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Comment by CobrastanJorji | Hacker News Reader

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?

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> 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.

Which one do I shoot!?

Best to be sure. Shoot them both.

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.

Imagine inventing all of this just to listen to your interview.

Incentive to do that would have to be pretty wild.

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.

Definitely a Jerry Springer moment when he "could not stand this anymore" and jumped back into the conversation.

>It means a random person could eaves drop on my interview by just pretending to me and telling this story.

Only if the random person somehow found out the meeting code.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Scammer can open a bank account using a fake ID for Connor. So they hire the real Connor but money goes to a foreign country, to an account owned by the imposter.

> Even UpWork requires government ID verification.

I dont think it will be too difficult for a scammer to setup a bank account with a false name.

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.

Acting in good faith, does matter here.

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.

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.

The US TV series "Impractical Jokers" ran a few sketches in the last few years where they did exactly this...you'd probably enjoy.

Like Catfish, but for jobs.

Not Zoom interviews, but there are Youtube videos of people messing up with other people on Omegle, with a fake skip screen. From the point of view of the pranked, what happens is they get to someone that ends up skipping them, get a different person, and the previous person shows up in the background or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSqexFg74F8

I get the sense that "real Connor" must have been extremely good at concisely explaining the situation and giving the interviewer exactly the information he needed to believe real Connor and understand the situation. It made me think of one of those movies like groundhog day or "source code" where someone has multiple tries and eventually comes up with the most efficient possible thing to say to get someone to trust them. Well done!

considering that this was a zoom call I would guess looking like the real Connor also helped ;)

You know that interviewer was shitting themselves when og Conor unmuted and said wtf mate.

Some trainwreck interviews make for good office lore and this one tops the cake.

This was my immediate reaction too. Would make my whole week.

An interviewer whom asks all the same questions is better suited in HR or hiring accountants. That's called a quiz, not an interview.

When interviewing, you do an actual interview, which is where you research whom you're interviewing to gain good questions to ask so you get good answers back.

The staleness and bore of interviewing is entirely the fault of the individual. Especially when they think whiteboarding compsci topics is meaningful.

I feel like this PND thing might just be an agency for the folks on https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed to outsource the acquisition of their 2nd, 3rd, 4th jobs.

It kind of reminds me of a time travel thriller. They have to act fast too as Connor#2 will be joining any second.

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