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Comment by ericzawo | Hacker News Reader

I cannot believe North Korean hackers are having better luck finding a job these days than I am.

It's less individual NK hackers and more "an established, well funded interview cheating pipeline" that lands jobs.

Yup it's definitely an organized group(s). I've gotten so many automated resumes that try different styles, locations, and keywords that I suspect are largely the same group or two. We even had one candidate join a Zoom as the wrong name (who had also applied!), realize his mistake, leave, and rejoin as the correct name.

I can't believe an actual engineer accepted this low of a salary!

Actual engineer:

> It's less individual NK hackers and more "an established, well funded interview cheating pipeline" that lands jobs.

Just a shower thought: isn't it a missed business opportunity for recruiters from in particular other countries (but also the USA) to set up a similar "well-funded interview (cheating?) pipeline"?

They are extremely talented. One of my Chinese friends told me that one of the interviewees he got knew enough about X11 to impress everyone, but then shocked them by showing on camera wearing NK uniform. Apparently he didn’t get the job.

Wow. Is this intelligence a one-off occurrence, or a pattern?

I only know this occurrence. Maybe it is a pattern. From what I know, they operate from a hotel in a Chinese city semi-publicly (the locals know). Developers are not supposed to leave the hotel. The reason they are extremely talented can be partly explained by the training they received: years of system programming training with access to all kinds of source code.

Of course I have never seen this with my own eye, but this friend is the original CTO of Deepin Linux so I believe him. I don’t get the military uniform part though, as it scares away potential employers. Maybe this is one of the requirements of the Chinese government.

If they really are operating from within China it wouldn't surprise me that they are required to be in uniform while 'at work'. When countries have status of forces agreements, it usually revolves around the individual being uniformed or not. For an example a US soldier could cross while out of uniform into the GDR anytime they wanted. But when in uniform, they had to use specific locations that were agreed upon by both sides. Otherwise it would have been considered recognition of a foreign government.

Yeah I think the same. I think that’s China saying we are OK for the operation but you need to make yourself clear that you are a NK military person whenever you approach Chinese business.

But really, I wish I could get into such an education. I myself lacks discipline to do so.

It would be interesting to see what these hackers are doing in interviews such that they’re landing so many jobs

There’s probably even recorded interviews out there with the candidates as data

Almost certain I interviewed one of these guys.

Basically, just imagine someone whose _entire_ job was interview prep and acting. (The guy doing the interview is likely not the one doing the job.) And for anything where they have any gaps, they've got a team of people behind them listening in and feeding them answers.

Basically every single technical, behavioural, or other question got a 10/10 perfect answer. (To the point where "the answers were too perfect" was one of the many yellow flags.) Part of the reason I'm so sure I interviewed one of these guys is I invested a fair bit of time looking into their background and chasing things up. They'd nailed the interview so hard it was worth digging until I found a red flag on the off chance I _could_ hire them.

Honestly the only thing they didn't nail were some of the more "chit-chat" type questions. The guy I interviewed claimed to be in LA while the fires were raging there and... was very confused when discussing the weather and I mentioned smoke.

The motivation might be to stay alive.

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