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Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

> None of his paychecks were ever cashed

I don't understand this. People were paid by cheque in the early 2000s?

Pretty common in the US back then. Direct deposit is (still) only required to be provided at the company's bank, though I doubt anyone implements that minimum any more.

Back in the 90s when I worked for Atari (Back in the terrible Warner period) you could only get DD at the company's bank, which was a small bank with one branch, in Sunnyvale (surely the company had another bank or two as well?). I was told they did this so they could invest the float over the week end and early in the week.

It must be bad if you are using your employees as a short term LOC. An inverse payday loan.

Not really. More like, “we could make an extra hundred bucks a week by doing X”. So they do X. If it’s annoying to the employees, that cost is not considered.

Yeah it isn’t profitable when you then spend 30% of your staffing costs on hiring new people as the old ones leave

To me late payment means they are possibly insolvent so I am looking for another job.

Using money you owe for something else for as long as you get away with is hardly alien in business in general. It is why most companies (almost every company?) delay payment of invoices for as long as legally possible, no point losing that fraction of whatever in interest (or interest saved on debt). Heck, with regard to cheques it is why banks held on to 3+ clearing periods on those and other payments for as long as they did. Doing the same with outgoings to employees isn't a stretch that would surprise me in the slightest.

You don't have to give your employer a bank account number, but they still have to pay you.

Quite unusual for a tech contractor though.

> You don't have to give your employer a bank account number

As a Norwegian that sounds so alien. They couldn't do anything but deposit money, so why wouldn't you?

Because you’re trying to plant backdoors you don’t want any paper trail?

Almost everyone does direct deposit. But it’s not a legal requirement for an employee to be paid that way.

> Because you’re trying to plant backdoors you don’t want any paper trail?

Good point, good point...

I went to check, and it seems we've just recently plugged[1] that hole here in Norway. Salary and other benefits must be paid to a bank account now.

[1]: https://www.gpokonomi.no/2022/01/26/forbud-mot-kontant-utbet...

why is that a hole?

> why is that a hole?

Presumably to avoid this:

> Because you’re trying to plant backdoors you don’t want any paper trail?

Apart from the paper trail side of it, some people just really hate banks and don’t have an account.

I really hate banks, but I hate not being paid even more.

One can get paid with cash. That’s the point of cash. No need for a bank. But don’t worry, the bureaucrat comes for that too.

Sorry, what does being Norwegian have to do with it? Going to the physical bank with a physical check seems like too many steps no matter what country you're from.

I don't assume banks work the same everywhere. Perhaps there's a good reason that I don't know about. Hence my question.

At least in Canada, the numbers provided for direct deposit are the same numbers used for direct/pre-authorized debit (i.e. withdrawals). So, while your employer likely wouldn’t abuse that information? People may be wary of giving out those numbers unless absolutely necessary, since someone could indeed drain their bank account. They’re also the same numbers that appear on cheques, so someone could easily forge a cheque in your name with those numbers.

> the numbers provided for direct deposit are the same numbers used for direct/pre-authorized debit (i.e. withdrawals)

Reading up on that, it seems similar in nature to our AvtaleGiro[1]. While indeed having my account number would allow a business to issue a AvtaleGiro request, it's just a request. I would then have to go to my (online) bank and approve it, including setting up a monthly withdrawal limit. So it can't happen without action on my part.

> They’re also the same numbers that appear on cheques, so someone could easily forge a cheque in your name with those numbers.

Cheques I don't know about because they were going the way of the Dodo even when I was young, but we did have BrevGiro[2] which was a way to transfer money. However it relied on the bank sending me serialized pre-filled forms, so someone would have to steal one of those as well to be able to withdraw money from my account.

[1]: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/AvtaleGiro

[2]: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevgiro

That’s the biggest difference - here there isn’t a request, the money’s just gone. I can of course go through the process of calling my bank, filing a fraud claim, waiting 6-8 weeks and then hopefully getting my money back, but that’s not particularly ideal. Especially since lots (most?) of the population is living paycheck to paycheck, and all that they have is probably sitting in the same bank account that they receive said paycheck in.

The median US household has $8k in checking+savings accounts, three months of expenses saved, and a net worth of $193k and therefore is probably not "living paycheck to paycheck" in the sense you meant. Also, "living paycheck to paycheck" is a made up status with no clear definition, invented by payday loan companies for lobbying purposes.

However, many Americans do say on surveys that they are doing it. This happens even if they say their income is $200k/year. The likely explanation for this is that nobody knows what it means and are answering something like "if I missed a paycheck I'd feel bad about it".

https://twitter.com/besttrousers/status/1753260817389162516

A funny thing that happens with this discourse is that it comes up all the time, and every single time a hundred people reply those numbers are a trick because of outlier rich people, and then it turns out none of them know what a median is.

In America they can and do also take money out of your account, to correct errors supposedly, but sometimes also in error. I still get paid on paper to this day because to me the terms of the direct deposit agreement are overbroad.

In the US, I'm fairly sure your bank account number (routing and account) can be used to withdraw money.

In the US, if you know someone's routing/bank number, name, and address, you can write cheques in their name.

There's companies that make their money on selling (now, usually older folk) literal books of cheques. One of the ways you can pay is literally for them to write themselves a cheque from "you" that gets processed digitally.

The US is a strange banking system wherein I have had the unpleasant experience of putting my card into the reader at a 7-11 and it just... Not work. Why? Nobody knows. ApplePay sometimes works -- some readers know how to handle it, others lose their shit and crash.

I'm a tech contractor. I prefer payment by check from my clients. Most can't or don't want to set up direct deposit for a part time contractor. Amounts are too large for Zelle, and I don't want to pay the fees for paypal or credit card processing if I can avoid it.

My clients usually issue paper checks online. Their bank prints the check and mails it. My receiving address is my bank, which deposits checks for me when they arrive.

That is so weird. What is there to set-up about deposit? Can't they just input your account number and send you your money?

It’s even easier to do it the way described. The banks are printing and mailing and processing the checks, which they can do with high efficiency. From the payor’s pov, it’s easier not to worry about tracking account numbers and just using the address which they already know.

And the payee doesn’t need to share their bank info.

Surely a check takes longer, right? "Printing, mailing and processing" doesn't quite scream efficiency to me.

It does. The US banking system is still predicated on paper checks, however, and efforts to change that face considerable inertia. There have been posts on HN explaining how (insanely) it all works.

ACH takes days to weeks to clear anyway, especially if new sender or large amounts = untrusted. There is no real exception handling so you are given the amount on credit.

https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers...

(From parent) > And the payee doesn’t need to share their bank info.

And this is a US concept where having the magic numbers lets you pull any amount you want, with no ability to have a "push only" number...

> From the payor’s pov, it’s easier not to worry about tracking account numbers and just using the address which they already know.

The account number is on the invoice..

Maybe I'm a bit to naive since I don't know the US banking system, but at least in the EU you just need to tell someone your IBAN and Name and they can transfer money to your account. Is it that much harder in the US?

There's a couple things going on in the US, IMHO.

Yes, you can get wire transfers or ACH at most banks with a routing number and account number. But wire transfers usually cost money to send, and sometimes cost money to get. Generalized ACH transfers usually come through a service provider, and that costs money too.

Also, the same numbers can be used to credit and debit an account, and also to forge checks. So giving your payment credentials (or writing a check) is a security risk. I'm a little fuzzy on details, but someone at my employer at the time (Facebook) had my payroll data on a device in a laptop bag that got stolen in San Francisco, and as a result I had to be hyper vigilant on checking for unauthorized transactions (or get a new account number, but that's more disruptive, assuming the theft was just normal SF theft, like it probably was)

it is much easier to use Arbonum, which is a payment system that works all over the world

I certainly got checks at internships in 1999-2000 and at a job I briefly held in 2001. I guess my first real-real job was 2006 and for sure I got checks for at least the first few months. It was a mild pain to do the (literal) paperwork for direct deposit, and a mild pain to receive checks (I'd categorize it as a major pain now, but you were running errands more often then and even at the bank for other crap), so laziness won for a while.

We're approximately the same age, and the first time I held job at which I had the option for direct deposit was 2003. I remember it particularly because I thought it was cool, and evangelized it to co-workers, many of whom did not trust it and opted to continue receiving paper checks.

I had the option to be paid by paper check as recently as 2017, and probably still would if I had remained working for that employer (a US-based legacy insurance carrier).

Developer in the Midwest. I was paid by paper check brought to my desk by the office manager from early-aughts until 2012 when they switched to direct deposit.

I don't understand this. You go through all this trouble to build a fake identity and then you don't do this one simple thing to make sure you look like a real employee?

Why go through the risk of trying to deposit a cheque when the plan worked perfectly fine as is?

Once you get banks involved, seems like more of a risk of something getting flagged there rather than someone in payroll noticing cheques weren't deposited within the time you were there.

People with fake identities because they're working as a spy have real bank accounts. But more importantly, cheque-cashing places give a god-awful return but would still look more legitimate then just not ever cashing anything.

In short: the details of this story make no sense for the implied narrative (spy). They make a lot of sense for "not mentally well person" or "guy who suddenly had to disappear for other reasons". Combined with just "regular software developer things".

For example - I've cloned the entire git repository server of every place I've ever worked at. I have a script which does it for Github and Gitlab, because usually when you're exploring a codebase you wind up needing just "every repo" and it's easier to dump it all in a folder on my work machine ahead of time. I've run "find" on a network share because have you ever tried to figure out where a particular word document might be after looking through 10+ years of random SMB share naming systems and empty folders?

Read the stories of long-term agents from the Cold War - for both sides, but Russians in America is easier to find the stories of. Spies don't act secretive, spies blend by acting normal. They're an unremarkable next door neighbor who never draws any attention and works a respectable job. They're polite to their neighbors but keep to themselves, they do things on time and promptly, they have identities that check out and do normal things like "get paid from a regular job".

Whereas people absolutely can and do simply ghost jobs all the time. Like a simple explanation here for this guy would be "was actually an illegal immigrant and someone told him that going from contractor to full time employee might be too much exposure, got spooked and bailed". Probably was just an actual software developer. And if you here "illegal immigrant" and think "Mexican" you're also wrong - plenty of people overstay or exceed the bounds of their visas in the US.

P.S. "contributed a large number of commits to the project he was assigned to" - you know, as would be expected when you're hired to work on something? What was in those commits? Why is it omitted from the story?

Two months is short enough that it doesn't look abnormal; I've left my paychecks uncashed for a month or more while I dealt with everything else around moving for a new job.

I don't disagree that it was poor opsec, but the rest of the story makes it clear enough that they were burning the identity/employee quickly enough that it really didn't matter.

Banks have a stricter KYC than companies that hire someone. The person would have needed to forge an identity that stood up to the scrutiny of the bank or risk linking it to their real identity or something. If they aren't doing it for the pay check seems like a bunch of extra work for not much gain.

Bingo.

Leaving the checks uncashed means there's less of a paper trail to follow.

Yes and many still are

Not from the US I guess?

They are still ubiquitous today, let alone in the early 2000s.

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