About 6 months ago I was interviewing with InterSystems, a company that does healthcare software. Only when I signed in for the online coding interview did I learn that they required I have a webcam on myself the whole time.
I don't like using coarse language. But it was the first time I struggled to not use the phrase "fuck you" in my email to the recruiter.
If the former, their fears are not unfounded: Sometimes the person who impressed you in the interview is not actually the same person who arrives for their first day of work. There are also less-audacious forms of interview cheating, where an off-screen cyber-Cyrano is supplying them with answers and/or keyboard-input.
That said, I agree that any workplace with a "webcam on at all times for monitoring" policy for employees is one I would leave ASAP. Not just because it's hostile and offensive, but also because it's indicative of the company doing badly while management is busy "rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic."
That's the problem.
Granted, I've seen tech employee contracts that do include that wording, but it hasn't been in any of the pre-employment paperwork like NDA, etc., in my experience.
Legally? Probably yes. Practically? Fuck no.
I don't care what they're going to do with it. They aint having it.
I've interviewed hundreds of people since COVID / interviews going online. I'm not aware that it's been a problem for a single candidate, I don't even think we say it explicitly.
But there still is a line like if I am doing take home assignment I will not install spyware on my personal computer.
We can have a zoom/teams call with a person where I share screen if someone wants that with enabled camera as well during coding or for discussion.
Agreed, if they want to lend me a computer for the exercise, that's another matter. :p
It's been a while since I last interviewed in earnest, but my recollection is that those situations (fortunately) correspond with companies that I probably wouldn't want to work for anyway.
I would rather clean toilets with dignity than be bitch-whipped into programming for such psychopathic entities.
If a company can't think of a single way to ensure the person who interviews is actually the person who comes to work the first day (hint, there was a time when webcams did not exist), then that company is probably also inclined to inflict lazy, intrusive surveillance-based schemes on employees after they're hired.
If the work is fully remote, then does it really even matter? If you hire Person A to provide certain business results, but he actually contracts it out to Person B who does all the work, yet the expected business results are provided, then do you actually care?
Seems like it's great signal of how the company thinks, and will behave.
Not necessarily that they'll put all employees under video surveillance, but if they think that interview thing is a good idea, I'd guess probably they'll do numerous other things along the same line of thinking.
Occam's Razor possibilities:
1. The company is normally very enlightened and thoughtful and fair, and has a very subtle and nuanced rationale for why they're coming across as invasive and overbearing in this one narrow instance, and their reasons in this bad first-impressions instance (when they should be thinking about first impressions) were simply somehow not explained.
2. The company is going to behave like a jerk.
Fake interviewees are pretty rampant. We’re getting to the point where presenting yourself in-person to a government representative, agency or a private attestation company will be part of the onboarding process. At this point it looks like it’ll be iris scans.
In the US it’s even an issue in-person with H1B’s where they get interviewed and hired online, then someone else shows up.
Also the fact that insider threats are almost never budgeted for, and so many companies blanket-approve access to systems like logging systems, customer support systems, source code, etc - means attackers don’t even need to get hired into a very important role to get the data they want.
someone else shows up ? what is the denominator
This may be a reasonable gamble, as many companies do probably not expect such a rochade, and do not have detective measures in place. And if that doesn't work, you still have 3 months time to find another job in an environment that favored job seekers at this time.
[1] https://expatrist.com/losing-a-job-in-germany-with-eu-blue-c...
Oh god no, a piece of not-that-secret information which can't be revoked when eventually leaked.
"This is a courtesy alert that your iris scan has been found on the darkweb..."
Either way, I think this is one of those "if it was used properly, people won't like the limitations, so they'll use it improperly" situations. Kind of like with social security numbers.
"Welcome to Acme Bank. To prove you are the owner of this bank-account, please supply your full name and street address. *ding* Authentication successful! Please choose an amount to transfer."
At best, biometrics can only replace usernames. In other words, information that is quasi-public and not expected to be easily changeable... With the additional problem that sometimes it changes all on its own.
The part that would have made me walk away would have been if the video was being recorded and retained, as opposed to merely being watched live.
Trust runs both ways.
They'd need to get more than one job per pay period for that to be more lucrative than just doing one of the jobs they were approved for.
Also the money would be split between the scammers.
That sounds like more work than actually doing a normal job, but I guess it may be more automatable.
I don't know though, interview processes can be very tedious.
If one is eligible to do the job in the first place
Most are formulaic bullshit.
You can coach someone to pass them in a few weeks, that's what the bootcamp phenomena is about.
Use a short take-home test for coding stuff, and then do a live interview where you do roleplay and situational questions that make it really easy to tell if someone has actually done this stuff as a job, or is just reciting answers they memorized.
Can they help me out? Apparently, those scammers have figured out a way to convince companies they are real applicants, yet somehow I, a real applicant, apparently cannot do the same.
LLM’s are fucking terrible at this for anything nontrivial.
They seem pretty solid in my experience, in fact, if they shine at anything it's expository blobs of text.
> LLM’s are fucking terrible at this for anything nontrivial.
Amusingly, one of the common pieces of advice to limit hallucinations is to ask the LLM to walk through the reasoning.
That is, unless companies are lying about how much damage bad hiring does. I don't suspect they are, but they apparently can't also do the math to go back to that option.
Edit: Maybe a library? Most around me have rooms for working in groups.
I imagine there are people who want a remote position who don’t want to travel but at that point <shrug>.
Last I saw even the cheapest of Android phones had some form of “selfie” front facing camera.
Rise of the dumbphones!