I think this is probably more common than we might think. Given remote work being preferred lately, this is probably doable, especially if companies are hiring

I think this is probably more common than we might think. Given remote work being preferred lately, this is probably doable, especially if companies are hiring large numbers of random contractors. I know my old team members (I retired recently) have gone through a ton of remote contractors recently, many of whom were completely useless. Thankfully I only hired people before Covid hit, and at that point everyone was required to work in office (at least for the work I was responsible for). Everyone I did take on was either excellent or at least competant. I did hire most of them off of phone interviews only, so maybe I was lucky. If an experienced person does the interviewing asking the right questions / requiring tests / etc might be insufficient to realize the person you are interviewing is not the person who will do the work. I wonder how you would catch this before actually having the "worker" start. I guess this is a downside of all remote work assuming your company is less than thorough in checking references/documents/etc.