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What an unempathetic read for "worker applies to remote job and going through the incredibly uncomfortable but no less than the necessary desperate steps to try

by Spivak 2y ago

What an unempathetic read for "worker applies to remote job and going through the incredibly uncomfortable but no less than the necessary desperate steps to try and keep it." Sure you have to reject them due to sanctions but in their absence, would you still? I'm sure there are spies and clearly this company uncovered an operation, but it's hard to judge because I would try it if it meant I could make US money. Because damn this article is being really overt with the racism which is pretty surprising since it's attached to a company blog. The implication that no one in the entire country of NK could be qualified for anything but the bare minimum for a junior is pretty insulting. I worked in a research lab with Chinese spies— really nice smart folks. I really can't imagine NK being so different as to not have any qualified people.

meowface 2y ago
That's just reality in North Korea. It's not any of the ordinary citizens' faults, but they all essentially have to be assumed to be coerced puppets of the state if they're perpetrating such application fraud. (Though, really, a company shouldn't be accepting fraudulent applicants even if they aren't spies.) I'm sure there are plenty of North Koreans who are qualified (whether they are or aren't working for state intelligence), just as plenty of people working for Chinese intelligence are smart and qualified and decent people, like you mention, but we don't live in an era of utopian world peace where such things can just be overlooked when giving people access to sensitive systems, and we may not even in ten thousand years from now. We shouldn't expect Chinese tech companies to accept applicants working for CIA or NSA, either.
- Spivak 2y ago
  All this is right and most people get it by the whole country-wide sanctions thing but god I wish we would treat the folks living there with a little more humanity. It's painting with a huge brush to associate a group of remote work scammers, which is what they found, with the whole country. We don't do this with Iran despite similar sanctions— people talk about how awful and regrettable it is to have to cut off so many regular folks just trying to live. It's clearly not even the whole communism/socialism thing because we don't do it with Cuba either. But when it comes to NK (and China) the crazy amount of propaganda has flipped a switch in people's brains that it's not a country of regular people with a shitty government but an impossibly powerful state who has a nuralink into every citizen and company.

by Spivak 2y ago

meowface 2y ago

That's just reality in North Korea. It's not any of the ordinary citizens' faults, but they all essentially have to be assumed to be coerced puppets of the state if they're perpetrating such application fraud. (Though, really, a company shouldn't be accepting fraudulent applicants even if they aren't spies.) I'm sure there are plenty of North Koreans who are qualified (whether they are or aren't working for state intelligence), just as plenty of people working for Chinese intelligence are smart and qualified and decent people, like you mention, but we don't live in an era of utopian world peace where such things can just be overlooked when giving people access to sensitive systems, and we may not even in ten thousand years from now. We shouldn't expect Chinese tech companies to accept applicants working for CIA or NSA, either.

Spivak 2y ago
All this is right and most people get it by the whole country-wide sanctions thing but god I wish we would treat the folks living there with a little more humanity. It's painting with a huge brush to associate a group of remote work scammers, which is what they found, with the whole country. We don't do this with Iran despite similar sanctions— people talk about how awful and regrettable it is to have to cut off so many regular folks just trying to live. It's clearly not even the whole communism/socialism thing because we don't do it with Cuba either. But when it comes to NK (and China) the crazy amount of propaganda has flipped a switch in people's brains that it's not a country of regular people with a shitty government but an impossibly powerful state who has a nuralink into every citizen and company.