Coinbase Mandates In-Person Orientation to Stop North Korean Hackers | Hacker News Reader

Coinbase Mandates In-Person Orientation to Stop North Korean Hackers

businessinsider.com

12 pointsianrahman8 comments

I wonder how much this has an influence on the widespread reduction in remote positions, especially in bigger companies, as opposed to the other reasons.

I’m curious what an in person orientation does that a background check does not. In my experience, asking suspicious candidates to show me what is outside their window is enough to weed out North Korean candidates who are lying about their location. That is a much lower effort than an in-person orientation.

If you tell them during the call that after being hired they are required to be in office for an orientation, and ask them if that’s a possibility they will come up with an excuse. I did the same and saved me the awkward window question, which might as well be the sky or they might be in a room with no windows

I like that.

> In my experience, asking suspicious candidates to show me what is outside their window is enough to weed out North Korean candidates who are lying about their location.

...I have to say, if I was randomly asked in a job interview to show what is outside my window, I'm not immediately sure how I would do it. I use a desktop computer with a USB webcam clipped to the top of the monitor. The cord isn't long enough to show a good view out the window. I guess I could switch the video conference to my phone, but it might take some fiddling. I would probably find the overall request a bit off putting.

I live in Manhattan by the way. I also don't work in tech (any more), but I've still had online job interviews.

It's not something I spring on all candidates. I only ask the ones who seem suspicious. I recently started explicitly mentioning WHY I am doing it and stating my desire to not support the murderous regime of North Korea. The call always drops abruptly.

Re: fixed cam, I'm pretty sure you have a cell phone that you could walk over to a window, take a snap, and show me on a webcam if push came to shove.

Pardon me for the low effort post, but... Duh.

I mean, what did people think would be the ultimate result of fully dematerialized, depersonalized, delocalized remote first company? Obviously there needs to be a certain rhythm of human interactions as a foundation to build remote interactions on.

At $WORK that's one week in presence with your remote team when you join, followed by one week every six months in the presence of the whole engineering team, at minimum. Exceptions to this policy are... exceptional.

The desperate excuse that companies need to enforce RTO policies.

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