not on Upwork yet, then you apparently
| have a disappointing (or at least a not marketable) career.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| This story is much more fun when you come at it from the
| interviewer's position. You've been doing interviews every week.
| They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and
| over with minor variation. You're about to repeat the experience
| for the 18th time and you're 100% on autopilot. But suddenly
| you're in a spy thriller. This is the greatest thing that's ever
| happened.
|
| Is it a good legal/corporate decision to hide the person who
| claims to be the original and let him listen to the interview
| with the other candidate? Holy fuck, no. Is it going to be WAY
| more thrilling? Oh my god yes; how could you not?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Is it a good legal/corporate decision to hide the person who
| claims to be the original and let him listen to the interview
| with the other candidate?
|
| Consider the situation from the perspective of the interviewer:
| They don't have all of the background we did while reading this
| blog. They haven't even had time to process what Connor #1 said
| by the time that Connor #2 arrives.
|
| The decision to hear them both out for a few minutes is
| reasonable, IMO. At that point in time, Connor #1 could have
| been lying as far as the interviewer knew. Letting them both
| exist in the meeting immediately cleared up any confusion.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Letting them both in the same room at the same time was
| probably the safer thing. Maybe there's an argument, or maybe
| one bounces, clearing it up.
|
| But having one person _hide_ is riskier. It means a random
| person could eaves drop on my interview by just pretending to
| me and telling this story.
|
| I mean, super cool though. I imagine my adrenaline would be
| going as the interviewer. I'd probably chill out when I
| realized this was identity theft with extra steps, not a Kyle
| Reese situation.
| comboy wrote:
| Imagine inventing all of this just to listen to your
| interview.
|
| Incentive to do that would have to be pretty wild.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Stalkers gonna stalk. The "all of this" would just have
| to be getting the interview link/time (calendar or email
| access) and then showing up a bit early to tell the
| story.
|
| It is very very unlikely and I don't judge the
| interviewer for how they handled it.
| axus wrote:
| Definitely a Jerry Springer moment when he "could not stand
| this anymore" and jumped back into the conversation.
| Stamp01 wrote:
| Which one do I shoot!?
| dhosek wrote:
| Best to be sure. Shoot them both.
| icambron wrote:
| This was my immediate reaction too. Would make my whole week.
| fatjokes wrote:
| 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.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| 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.
| jjslocum3 wrote:
| The US TV series "Impractical Jokers" ran a few sketches in
| the last few years where they did exactly this...you'd
| probably enjoy.
| smcameron wrote:
| Like Catfish, but for jobs.
| conductr wrote:
| Some trainwreck interviews make for good office lore and this
| one tops the cake.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| You know that interviewer was shitting themselves when og Conor
| unmuted and said wtf mate.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Oh, I'd be so in to take part in this drama. It would probably
| be one of the most memorable job interviews of all time.
|
| And I doubt there would be too many legal or corporate
| ramifications from allowing someone else to be on the call with
| their camera off. These are contractor positions, not full-
| time. Frankly, it's a risk I would take to be able to witness
| this sort of thing in real-time.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, don't bet on it. What if #2 was real, and #1 was someone
| stalking #2? Or an abusive ex?
|
| If #2 doesn't get the the potential job, they could come
| after you for all sorts of things - emotional damages,
| economic damage (from not getting the job), etc. They might
| even be able to get the court to force you to give them the
| job, or at least waste years of your time and mental health
| dealing with legal hassles.
|
| It's hilarious and awesomely entertaining, but don't do it if
| you have assets someone could go after, as eventually,
| someone will.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I think the fact that it's a zoom interview changes things.
|
| Even if one of them is stalking the other, it's not like
| they're physically in the same conference room together.
| the worst they can really do is yell at each other.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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.
| sinoue wrote:
| 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.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Yeah, I have to imagine they might be using a group
| account on Upwork and then misrepresenting the coder as a
| part of their team, but I don't know enough about how
| Upwork works.
|
| I posted about this blog post on Twitter and was directed
| a Reddit post [1] showing how little Upwork seems to care
| about fake reviews and stolen work product, so it appears
| Upwork has a history of ignoring fraud, regardless of
| what their terms say.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/xavntw
| /freelan...
| RunSet wrote:
| Someone created a github account with my name and has been
| squatting it for years.
|
| Github support tells me they won't deactivate or rename the
| account (I don't want it, I just want it gone) unless I copyright
| my own name and file a copyright complaint with them.
| thih9 wrote:
| > So if you hired a Maris in February 2022 - you may want to
| double check who you actually hired.
|
| I'd love to hear a follow up.
| blastwind wrote:
| 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 pointers, left and right,
| iterating over a list of heights to find how much rain water it
| can trap.
|
| I'm about to repeat the experience for the 10th time and I'm 100%
| on autopilot. But suddenly, a man reaches out to me on email and
| offers me up to $80/hr to be his senior engineer. This feels
| sketchy, my girlfriend tells me, "you're good but let's be honest
| here...". Anyways, I proceed, it might just be the start of a
| beautiful thing. I'm asked to interview as one of our developers
| because English is not their best language. I'm a little
| bothered, but I was fine with it. But then I see the developer
| name: Connor Tumbleson. My laughter bursts and so does my
| suspicion: With a name like that, no way the guy doesn't speak
| good English. I look up Connor Tumbleson on linkedin, and my
| suspicions were proved correct. I detail everything to Connor,
| and now this is on the top of HN. I lost a opprotunity but gained
| a story of the lifetime.
| comboy wrote:
| This comment thread feels like a game of Mafia[1].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)
| fortran77 wrote:
| I wonder how many people in your position smell something
| rotten, but instead of trying to contact the "real Connor" just
| delete/ignore all the messages because they don't want to be
| part of even a bigger scam. (What if everyone is in on it, and
| they're trying to scam you somehow?).
| Naracion wrote:
| Recount _this_ story during the social / break between
| interviews if you ever get an onsite. :D
| kodah wrote:
| Shout out to you for wading through the literal torrent of
| bullshit without the foresight of a blog post to expose context
| and with little professional experience to help inform you.
| You'll be a great asset to the industry but it can take a
| minute to find your footing. Be persistent and definitely keep
| this story around for beer Friday.
| robswc wrote:
| I know it probably feels a bit hopeless now but trust me.
|
| If you learn to build things, provide value, you will have 100s
| of recruiters reaching out to you and you will mostly be
| rejecting offers for a change :)
|
| I have no doubt reading about you and seeing this comment in a
| few years you will be more than set!
| boomskats wrote:
| > I lost a opprotunity but gained a story of the lifetime.
|
| Was this on purposes?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tomcam wrote:
| > my girlfriend tells me, "you're good but let's be honest
| here..."
|
| My favorite part of this whole thing. Hang onto her.
| blastwind wrote:
| Haha yes. She's honest and the best.
| dmoy wrote:
| > 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.
| bqe wrote:
| 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.
| jaffee wrote:
| Andrew, see if anything here catches your eye... we've got a
| few openings. You can email me at my username at
| featurebase.com.
|
| https://www.featurebase.com/careers
| tomcam wrote:
| Damnit with all these job offers dropping into Andrew's inbox
| I definitely need someone to clone me so I can be all ethical
| and shit
|
| * Kidding I'm retired. Mad props, Andrew!
| tomrod wrote:
| Andrew, mad respect on your integrity and navigating an ethics
| situation one would expect to read about in a college study.
| pjbeam wrote:
| Email me at my HN username at protonmail dot com for a referral
| to Dropbox's internship. Love the integrity and drive to get to
| the bottom of a strange situation.
| jxi wrote:
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| There ya go, looks like a gained opportunity there!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Not just for Andrew, but the identity thieves too!
|
| If anyone needs a Westerner to interview as "Andrew", hit
| me up. I've got a hot lead on an internship at Dropbox!
| pjbeam wrote:
| My plan is to verify it is the same email at least
| through OP, although your point is valid.
| atmosx wrote:
| Shoutout to you sir for being honest and reaching out your
| fellow peer!!! I am sure you will have a great career and now
| you have an epic story to tell over beers with friends!
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| Andrew - you the sort of person I would love to have on my
| team. Alas I more hardware engineering than software. I hope
| the community here can give you some good leads and tips.
|
| Karma should be that ethics works.
| blastwind wrote:
| I'm grateful for all of the opportunities! Thank you everyone.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| > I then learned this was a interviewee discovered through Upwork
|
| People trying to get cheap labor and instead get defrauded.
|
| I feel bad for Connor though.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| 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 involving identity theft, which is a very serious
| crime. I realized that this is an international situation and the
| local police probably cannot do much, but at some level of
| policing, be it the FBI or even at the international level, this
| feels like something that should be reported. Even if nothing can
| be done, in the worst case it's useful that the police be made
| aware of new trends in identity theft; in the best case, they
| will be caught. These people are _organized_ to perform identity
| theft, which is literally organized crime -- I hope they are
| aware of the risk they are taking doing this.
|
| Lastly, unrelated to the above, but just a random social aspect
| of this; it's clearly an interesting and unexpected result of
| location-based pay. The only reason I can think of that a group
| of people would organize something like this is because
| pretending to be native English speakers and presumably
| pretending to be US- or Europe-based will automatically get them
| a higher pay scale. (If I understand correctly, they are possibly
| a team of programmers in some other country, and _are_ offering
| to actually do the work, but just pretending to be other people
| while doing it in order to get a higher paycheck.) Not making any
| judgement here regarding location-based pay, although that 's an
| interesting discussion for another thread, but in today's remote
| work environment, new kinds of fraud are definitely an
| interesting consequence to be on the lookout for. Fascinating,
| and dangerous.
| entwife wrote:
| I was going to comment about a police report, but largely
| because it might be useful for an insurance policy that covers
| identity theft.
| jstarfish wrote:
| You vastly overestimate the degree to which the police give a
| shit. Unless there's an actual financial loss or threat to
| life, they don't care. This barely qualifies as identity theft
| anyway; it's _attempted_ fraud.
|
| They won't take a report of your phone number being spoofed,
| but they'll deploy SWAT teams to unsuspecting houses at the
| word of bored teenagers.
|
| Do you know the imposter's actual identity? What would you even
| report? If the perpetrator is international, what are your
| local police even supposed to do with this information?
|
| You might have a little better luck with the FBI, but if you
| don't show up with hard evidence (i.e. do all the work for
| them), you won't get anywhere with them either.
|
| All of this goes to show you why this sort of scheme remains
| successful. Nobody cares. Fraud is just an assumed risk.
| blitzar wrote:
| Like all scams and spam, if it didnt work then people wouldnt do
| it. But I am struggling to see how it will work.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Sometimes just the possibility of it working, and the person's
| desperation, will cause them to try it. I've heard enough
| instances of people paying others to take exams for them that
| it doesn't surprise me that some people trying to do an
| interview that way, too. They think just getting the job will
| do something for them, and (for whatever reason) think they'll
| be able to keep the job once they have it.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised to learn that these people think they
| have high-level skills, but some other factor is preventing
| them from getting the job. Sometimes it might even be true, but
| I'm better against them having the skill level they think they
| do.
| chx wrote:
| > I've heard enough instances of people paying others to take
| exams for them
|
| Back in the 90s I was becoming a math teacher at one
| university while I was working on getting admitted into an IT
| engineer course at another. Strangely enough, the other
| admittance exam besides math was physics and I sucked at that
| while obviously I was far ahead in math compared to my peers
| at the physics preparation course. So someone offered an
| astonishing amount of money to take the math entrance exam
| for them, enough to buy a small apartment with it -- and
| perhaps I would've been young and foolish enough to go with
| it except for one fact: they offered a falsified national id
| to go with it. That's five years in prison if you get caught
| with it and I noped the hell out of it...
|
| In the case OP describes, the situation is similar: it's the
| documentation that catches you.
| coldcode wrote:
| I think this is probably more common than we might think. Given
| remote work being preferred lately, this is probably doable,
| especially if companies are hiring large numbers of random
| contractors. I know my old team members (I retired recently) have
| gone through a ton of remote contractors recently, many of whom
| were completely useless. Thankfully I only hired people before
| Covid hit, and at that point everyone was required to work in
| office (at least for the work I was responsible for). Everyone I
| did take on was either excellent or at least competant. I did
| hire most of them off of phone interviews only, so maybe I was
| lucky.
|
| If an experienced person does the interviewing asking the right
| questions / requiring tests / etc might be insufficient to
| realize the person you are interviewing is not the person who
| will do the work. I wonder how you would catch this before
| actually having the "worker" start.
|
| I guess this is a downside of all remote work assuming your
| company is less than thorough in checking
| references/documents/etc.
| seydor wrote:
| And how do we know the author is not pretending to be him?
| Maursault wrote:
| > We are not an adult company.
|
| What are the chances its children behind this, maybe even
| American children lying about why they need a stooge? It would
| explain why they're not concerned about violating federal law,
| whatever else, I think also US Code Title 18 Section 241,
| Conspiracy Against Rights (a wild guess, iinal).
| peppertree wrote:
| Scam is rampant on LinkedIn. I'm getting constant connection
| requests from obviously fake profiles with AI generated faces.
| kube-system wrote:
| And they all have 500+ connections. Bet they're scraping
| profiles or some crap.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| The connections are also bots.
| cynusx wrote:
| Same here. I just ignore devs that apply directly to me on
| linkedin, I would be surprised if any of them were real or not
| an agency.
| earleybird wrote:
| "connortumbleson.com refused to connect" - HN HoD?
| mrandypratt37 wrote:
| 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 meetings and he would
| do the work for a 30/70 split. I told him, morals aside, that I
| didn't have the credentials to get into the jobs he would want
| and pointed out numerous obvious issues like in-person coding,
| etc.. He said he was ready to make a fake LinkedIn and had this
| whole operation planned out.
|
| Seems to me like there is a whole operation around this business
| model of exploiting US developer salaries and the morality of a
| few Americans willing to try and make a dollar for free. Honestly
| more disappointed in the people accepting shady deals like this
| than the ones offering them.
| datavirtue wrote:
| We blew "morals" out the air lock long ago. Not to mention,
| morals are subjective.
|
| I don't understand why corporations are not embracing and
| encouraging such arrangements.
| dont__panic wrote:
| 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 relationship with to execute reliably
| "as me" in the coding side of a role. But if I had a good
| friend from college who couldn't get a VISA to the US? I dunno,
| I might be tempted to collaborate. If everybody wins, I'm not
| sure it's inherently bad. But maybe I'm missing something.
| shagie wrote:
| Say you do it... the company pays you $100/h (making up a
| number to do math) and $70 of that goes to the person who
| does the job while you keep $30 of it.
|
| Guess how much gets reported to the IRS that you're making
| and how much taxes you'll owe on that $100/h.
|
| Next there's the fraudulent representation of who is doing
| the work to the client.
|
| Lastly, there's the "this is a form of money laundering" and
| you're taking a significant role.
|
| When this starts to unravel, you're not going to come out
| ahead.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
|
| This entire scam can be done entirely legally by
| subcontracting the work to your foreign friend, if your
| clients allow for that; if the end result is of decent enough
| quality then I don't see why they wouldn't. You'd be on the
| hook if they mess up, but the same is true when you lie to
| your friend's employers.
|
| However, these people choose not to go the legal route,
| instead relying on lies and fraud. They go as far as to hire
| others to do part of their lying just to get into a company.
|
| Personally, I'd call the authorities the moment I'd find out
| an employee of mine has been lying about their qualifications
| and experience from the very first day to fake it through the
| interview. You cannot trust someone whose entire career is
| built on top of lies, or someone who actively enables such
| behaviour.
|
| 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. I'm sympathetic to the third world
| programmers that have the capabilities to earn some of the
| absolutely insane wages American programmers get paid, but I
| completely oppose the large-scale fraud these lying-as-a-
| service middlemen employ to make money.
| mirkules wrote:
| I'm kind of at a loss that these propositions would be taken
| at face value. Imagine for a moment that these "talented web
| developer groups" whom you are essentially representing with
| your name attached to them are bad foreign state actors in
| disguise. Imagine what would happen to you if some malicious
| piece of code made it on some website processing personal
| information, payments, or worse. It's eye-opening and really
| terrifying people don't even consider this possibility, in
| 2022.
| lazide wrote:
| It's generally all the OTHER details that people conveniently
| skim over in these descriptions that get people hurt, or the
| less obvious exposure to unexpected risks for the
| counterparty.
|
| As a (pretty common) comparison - if a gay man marries a
| woman, has kids, does the whole couple thing and blends in,
| but periodically goes to clubs or gay bars, or has a
| boyfriend on the side, who are they really hurting?
|
| What about the equivalent straight man with a mistress on the
| side? Or two? Or the woman with a side man?
|
| Well, as long as everything goes perfect, I guess just
| themselves by pretending to be someone they aren't most of
| their lives and having to lie to everyone every day. And
| certainly the cards have been stacked against them in a great
| number of societies and environments (to the point of death
| penalties in some cases if they don't hide), so it's hard to
| blame them for _hiding_ doing it in those situations if they
| really can 't stop.
|
| But it almost never just goes perfectly forever does it?
| Eventually, either someone finds out (and now they're exposed
| to blackmail risk, or a bitter divorce and lots of bad
| publicity), or someone gets sick with something they
| shouldn't have been able to, or pregnant, or whatever. There
| were a decent number of counterparties in supposedly
| monogamous relationships over the years that have gotten
| diseases they should not have been able to get, including
| HIV, from this type of stuff. It can trigger severe emotional
| trauma in people. Folks get killed over this kind of thing
| somewhat frequently.
|
| From a corporate equivalent, think - traceable customer
| information leak. Or attackers get control of the corporate
| network through a hidden VPN endpoint configured to allow
| these contractors in to do things, and do things from crypto-
| ransom the company to outright rob the company blind.
|
| An acquaintance at a company I only briefly worked at years
| ago got busted for siphoning MILLIONS of dollars through
| phony affiliates he'd setup at the company. He was in charge
| of the affiliate program. I never cared for him, and wasn't
| particularly surprised, and was part of the reason I left
| once I saw what I had gotten myself into, but it was a good
| cautionary tale.
|
| The company had been really happy with overall performance,
| they just hadn't noticed the extra 'tax' they were paying him
| until he did something else sketchy and they started looking
| closer.
|
| The reason to avoid doing sketchy things, is because they
| inevitably have hidden costs, from cognitive overhead from
| constantly tracking all the lies, to real risks of extreme
| bad problems that others are being exposed to. It's often
| lucrative enough however, that there is always the
| temptation.
|
| It's why 'sunshine is the best disinfectant' is still so
| true.
|
| After all, generally if everyone was actually comfortable
| with it and it's side effects, there would be no need to be
| sketchy about it.
| brysonreece wrote:
| From the perspective of the company, there's immediate
| concerns around sensitive information, intellectual property,
| corporate/government espionage -- none of which seem unlikely
| in positions premised on flexible morals.
|
| IMO if there were registered/regulated, established services
| that filled this need and handled the VISA/background check
| process then I wonder if companies might be willing to work
| with overseas developers more.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > who's getting hurt?
|
| The person being impersonated. Someone is out there
| pretending to be them. This person is known to be willing to
| do unethical things. (Who knows, maybe they're also
| infiltrating the client's network and stealing data,
| installing ransomware, etc.?) Furthermore, how does the
| person in the US pretending to be the developer get paid? Do
| they actually get paid, or is that a scam, too? At any point
| does someone write a check to fake developer in their name?
| Does the IRS see that? Is the real developer now on the hook
| for taxes on that? There are numerous things that could go
| wrong and hurt the developer being impersonated, the person
| doing the impersonation, and the client.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Good points about the person being impersonated subject to
| (completely involuntary) risks. I probably should have
| phrased my question to specifically ask about situations
| where the impersonated is involved and asked to participate
| in the scheme. I would agree that it's not OK to just...
| start using someone else's identity without permission.
|
| In sibling comments, some other great points were made
| about the risk profile for the company if you do this
| without their knowledge. I'm less convinced that I should
| care about risk towards the company, but from a legal
| standpoint it probably holds up.
| mapmeld wrote:
| Bizarre. I (US-based engineer with an Upwork account) was invited
| into a less sophisticated variant of the scam in spring 2021:
|
| > Nice to meet you. I am looking for a US person who do business
| with me. You can earn money with a few cooperation. Do you know
| Upwork or Toptal site?
|
| They also had the text of the message in a GitHub repo. I tried
| reporting them to GitHub, Upwork, and Toptal, but I don't think
| they knew what to do with it? I assumed my scammer was looking to
| evade banking rules or sanctions, but it could be for either fake
| employment or actual work with a US-based persona like in this
| case.
| bogwog wrote:
| Same, although I was never asked to impersonate anybody. They
| just wanted to work using my real name/identity, and would
| throw some money my way every month. At the time I was
| annoyed/pissed, but after reading this I respect that they at
| least had the decency to ask for my permission lol.
|
| Honestly, this is 100% Upwork's fault. Their platform is a race
| to the bottom, yet they make it very difficult/impossible for
| people from countries that can actually afford to make a living
| with those rates to sign up. So I understand why people resort
| to this behavior, even though I would never want to work with
| someone who would actually do that. Fuck those people.
| dvykhopen wrote:
| I run a job platform. This scam is pervasive, especially with
| contract work. We've had to get really good at recognizing
| patterns because their covers are really good (even faking
| passports and work history).
|
| Many of the big contract platforms are dealing with this too.
| Hiring managers are getting tired of it and are 1) not hiring as
| many contract workers and 2) not using platforms to hire those
| workers.
|
| Unfortunately, this hurts small companies more since their hiring
| practices are so lax and there's a crop of new ones every few
| months.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _We 've had to get really good at recognizing patterns
| because their covers are really good (even faking passports and
| work history)._
|
| I'm pretty sure that can get you into super duper extra trouble
| with the State Department.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Creepy. With recruiters you can expect anything but a zoom call
| with an unexpecting client. That is new for me.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Let's say that this happens with some regularity: an imposter is
| hired to take an interview on behalf of a third party who is
| obviously not the same person. Let's say that, some of the time,
| this ploy is successful and the third party is hired for the
| position. Don't they just get fired immediately? Is this entire
| scam just about getting a couple day's salary? Or do some
| employers just shrug and go with the flow?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| These scams have been happening for decades. It's as hilarious as
| infuriating when somebody shows up to a job site and it's
| _clearly_ not the person that was interviewed.
| ollien wrote:
| What I can't piece together here is what the scammer's endgame
| is. They land a cushy developer job under some false identity and
| ... then what? They're not going to pay some random college
| student to attend every meeting, are they? Even if they were, are
| they going to be able to maintain the level of work they lied
| about? If they really had those skills, they would just interview
| on their own.
|
| Something's not adding up
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Maintaining is not the goal. Say you get a job that pays senior
| engineer money, and they fire you after maybe three weeks of
| you just saying "it depends" and pretending your connection is
| bad. You still made like $5,000. And you're probably running
| more than one of these scams at a time. And you're doing this
| from a relatively poor country with not much formal education.
| 100% worth it.
|
| And who knows, maybe you manage to actually KEEP one of those
| jobs, which given how bad some employers are at figuring out
| who's good and bad at this stuff, is entirely plausible.
| AyyWS wrote:
| At a big telecom we had an employee that maybe closed 10
| tickets in two years. He was the highest paid team member (as
| reported by our director) and worked remotely from an RV in
| Oklahoma. When he was finally discovered by our director, he
| was fired and his immediate manager was fired.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| How much do you want to bet that he also had one or two
| other jobs that he treated the same way?
| AyyWS wrote:
| He was a long time employee with a legacy job title
| "wintel engineer." A transformational ex-IBM director was
| finally brave enough to PIP and fire him. I think he was
| mostly retired while putting in 8 hours of work a
| quarter.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| It would take months for the company to figure out that the
| person is not doing anything, is not who they pretend to be,
| and fire them. Months during which that imposter would have
| been paid to do literally nothing.
| ollien wrote:
| I guess at some company scale that would happen... you'd
| probably need pay someone to do onboarding for you (so you're
| not immediately flagged as a no-call-no-show), then you could
| go AWOL after that?
| codedokode wrote:
| 1) they could have developers from 3-rd world countries who
| have necessary skills but get low pay rate
|
| 2) they could have developers from countries currently under
| sanctions
| rngname22 wrote:
| They could be fully technically capable but unable to secure
| those jobs because of visas, location/timezone, the company
| having a prejudice against outsourcing/remote work, etc.
| chadmckenna wrote:
| Its possible they need someone with a "Senior" resume so they
| are able to charge $200/hour for their work. Then they are free
| to outsource it to 2 or 3 junior devs in a much lower priced
| market and pocket the difference.
| notahacker wrote:
| I assume they avoid jobs involving standups.
|
| In roles where communication is fully asynchronous, a competent
| offshore dev whose written English is considerably closer to a
| native speaker than their spoken English might be able to hold
| onto the job for a while, especially if they're good at
| excuses.
|
| If they're applying for US onshore jobs with below- _local_
| -market pay, they might even be considered relatively
| productive members of the team.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| I had two past co-workers who were almost certainly having
| someone else do their work, I think (especially) at non-
| software companies folks just don't get caught.
|
| Frankly, the work environment was slow-paced and generally non-
| confrontational so both co-workers I suspect of this behavior
| just managed to tread water. When I joined the group there was
| a very tight-knit group of 3-4 developers who were _very_
| protective of each other. There was always a handy reason why
| some schedule was slipping and the other fact is that in
| hindsight, there just weren 't very high expectations for them
| to accomplish anything.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| sketchy interview stuff is how ronin got hacked. I feel like
| impersonating other people in a job market or "fake interviews"
| will be more common. Really scary and a relatively common
| practice compared to the knowledge out there about it.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| A long while back I was sitting in a coffee shop, and happened to
| meet a guy recounting his work history to a client. The hilarious
| part was hearing my life plagiarized off my web CV at the time.
| Seeing the con describe climbing an antenna mast where I worked
| was awe inspiring given he was over 350lbs. I tipped off the
| client to do his own verification after, as there was no way that
| guy was part of our small team at that time.
|
| Some people are certifiably insane, and will con anyone to make
| money. Note, confronting psychopaths with proof they are liars is
| extremely dangerous. These are the people that will hold grudges
| for decades if they feel you owe them something, or do something
| nasty.
|
| Weak Stenography in your CV is also good for auto-
| screening/blacklisting those engaged in social-engineering
| workers. You would be surprised who shows up. ;)
| bdcravens wrote:
| A couple of weeks ago I received this email:
|
| "Hi, Billy
|
| How are you?
|
| I checked your Codementor account, it is great.
|
| I am *** **** from Ukraine.
|
| I am 32 and I am also a computer programmer.
|
| I want someone who can help me.
|
| Would you lend me your account?
|
| If you borrow it, I can earn a lot of money.
|
| I will pay 100 usd every month.
|
| Regards."
| vlunkr wrote:
| 100$ a month for some fraud. Not very enticing lol.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Yeah I've had people ask to buy my codementor account
| (https://codementor.io/jleclanche). I forwarded all of them to
| support@arc.dev, but I suspect some people always say yes ...
| mk89 wrote:
| People, I really tried to read comments to understand if someone
| had my same question: what for?
|
| Eventually you need to pay this person, he/she will need to give
| you some ID or passport, etc. How can someone just employ a name?
| Or is it just because they are contractors (so no document /
| background check)?
| axus wrote:
| Sounds like this scam artist did more work to land Connor a job
| than some recruiters.
| walrus01 wrote:
| There are people out there right now putting a truly astounding
| amount of information on their wholly-public Facebook, Instagram
| and LinkedIn profiles.
|
| My main message for people is to _resist the social temptation_
| to share every detail of your family 's life on social media, in
| the long run it's better for your privacy, your family's privacy,
| your security, and reduces opportunities for malicious data
| mining.
|
| It's sufficient to build an entire identity theft kit if you're a
| malicious actor wanting to impersonate somebody. Somebody would
| combine whatever is available from social media with things like
| linkedin profiles, CVs, github projects, other github-like-
| project profiles, and linkedin-type business networking site
| data.
|
| Or at least a good enough to pass cursory inspection/examination
| identity theft kit to impersonate somebody with a close-enough
| email address, or a throwaway custom domain name registered for
| the purpose.
|
| I would highly recommend anyone that _does_ keep an account
| somewhere like Facebook to stop posting photos of your house,
| family members and to set all of your 'privacy' settings to
| whatever is the friends-only/maximum setting. Try looking at your
| own profile from a different browser with no cookies in a burner
| account or incognito mode and see if any of your personal life is
| visible.
| permo-w wrote:
| good luck getting a burner account on facebook
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I think the root of the issue is LinkedIn. I know a number of
| scammers regularly monitor LinkedIn. When a new employee at our
| office updates LinkedIn they start getting email from the 'CEO',
| first asking for a personal cell number, and then asking to buy
| gift cards in a hurry.
|
| I'm seriously considering being LinkedOut.
| absolutelynobo wrote:
| This has happened to every new employee at my company within a
| month of them joining.
| freedomben wrote:
| Interesting. I doubt it was the same person, but I was approached
| with a proposition regarding Upwork not super dissimilar to this
| three times by somebody on the Elixir Slack. I think it was the
| same "person" each time just with different accounts because they
| kept getting banned by the admins.
|
| Basically the person would write to me and say something like,
| "I'm a good $language dev and am worth $120/hr but in my country
| that is really high pay and people won't pay it unless you're
| American. I'll get closer to $25/hr." Then the deal is something
| like this: "We will apply for jobs/contracts in your name, but
| I'll do 100% of the work and you keep half the money and send me
| the other half."
|
| The worst part is, I get the feeling that the premise is actually
| true and that this person is merely trying to beat the system.
| However, I could never bring myself to do such a thing due to the
| dishonesty required. Secondarily (but importantly) I've been
| burned by low-cost foreign contractors that billed for over a
| week before essentially delivering nothing, so I'm a bit once-
| bitten twice shy. I likely never would, but have considered doing
| a similar strategy but in an honest way where I'm up front with
| the client that I won't personally be doing all the work, but
| instead will out-source it, but I would be their point of
| contact/PM and if the work wasn't acceptable then (worst case
| scenario) I would (re)do it all personally.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Better title than before. Thank you!
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