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Comment by codegladiator | Hacker News Reader

> putting recruit A in front of the interviewer and then slotting recruit B in after the position is secured

reality is way more messy and worse. There are multiple actors involved in each part. Eg 2-3 "actors" for visual screen are ready for each call, 2-4 "audio" knowledge only experts on the call, 1 dedicated speaker, 1 person coordinating answers from audio folks to actor folks.

they are even ready for once in a while visit to offices in us, so they have actors there on the field as well ready to attend calls (probably 1 to 1 mapping after first visit)

and the work assigned is assigned to a completely different set of people, not involved in any of above. those folks and these folks dont interact.

i have worked part time as one of the "audio" person in above interviews. also involved on work side. ama.

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This sounds nuts, do you have any sources for this?

i am the source, i have worked across multiple years on and off between 2015-2020

The effort of the grift doesn't seem to match the score, or at least I think that's what the other guy is saying. Are they doing this for the philosophical challenge of it?

No this is not for philosophical challenge. not one of these actors are "enjoying" their work. its a regular job at the end.

Compare US tier 1 city salary to India tier 2 city salary and the math will work out.

… what’s the point?

Make money ?

I'm having trouble understanding how 1 company paying 1 salary for 1 position makes money for the 8-12 people described in the process above.

Those people are only for the initial interview.

Also, the purchasing power disparity in different regions is humongous. For what a typical L5 might get paid in Silicon Valley, you can afford a team of 5-10 in India, and India isn’t even ‘low cost’ anymore.

You assume they care about the people and underestimate the desperation of those employees. This is slave labor and it's what US developers are up against. This is why under Trump we've seen 100k layoffs in Tech this year.

because the people above are just for the interview.. And they are shared across multiple jobs, so it is not just 1 position..

They apply to multiple jobs at multiple companies..

One team handle interview process to make sure they get the job, once they get the job another set of people handle the actual work.. And then the interview team also handle any instance the person need to be seen or talked to..

Each job pay a few of those guys and the company keep the rest.. If they land enough jobs they can easily pay for all that..

1 company, taking up multiple positions (5-10) in multiple companies (3-5) as regular full time employees (us salary) and work is spread across lowly paid workers. and its not 8-12 people involved, that would be just 1 position. there would be about 20-50 people in these "smbs"

One Western salary can be enough to pay for a whole boiler room's worth of salaries in a third-world country.

You clearly do not understand how rich Americans are. $10k USD is massive amounts of money in these enabling countries

yes, its a regular freelancer project to begin with for all these actors

It is because you give someone who can do work, access to the client - they will instantly forget that they "came from collectivist culture" and flip out to work directly. So those who can work, don't get access to client. Those who get access to client, can't work.

money is made, people are living on this. surely better than call center scams ? because work is being delivered. work from fortune 500 companies end up here.

"because work is being delivered"

This is debatable.

My company now mandates all contractors sourced via one specific firm, and more recently that 70% of contractors are located "offshore", which in practice means India. Of the 5 contractors they have placed, I've let 4 go for performance reasons. Even at the rates they're getting paid (about 25% what a domestic resource would get) they're net-negative value.

There are great developers in India, but they get a lot more than 25% of US salaries. Great developers in Germany are cheaper than India - but labor rules in Germany are weird.

redhat openshift is partly developed by this work. I know its not great. the "engineers" working there are afraid to touch the code even beyond whats asked of them.

> This is debatable

work is being delivered is relative, not talking about good work or great work. its average at best. The debate you want to do maybe is if this is better than call center scams

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