12 ms·

Today we had someone fake their entire interview via Skype - Story (r/devops)

65 points by staz 8y ago

kerng 8y ago
The true gem is the story shared in the first, top rated comment on reddit. An engineer found a side gig to help others that passed interviews to do their job (not knowing this initially, but realized soon). Basically a contractor who via a fake interview got a dev job in a large corporation is subcontracting specific programming tasks. Interesting world we live in.
- notafrog 8y ago
  On the other hand I've had a few companies reject my application without even giving me the chance for an interview although I was qualified. I know it happens to the best of us, but it's still frustrating when you hear stories like this.
  - marwarii 8y ago
    Right! And then you have to endup in companies like Infosys and then people say it's a red flag.
- wil421 8y ago
  It has since been deleted. Can anyone post the text of it on HN?
  - veb 8y ago
    If you change the URL from `reddit.com` to `ceddit.com`: it'll show you the deleted comments. Which gets redirected to: https://snew.notabug.io/r/devops/comments/askyfu/today_we_had_someone_fake_their_entire_interview/ https://snew.notabug.io/r/devops/comments/askyfu/today_we_ha...
    - wil421 8y ago
      The comment is so horrible I have to post it. I highly appreciate your comment about the ceddit trick. >The real DevOps scam : ( must read) Few months ago I was contacted by a person on linked in from India Hyderabad he said I could work remotely for few hours and will get good wages, asked for my resume and then he called me on my phone and said I need to provide job support to Indian students in US who are working in IT Companies on their job tasks... This confused me and I was curious to know everything about it. He then set up a conference call and here I meet this girl named V ( a finance student from India in US) she shared her screen and said she needs help with a Python script to update DNS entries... She was reading the Jira and I got to know she does not know computers beyond uploading selfies to insta. She gave me access to their dev account aws keys and per jira story I wrote the script for her.. And later guided to push to git... Here she was paying to the guy who found me on linked in and that guy will pay be weekly.. 200 usd per week. More than the money I wanted to understand what's the whole scam about. Later in few conversations with V I got know that she is on a student visa and does not know anything about IT.. She paid a job consultancy to get her a job who set up a fake interview and got her the job of a devops Engineer and her route to stay in the job was through paying someone in India to do her job.... She was working for a really big company :) as a contracter in NY... Everyday she would go to work and share her screen... I will work remotely on their computer chat with their team mates in slack lol and get money... Later she also got her boy friend through fake interview in the same job and I was doing his job support too .. Lets call him S... V and S would share their sprint tasks and login credentials with me and I would work them and send it to them via email I did tell them what they Re doing is out right wrong and must quit to which they said they can't get job because they have no real skills and fake interview and job support from India in rampant in US They said they have several friends who are working as fake engineers... They both got fired later on and in few months again via fake interviews got the job.. This is happening only with contractor jobs in US .. Let me know if u want to know more
beerlord 8y ago
I don't hire Indians as freelancers or employees. Whenever I post a Freelance role, I can be sure that I will get at least 1-2 generic applications from Indians. Usually they are part of some cohort of other IT workers - so even if I accepted their offer, I would have no idea who my information was being exposed to or who the work was actually being done by. Cheating and dishonesty is part of the culture, sadly - to the extent that parents will even climb school buildings to pass cheat notes to students during exams: https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/03/19/en-masse-cheating-parents_n_6900248.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=DjZqlfSn6xMzuAvmRCZDYA https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/03/19/en-masse-cheating-p... Part of this is the bodyshop-encouraging nature of the H1B and other 'skilled' visas around the world. Limits should be placed to ensure that only 20% of all visa types can be given to any country, to avoid one country completely monopolising the visa type, and creating positive feedback effects (ie. Indians hiring other Indians or helping eachother game the system). Right now 76% of all H1B visas are taken by Indian workers which I think partly represents the scheme's failure.
- stevezsa8 8y ago
  If some people cheat, doesn't make it a universal trait of that culture. Would you hire someone with an Indian name who was born and raised in Canada? Just trying to gauge the cut off.
- everybodyknows 8y ago
  What you call "cheating and dishonesty" most of the world's population thinks of as nothing other than valuing the good of self and family ahead of that of strangers. Adults who treat strangers as well as family are scarce indeed in this world, even within societies where the principle is universally inculcated in children by all of church, school and family. If what you say of Indian culture is true -- well, such is the world norm.
  - deogeo 8y ago
    Are you really equating dishonesty and valuing family over strangers? Do you believe there's no way to value family over strangers, without cheating and being dishonest?
wil421 8y ago
When I saw Infosys I knew what was up. The last company I was at was an IT sweatshop and I was a naive college grad. You couldn’t be in IT and be called a developer or software engineer, those positions were only for India. I could write a blog post about the crap I saw, not sure why I stayed so long. Anyway, I had exactly one Indian developer I trusted. She wouldn’t cover for other Indians bullshit, called people out, and generally asked questions. She would usually do the first line interview and then it would come to me. The clear amount of absolutely fabricated resumes by Capgemini, Accenture, Infosys, and the like was staggering. One person couldn’t answer questions and then hung up due to a supposed internet connection issue. 5 minutes later they dial back in with near perfect answers. Another was clearly a Project Manager but had develper stuff all over their resume. Most were just complete BS. We wanted to try coding exercises but the India dev said they would get someone to do it for them. Glad I left that place last September! Best decision I’ve ever made.
justfor1comment 8y ago
When I was in grad school, I applied to a lot of companies but didn't here back from any of them. Getting desperate a friend suggested I should try signing up for Dice.com. From my perspective it seemed like just another LinkedIn. So I signed up. Within a week I had a plethora of recruiters contacting me from companies I had never heard of. Not being too picky back then I took a few of these calls. Most were largely Indian run companies. One of the recruiters asked for my resume. So I sent over a pdf file. The next day she calls me and asks for a .doc version of my resume. Naively, I thought may be the recruiter isn't tech savvy so unable to open a pdf file. I told her to download Acrobat reader. She said but she wants to edit my resume before showing it to the clients. I promptly ended the call and deleted my dice account.
- notafrog 8y ago
  Oh wow...
- tropo 8y ago
  There is a legit explanation for this. Sometimes recruiters just want to remove your contact info. The idea is that this makes it harder for companies to avoid paying the recruiter. You could offer to make the edits as requested.
  - Jedd 8y ago
    Yup - I've had this with legit recruiters in Australia. I know they're legit as they're people I've worked with in the past. It's frustrating, as often times you've worked to make your PDF in local page size (A4 here) fit 'just so'. I've seen the resultant print-outs on the desk during interviews, and they're not pretty - so I'd also much prefer to supply modified PDF's. Weirdly, in the age of web search and linkedin, this still happens -- despite it taking all of a couple of minutes to bang in someone's name, and a couple of their previous roles, and being pretty confident of finding out how to contact that person. OTOH it's nice to see that some recruiters trust their paying customers just as much as they trust their candidates.
scarpino 8y ago
We've had this happen as well, with that same company. A different company tried to pull a bait and switch on us: excellent screening interview, but they sent an entirely different person to the second round. It's crazy out there.

65 points by staz 8y ago

The true gem is the story shared in the first, top rated comment on reddit. An engineer found a side gig to help others that passed interviews to do their job (not knowing this initially, but realized soon). Basically a contractor who via a fake interview got a dev job in a large corporation is subcontracting specific programming tasks. Interesting world we live in.

notafrog 8y ago
On the other hand I've had a few companies reject my application without even giving me the chance for an interview although I was qualified. I know it happens to the best of us, but it's still frustrating when you hear stories like this.
- marwarii 8y ago
  Right! And then you have to endup in companies like Infosys and then people say it's a red flag.
wil421 8y ago
It has since been deleted. Can anyone post the text of it on HN?
- veb 8y ago
  If you change the URL from `reddit.com` to `ceddit.com`: it'll show you the deleted comments. Which gets redirected to: https://snew.notabug.io/r/devops/comments/askyfu/today_we_had_someone_fake_their_entire_interview/ https://snew.notabug.io/r/devops/comments/askyfu/today_we_ha...
  - wil421 8y ago
    The comment is so horrible I have to post it. I highly appreciate your comment about the ceddit trick. >The real DevOps scam : ( must read) Few months ago I was contacted by a person on linked in from India Hyderabad he said I could work remotely for few hours and will get good wages, asked for my resume and then he called me on my phone and said I need to provide job support to Indian students in US who are working in IT Companies on their job tasks... This confused me and I was curious to know everything about it. He then set up a conference call and here I meet this girl named V ( a finance student from India in US) she shared her screen and said she needs help with a Python script to update DNS entries... She was reading the Jira and I got to know she does not know computers beyond uploading selfies to insta. She gave me access to their dev account aws keys and per jira story I wrote the script for her.. And later guided to push to git... Here she was paying to the guy who found me on linked in and that guy will pay be weekly.. 200 usd per week. More than the money I wanted to understand what's the whole scam about. Later in few conversations with V I got know that she is on a student visa and does not know anything about IT.. She paid a job consultancy to get her a job who set up a fake interview and got her the job of a devops Engineer and her route to stay in the job was through paying someone in India to do her job.... She was working for a really big company :) as a contracter in NY... Everyday she would go to work and share her screen... I will work remotely on their computer chat with their team mates in slack lol and get money... Later she also got her boy friend through fake interview in the same job and I was doing his job support too .. Lets call him S... V and S would share their sprint tasks and login credentials with me and I would work them and send it to them via email I did tell them what they Re doing is out right wrong and must quit to which they said they can't get job because they have no real skills and fake interview and job support from India in rampant in US They said they have several friends who are working as fake engineers... They both got fired later on and in few months again via fake interviews got the job.. This is happening only with contractor jobs in US .. Let me know if u want to know more

beerlord 8y ago

I don't hire Indians as freelancers or employees. Whenever I post a Freelance role, I can be sure that I will get at least 1-2 generic applications from Indians. Usually they are part of some cohort of other IT workers - so even if I accepted their offer, I would have no idea who my information was being exposed to or who the work was actually being done by. Cheating and dishonesty is part of the culture, sadly - to the extent that parents will even climb school buildings to pass cheat notes to students during exams: https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/03/19/en-masse-cheating-parents_n_6900248.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=DjZqlfSn6xMzuAvmRCZDYA https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/03/19/en-masse-cheating-p... Part of this is the bodyshop-encouraging nature of the H1B and other 'skilled' visas around the world. Limits should be placed to ensure that only 20% of all visa types can be given to any country, to avoid one country completely monopolising the visa type, and creating positive feedback effects (ie. Indians hiring other Indians or helping eachother game the system). Right now 76% of all H1B visas are taken by Indian workers which I think partly represents the scheme's failure.

stevezsa8 8y ago
If some people cheat, doesn't make it a universal trait of that culture. Would you hire someone with an Indian name who was born and raised in Canada? Just trying to gauge the cut off.
everybodyknows 8y ago
What you call "cheating and dishonesty" most of the world's population thinks of as nothing other than valuing the good of self and family ahead of that of strangers. Adults who treat strangers as well as family are scarce indeed in this world, even within societies where the principle is universally inculcated in children by all of church, school and family. If what you say of Indian culture is true -- well, such is the world norm.
- deogeo 8y ago
  Are you really equating dishonesty and valuing family over strangers? Do you believe there's no way to value family over strangers, without cheating and being dishonest?

wil421 8y ago

When I saw Infosys I knew what was up. The last company I was at was an IT sweatshop and I was a naive college grad. You couldn’t be in IT and be called a developer or software engineer, those positions were only for India. I could write a blog post about the crap I saw, not sure why I stayed so long. Anyway, I had exactly one Indian developer I trusted. She wouldn’t cover for other Indians bullshit, called people out, and generally asked questions. She would usually do the first line interview and then it would come to me. The clear amount of absolutely fabricated resumes by Capgemini, Accenture, Infosys, and the like was staggering. One person couldn’t answer questions and then hung up due to a supposed internet connection issue. 5 minutes later they dial back in with near perfect answers. Another was clearly a Project Manager but had develper stuff all over their resume. Most were just complete BS. We wanted to try coding exercises but the India dev said they would get someone to do it for them. Glad I left that place last September! Best decision I’ve ever made.

justfor1comment 8y ago

When I was in grad school, I applied to a lot of companies but didn't here back from any of them. Getting desperate a friend suggested I should try signing up for Dice.com. From my perspective it seemed like just another LinkedIn. So I signed up. Within a week I had a plethora of recruiters contacting me from companies I had never heard of. Not being too picky back then I took a few of these calls. Most were largely Indian run companies. One of the recruiters asked for my resume. So I sent over a pdf file. The next day she calls me and asks for a .doc version of my resume. Naively, I thought may be the recruiter isn't tech savvy so unable to open a pdf file. I told her to download Acrobat reader. She said but she wants to edit my resume before showing it to the clients. I promptly ended the call and deleted my dice account.

notafrog 8y ago
Oh wow...
tropo 8y ago
There is a legit explanation for this. Sometimes recruiters just want to remove your contact info. The idea is that this makes it harder for companies to avoid paying the recruiter. You could offer to make the edits as requested.
- Jedd 8y ago
  Yup - I've had this with legit recruiters in Australia. I know they're legit as they're people I've worked with in the past. It's frustrating, as often times you've worked to make your PDF in local page size (A4 here) fit 'just so'. I've seen the resultant print-outs on the desk during interviews, and they're not pretty - so I'd also much prefer to supply modified PDF's. Weirdly, in the age of web search and linkedin, this still happens -- despite it taking all of a couple of minutes to bang in someone's name, and a couple of their previous roles, and being pretty confident of finding out how to contact that person. OTOH it's nice to see that some recruiters trust their paying customers just as much as they trust their candidates.

scarpino 8y ago

We've had this happen as well, with that same company. A different company tried to pull a bait and switch on us: excellent screening interview, but they sent an entirely different person to the second round. It's crazy out there.