Comment by tdullien
3 days ago
There's been an ongoing issue with North Korean state agents infiltrating SV companies, and this proposal helps them pass the interview process more easily.
There's multipronged benefit for them: Access to company infrastructure to potentially cause harm or ransom in the future, access to technology / intelligence, but also simply foreign currency.
Not necessarily North Koreans only.
Anyone in a very low income area can benefit from pretending they're in a high income area and negotiating US-like pay.
Although the cancer stuff does look very scammy.
There's an event bigger number of Indian candidates trying to scam themselves into US jobs, than north Korean ones.
Especially when the recruiting process of big companies becomes predictable and well documented online, candidates will just perfect the targeting and cheating of that specific system.
What if the future just becomes in person interviews again, because every remote candidate will either be an Deepfaked scammer with a stolen ID, or a cheater with someone nearby whispering AI generated answers to him?
Employers are already including 'proof-of-life' checks on the low hanging fruit freelance sites such as Upwork. One example is literally having to get on a virtual call and obstruct your face with your hand or something similar to prevent passing any automated checks.
Cat and mouse.