FBI: Stolen PII and deepfakes used to apply for remote tech jobs

The two full-time companies objected strenuously to her leaving and made various offers to keep her around. Would they have suddenly decided that they were deluded and that she was actually a horrible employee if they knew the truth? Possibly, but that doesn't mean they're in the right.

The real problem here is that a large portion of managers actually have no idea what constitutes a good employee or good job done. So they try to figure it out through second order observations like how many hours are worked, how convincingly the employee acts like they're good at doing their job, or how they report on their progress in meetings; and they get upset when they find out information that makes it seem like the employee should be doing a worse job.

I'm being a bit harsh, since I'm not immune to the same thoughts and uncertainties; I have an employee of my own who has two other part-time jobs and at times I've questioned whether that's OK. When I really examine the work he's doing, though, the answer is always the same: he's doing a good job, and the rest of his time is none of my damn business.

I have no regrets and still employ the same people today, but it just wasn't so straightforward as you're making it out to be. I think it's actually easier for a startup to have, let's say, an entirely Indonesian team including the founders, targeting an American market, versus a startup having an American founding team then start hiring in Indonesia. (For big companies I don't know, but I'd imagine it all gets even more complicated.)

I had no luck with it at all myself. I'd get completely useless low-quality crap work out of these guys when I got anything out of them at all.

I think you'd have to hire some local managers and maybe send over some experienced devs from the USA to train up the locals, at which point it'd only be a matter of time until they realize their new worth and jump ship for FAANG or whatever.

Your offer letter usually functions as an employment contract. The thing that spells out your start on a specific date, and we will pay you some amount in some given manner.

It really depends on your local labor laws, which vay from state to state.

Depending on the industry, it's definitely not fine.

I work in healthcare. If one of our employees was giving a foreign national access to our internal systems, that would be a Very Big Deal.

Yeah and how many other employees took themselves out the door because they had to compensate for the nonperformer? I've been in teams with these sandbags and it's infuriating.

How do you prove the employee wasn’t simply incompetent?

First, the top performers on my team right now are essentially ghosts. One I just went on a business trip outside the country with, and I hadn't seen his face for a year and I might not see it again ever. Another one is my "lieutenant" and in two years I've seen him face to face twice. No video. He's probably leaving the country soon and I don't care, because he'll be in the same longitude.

The other point, since this is FAANG, how is the conversation going to go with HR if I want to terminate someone because they won't turn on their camera?

If you think looking at a camera view of someone will prevent them from defrauding you, you are an ideal con artist’s mark because you’re taking your cues from the easier parts to fake.

Hacker news does attract some singular individuals from time to time, but I would suggest the more plausible scenario is that this person has untreated mental health issues.

Now, bristly replying aside: I also DO have anxiety, and wrote my comments earlier after too much caffeine.

>This individual claims to be somehow involved in two high-profile national security incidents. It's not beyond plausibility that they are being exploited for information by companies who don't want to be seen associating with them.

To give a real world example: one of the reasons I was pushed out of an NGO is I annoyed the lawyers pushing them to put MFA on their email accounts. Later we were one of the few not to be penetrated by the Russians... digitally... but when I watched that one Mr. Robot plotline where the one agent is increasingly unclear why her supervisor is not taking her concerns seriously, she finds out they are an agent of a foreign power.

Also I did a master's thesis on anonymity technology, so obligatory "it's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you".

>Snowden would receive the same treatment.

Snowden is stuck in Russia, a totalitarian hellhole. I live here, in the Paris of Appalachia, where I wander around sipping cortados and banging hipsters. We are not the same.

What often happens is I get a mix of people who respond in good faith (have no idea who the hell I am), paired with those who do, and say things in bad faith about my mental health.

(Reoccuring income would solve those issues overnight, email if you want a CV. I'm a decent pentester, can code in languages like Python and bash, and have an OSINT certification from Bellingcat.)

But often since my skills are more... qualitative (eg: I cannot write exploits well), people schedule an interview to treat it like a free consulting session (ask the one question an FBI agent would have if they could supoena me slipped in with the rest to clear me as a suspect in some bullshit), then don't actually hire me on... and the cycle repeats in 3-6 months.

Hence my supreme annoyance and occasional trolls.

Oh -- almost forgot -- in addition to the above, years ago, before I was doing brain experiments on undergrads alongside former Israeli snipers, I was in therapy. I found out at that therapist's funeral that he was a member of a motorcycle club. So sometimes... odd people boosted me through my career in civil society, and sometimes it feels like when I hit a wall, it's because someone in the past was supporting me for unsavory reasons, and doesn't have a good explanation for the sudden shift in allegiance.

I'm happy to explain further as needed, but all you really need to know is I ended up at a libertarian NGO despite being anything but, for reasons I don't fully understand, then got stranded in Appalachia by people who never want to admit they're wrong, even as I turn on the TV and see teachers who used to claim I was a menace to society running up on the capital.

TL;DR: I'm anxious because I'm a skinhead, in the antiracist sense, and a leftist, and the people who could assist me in my goal of being independent choose not to. I could join a firm like Mandiant or whatever tomorrow, be assigned some work, and be off HN and happy, but folks make the emotional decision to not allow me to do that, despite very clearly being qualified to, then question the mental health of a first generation PhD student with a dwindling bank account.

Any other questions?

:-)

The key is to turn the thing upside down and seek out the jobs you’d normally reject - shifty companies with lower pay, bad tooling, tons of bureaucracy, etc - basically a place where no sane developer would willingly apply. Then, you’ll be the smartest person in the room without having to do anything special and the extra bureaucracy can be either automated away or come in handy as an excuse when you fall behind, while the lower pay isn’t really a problem if you have 4 of them running concurrently.

They currently sit at a 2.8 on Glassdoor.

Think of that however you will.

I actually was thinking the people who'd do the detecting would be the social media site operator (e.g. Twitter), who would then shut down the inauthentic activity.

You dismiss people who fall for this as bad interviewers but I don't think you appreciate how sophisticated fraud has become-- with teleconferencing (anything internet-based, really), you never truly know you're interacting with who you think you are. You may not find out until they've collected a few paychecks, made copies of all your IP and disappeared into the night.