17 ms·
An interview question that will protect you from North Korean fake workers
- simplesimon890 1y ago[flagged]
- curiousgal 1y ago> "My favorite interview question, because we've interviewed quite a few of these folks, is something to the effect of 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly, because it's not worth it to say something negative about that," They likely terminate the call because you come across as so naive and simplistic that you're unlikely to be in possession of any good IP worth stealing. Edit: I am confused, on one hand these are sophisticated state sponsored actors, on the other, they can't respond "I don't know?". Which one is it? I think this whole "North Koreans are afraid of offending Kim Jong Un" is an overplayed trope.
- Smithalicious 1y agoSurely it's not stupidiif it works?
- lazide 1y agoThere is a large contingent of society that will even call you a terrible person if it works. shrug
- GuardianCaveman 1y agoNice Try Kim Jong Un
- treetalker 1y agoWow, it even works on HN!
- voidspark 1y agoNorth Korean spotted
- otherme123 1y agoOr it can be auto-triggered. I remember a history of a Call of Duty game were a number of players were being annoying, cheating and making the game horrible to play. Someone wrote in the chat "Tiananmen Square massacre" and instantly more than half the players were disconnected. Or maybe if you keep the convo about KJU being fat, you trigger an alarm that schedule a police visit to your house, in a state were they first act and then ask.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoIn a communist/totalitarian regime, you don't want to give informants any leverage. The fear of it being recorded and used against you is enough. Also, if the regime were to give permission to speak in this manner, it risks normalizing irreverence toward Kim Jong Un, including employees working in espionage.
- 2muchcoffeeman 1y agohttps://fortune.com/2025/04/10/north-korean-it-workers-spamming-github-resumes-insult-kim-jong-un-harrison-leggio/ https://fortune.com/2025/04/10/north-korean-it-workers-spamm... You can just generalise the question like these interviewers. I’d criticise Kim Jong Un just to see what was up with this interview question.
- koliber 1y agoNo. All it took is to call them out for being North Korean and they terminated the call.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gossterrible 1y agoI recently got one such contact through telegram with a so called Chinese worker asking to use my upwork account to get jobs and he will pay me a share of what he makes through my account. I had a quick chat with him to know how he got my contact info and it looks like they just scrape every profile on github and upwork and my username on github was thesame as the one on telegram. After sending him a meme of Kim Jun Un and asking him if he works for him he quickly deleted our wholesale conversation.
- riehwvfbk 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stevage 1y ago>This is most likely a laptop farm, where someone in the US agrees to run the laptop from a legitimate address for a fee, typically around $200 a computer, according to Meyers. Last year the FBI busted one such operation in Nashville, Tennessee, and charged the operator with conspiracy to cause damage to protected computers, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, intentional damage to protected computers, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to cause the unlawful employment of aliens. I don't quite understand the "laptop farm" concept. Can anyone explain it?
- chasil 1y agoEmployers in the U.S. are expecting to see domestic IP addresses. A laptop farm hosts the corporate laptop (domestically) that is sent to the remote worker. Hardware is provided to work the power remotely, along with all other functions. https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/us-woman-years-federal-prison-laptop-farm-n-korean-it-workers https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/us-wom... https://sashaingber.substack.com/p/the-23-year-old-who-infiltrated-a https://sashaingber.substack.com/p/the-23-year-old-who-infil... https://cyberscoop.com/doj-indicts-five-in-north-korean-fake-it-worker-scheme/ https://cyberscoop.com/doj-indicts-five-in-north-korean-fake... https://therecord.media/arizona-woman-pleads-guilty-north-korean-laptop-farm https://therecord.media/arizona-woman-pleads-guilty-north-ko...
- stevage 1y agoOh I get it now, thanks.
- SoftTalker 1y agoOnce again showing that "IP Address" filtering is pretty useless if you're trying to keep out someone who's targeting you. It probably does work somewhat to stop bots and crawlers.
- stevenwoo 1y agoYou have a bunch of laptops running software that accesses services that are normally restricted (like access per IP or IPs from certain countries would set off alarm bells) the client paying for the laptop can run something that does the work or submits the work from the IP address space that is OK. I contracted for one company and saw an office that had one department with a closet full of laptops scanning Craigslist ads because they were getting blocked if they didn’t take this measure but don’t know the details but they figured out a workaround and automated it to scrape data daily from all Craigslists regions daily.
- comrade1234 1y agoKim jong un is so fat he has his own event horizon.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoYou're hired.
- steelbird 1y agoKim jong un is so fat he jumped and got stuck.
- rawgabbit 1y agoQuoting the Korean Comic, “When I take my shirt off I have a one pack”. https://youtu.be/mC68d-Mj270 https://youtu.be/mC68d-Mj270
- mannyv 1y agoHe's so fat that when he jumps he jumps the Earth tilts a bit more.
- atonse 1y agoSo basically Yo-Momma-So-Fat jokes transposed to Kim Jong-Un? Those would also capture a pretty deeply American cultural kind of humor (yo-momma jokes)
- atonse 1y agoMy son and I have done "Yo-Momma battles" with ChatGPT, and one that it gave me where I laughed out loud was: - so fat that when she jumped into a swimming pool, NASA found water on Mars.
- kylehotchkiss 1y agoHired
- Mistletoe 1y agoI'll keep that in mind. I'd probably be crucified by HR for saying fat at work though.
- al_borland 1y agoI assume any similar question that could lead someone to be critical of North Korea would do.
- dotcoma 1y agoDifferently slim ;)
- joshdavham 1y ago> I'd probably be crucified by HR for saying fat at work though. Really? What kind of company would make a big deal out of that?
- libraryatnight 1y agosmells like 'can't say anything anymore' coded whining.
- Mistletoe 1y agoNo I really would be uncomfortable at work asking that question to an interviewee.
- marcuskane2 1y agoAlmost any of them? Asking a candidate about how fat someone is definitely does sound like something that would get an interviewer in trouble. Many people are deeply insecure about their weight, many women feel very uncomfortable when men make any comment about anyone's weight, body or appearance. The candidate might post on Glassdoor or LinkedIn about the hostile (and possibly sexist or "bro-y" or noninclusive or discriminatory) environment. Even aside from the HR type concerns, it could legitimately negatively impact the candidate's performance. Imagine an overweight applicant being asked that question, feeling flustered and embarrassed while answering "... about as fat as me?" and then trying to reverse a linked list or whatever as their next question.
- tobr 1y agoTo save you the click and skim, the question is: > ”How fat is Kim Jong Un?”
- pmontra 1y agoA legitimate answer could be "who?" I played a game of Taboo (a party game) yesterday night. I asked the question "the surname of the leader of party ..." (the third largest one in my country). The guy I asked it to looked at me and answered "I have no idea." He's old enough to vote even if he didn't have to do it yet. Leaders of foreign countries? Maybe he doesn't know where to place North Korea on a map, even the general area. OK, we could say that the lack of a general culture could be a hint not to hire that person so that could be a legitimate termination of the interview anyway.
- barry-cotter 1y agoCulture fit questions everywhere. Wouldn’t want to hire someone of the wrong social class. They might “shoot hoops” or something similarly vulgar.
- koliber 1y agoThat would be a good answer. But they are very poor at this game and can’t answer basic challenges gracefully. They do seem to be decent programmers though based on my experience with these scam interviews.
- blitzar 1y ago> ”How fat is Dear Leader?” 6'4 - 210lbs If they can say the line with a straight face they are either an incredible poker player or the wrong kind of American.
- MaxPock 1y agoI wonder what the American version of this question would be
- shemtay 1y ago
- joshdavham 1y agoI wonder what other creative ways there are to expose North Korean employees. That fat question is hilarious but I bet there’s even more hilarious possible questions.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago"Please read me the imdb plot synopsis of the film The Interview."
- koliber 1y agoLook at their LinkedIn profile. All the scammers had non-existent profiles in their resumes. Call their phone number. All the scammers had non-working phone numbers in their resumes. I wrote an article about this based on my experience: https://koliber.com/articles/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-north-korean-spy-on-your-dev-team https://koliber.com/articles/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-north-kor...
- apt-apt-apt-apt 1y agoEasy to make a legit-looking LinkedIn profile. Start as a recruiter with unbelievable code-in-your-pajamas job openings, connect to 500 developers, then suddenly change to a developer. And phone farms aren't much of a stretch from laptop farms.
- rdtsc 1y ago>'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly, I'd think it just takes a blessing from the dear leader to mock his rotundness in front of the evil capitalists, as long as it brings in the dough and the corporate secrets. I would think the people doing this are not the lowest level foot soldiers but are somewhat closer to elites and as such can afford to be a tiny bit cynical if the dear leader signals his approval.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago> I'd think it just takes a blessing from the dear leader to mock his rotundness in front of the evil capitalists, as long as it brings in the dough and the corporate secrets. The Muslim fundamentalists to did 9/11 shaved their beards to look less suspicious.
- djmips 1y agoYeah, I'm pretty sure this whole thread is rather silly because if this is a game of chess their next move is very obvious.
- kmoser 1y agoIn this case the person doing the mocking is the interviewer. I don't see why the interviewee doesn't just say, "I have no idea" and let the interview continue. Why would that be forbidden?
- progbits 1y agoThat would be a failing answer.
- chneu 1y agoThe only correct answer is that he is a rippling mass of pure beefcake muscle.
- rdtsc 1y agoLike Cartman from South Park, if the interviewee responds, "he's not fat, he's big-boned!" that would be at least 20+ points for culture fit right there.
- WalterBright 1y agoDuring the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, the Germans infiltrated Allied lines with fake officers who would give orders that messed up the Allied command structure. The fake officers were Germans who spoke perfect English and had often grown up in the US. The GIs discovered they could just ask the officers about baseball. A wrong answer, and the officer got shot. I heard this from my dad (WW2 vet). I don't recall seeing it in any documentary. He told me I would have been shot :-/ as I had zero interest in baseball.
- shawabawa3 1y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif
- sterlind 1y agothe joke I heard growing up is they'd ask suspected spies to sing the Star Spangled Banner, and shoot them if they knew the lyrics beyond the first verse!
- eesmith 1y agoIn Issac Asimov's 1980 short story "No Refuge Could Save", the suspected German spy is identified by a word association test based on the third verse of the national anthem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Refuge_Could_Save https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Refuge_Could_Save
- alabastervlog 1y agoMaybe a spy could finally explain to me what it means for light to be donzerly.
- autarch 1y agoI think you may have misheard the lyrics. It's "donzer lee lights". Obviously, "donzerly" is not a word, but all lee lights are donzer.
- WalterBright 1y agoI presume the candidate needs to provide his address. Have someone else google street map it, and then at some point ask "what is the color of your front door?" If he takes more than 5 seconds to answer it, end the interview.
- toxik 1y agoIf you can check it easily, so can they. Also I have no idea what my front door color is.
- WalterBright 1y ago> If you can check it easily, so can they Within 5 seconds? I doubt they could load google maps that fast. > Also I have no idea what my front door color is No hire!
- Straw 1y agoWhy does knowing your front door color have anything to do with hiring? You might just be someone who's very focused on things, so much so that you ignore the environment around you to focus!
- WalterBright 1y agoRead the article. It's about detecting laptop farms.
- Straw 1y agoI understand that, my claim is that you'd get false negatives- people who aren't laptop farm users but don't know the color of their front door and aren't at home to check.
- alabastervlog 1y agoSame, I couldn't tell you without checking. We mostly enter through a side door, and the back door. ... and I also couldn't tell you what color either of those are.
- dmurray 1y agoI'm reminded of SMBC Comics' recent proposal for detecting the use of AI: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/security https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/security
- progbits 1y ago> "One of the things that we've noted is that you'll have a person in Poland applying with a very complicated name," he recounted, "and then when you get them on Zoom calls it's a military age male Asian who can't pronounce it." Why not simply pretend they are from South Korea? Tinfoil: Maybe these ones are supposed to fail so everyone feels like they are so clever in stopping them.
- graemep 1y agoWhen you are dealing with intelligence services and others who work through deceit that sort of thinking is not tinfoil.
- alganet 1y agoI have come to a conclusion about this "tinfoil" thing. Expectation: intelligence services, spies, secrets Reality: bunch of ponzi schemers, arrogant sub revolutionaries, greedy people, envious people. All together in a pseudo network of trust, always at each other's throats. Unrepentable and thus, impossible to forgive. Sad but not much.
- dylan604 1y agoso even though reality isn't exactly as the expected, they are still detecting them because they are more sensitive to situation than normies. situational awareness is not a bad thing even if the reason your heightened awareness is up for a different reason.
- alganet 1y agoWhat are you even talking about? Sounds like complete bullshit. Your response is exactly the sort of thing I see as a social scam. Situation awareness? That makes no fucking sense.
- dylan604 1y agoyou've never heard the term situational awareness? that's funny. if someone thinks there's a conspiracy behind everything so they trust nothing and then it turns out that the thing could not be trusted but because of a different reason than the suspected conspiracy doesn't make the conspiracy theorist wrong about the lack of trust. just the reason for the lack of trust. compare that to someone that trusts everything. they get screwed because they were not paying attention to trust should be suspect. yet the kooky conspiracy person was better off even if for the not so right reason
- koliber 1y agoI love this article. It seems like it is lifted directly from a series of LinkedIn posts I shared about my experience with North Korean job scammers. I also wrote a quick guide on how to protect yourself. Link to LinkedIn post in the blog post below. https://koliber.com/articles/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-north-korean-spy-on-your-dev-team https://koliber.com/articles/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-north-kor... It’s a bit more in-depth and offers a few other ways to identify the fake devs.
- esafak 1y agoI interviewed this loser too.
- nbittich 1y agoisn't it fat shaming? or because it's some bad guy, is it allowed? what if I'm fat, and don't want to answer
- 1970-01-01 1y agoWoosh. It's always been allowed to call a fat person fat. File a complaint under the 1st amendment if you don't like someone asking the question. File a complaint under the 5th if are being forced to answer the question. File a complaint with Supreme Leader if this question is bothering you and these rights do not apply to you.
- nyokodo 1y agoOr, we can just start doing interviews in person again.
- grogenaut 1y agoWe're considering this. Tho we want to do an interview with AI to see how they use modern tools, then the rest onsite to avoid many forms of "cheaters".
- Havoc 1y agoOr for some industries back channel checks in network Only really works in industries that are “small world”
- nyokodo 1y ago> Or for some industries back channel checks in network Even in small-world industries, assuming they occasionally accept outsiders, they will still encounter some form of this problem.
- Havoc 1y ago>assuming they occasionally accept outsiders I guess it comes down to industry. We're on hn so emphasis is on technical ability and in that context what you say is true. I'm in a space that requires trustworthiness is part of the core value proposition so there is little acceptance of outsiders and much emphasis on back channel checks that the candidate is solid. NK fake candidate etc is just not a thing in that context
- HeyLaughingBoy 1y agoThis happened to me where an interviewee used me as a reference (not a good idea!) and the interviewer knew me and called to verify.
- jobs_throwaway 1y agoMassive alpha in this for devs who can shake someone's hand and make appropriate eye contact
- iJohnDoe 1y agoI’ll always ask this question when these articles appear. How are North Koreans so successful in landing interviews and even jobs? There are thousands of laid off tech workers desperately trying to get even an interview, let alone a job. Yet, North Koreans having a success rate better than zero seems like a major problem. The article even says they are interviewing candidates with long complicated names with defunct LinkedIn profiles. Yet, seemingly a normal candidate cannot get past the resume filter. Tons of articles posted here over the recent years of how broken hiring is and the horror stories. This is taking broken to a whole new level.
- Aspos 1y agoI suspect one of my hires may have been North Korean. He passed all the interviews and asked for less compensation than the others, so we hired him. He avoided calls but otherwise did excellent work for about a week — until our KYC and payroll provider flagged him as a fraud.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago> asked for less compensation than the others, so we hired him In todays's lesson, we develop an understanding of the old term "You get what you pay for."
- Aspos 1y agoNot sure what you suggest with this factoid. We hire the cheapest out of multiple equally qualified candidates.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoOur HR always wanted us to do that, but I used to push back. The company I worked for (as a hiring manager), paid fairly low wages, and expected employees to stay around for a long time, so I often judged candidates by more than “on paper” qualifications.
- 1y ago
- nottorp 1y agoIs this article really about north korean fake* workers? It looks to me that it describes what a sham the interview process is instead. * are they really fake? I'm led to believe they actually do the work...
- aaronax 1y agoTheir position within the grasp of the first-world "stay in line or go to jail" mechanism is fake. They cannot be trusted, because they are essentially above (beyond) the law.
- ferguess_k 1y agoThey actually also interview for Chinese companies too. I have a friend who got a big shock when he saw someone wearing military uniform on Zoom. Apparently they didn't bother to hide the identities. My friend told me that the interviewee has very, very good skills (e.g. deep knowledge of X11) but he quickly declined him. He dug a bit deeper and found out that the North Koreans have special programs for gifted kids. They send them to the schools for dedicated CS education. They also (presumably without proof) have access to the source code of various commercial closed source software. It's a good pay job (comparing to other NKs) and they get to do what they love, so they are pretty loyal. But I always wonder, wouldn't they burn out eventually? Maybe they can switch fields or become teachers, though.
- unhappy_meaning 1y ago> wouldn't they burn out eventually? They also might not have a choice depending on how much their skills are worth to the gov't... if North Korean.
- ferguess_k 1y agoYeah I heard the security is tight. They are basically just sitting in the hotel full-time. They can't get out because it's foreign land. I hate to admit, but sometimes I wish someone forced me to sit in a hotel to learn fundamental CS stuffs that I want to do but passion comes and goes so I never got the grit to actually learn much.
- barnas2 1y agoBrings a whole new meaning to the idea of a "coding boot camp".
- ferguess_k 1y agohaha a true camp...
- _factor 1y ago
- counterpartyrsk 1y agoCAPTCHAs in real life.
- deadbabe 1y agoSomeone should make a Netflix series about a North Korean fake worker because their lives and work sounds very interesting (different).
- lifthrasiir 1y agoThere is a very close analogue in Korean, called "say f*cking Kim Jung-un now 김정은 개새끼 해 봐", typically used as an irrelevant Shibboleth-like question to move the goalpost during a discussion. As like most such questions, this method won't last too long even if it supposedly works right now; they will be absolutely allowed to say so if the interviewer demands that.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoNot exactly. You have two factors working against this. The first is that in a communist/totalitarian regime, you don't want to give informants any opportunities for leverage. The fear of it being (mis)used against you is enough to take it off the table as an option. The second is that were the regime give permission to speak this way, it risks normalizing irreverence toward Kim Jong Un, beginning with a large swathe of employees working in espionage.
- rgblambda 1y agoThey could make a very specific exception with serious penalties for misuse. Similar to how part of the Knights Templar's training was to learn to spit on a cross without spitting on Christ "in their minds" in case they were ever captured and made to do so by their captors.
- Dracophoenix 1y ago> Similar to how part of the Knights Templar's training was to learn to spit on a cross without spitting on Christ "in their minds" in case they were ever captured and made to do so by their captors. Eerily reminiscent of 1984's doublethink.
- rgblambda 1y agoI don't think the comparison is apt. Doublethink is to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The spitting on the cross thing is to say/do something without actually believing it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Herring 1y agoThis is not a difficult problem. My last position had me take a drug test. I had to go to an actual building, show my ID, and the place/results were logged. They also did a background check, which presumably would have flagged any issues. I think I emailed a copy of my ID. One interviewer even flew me out for a day. They're making an issue out of nothing, and it's not clear why. > and maybe also avoid hiring fully remote employees. There it is.
- chatmasta 1y agoBackground checks won’t detect fraudulent documents used to initiate the check. In my experience you need to provide typical identity information (passport, insurance number, address, etc.). If the applicant has stolen a legitimate identity, they will simply continue to provide documents consistent with that identity. In-person interviews are the most robust solution to the problem.
- Xcelerate 1y agoSo we’ll require RTO for just about everything except paying for flights for in-person interviews, where being in an office might actually significantly matter. Will never understand the mindset of corporate executives.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoBut you don't even need in-person interviews. Video interviews work fine of you have any semblance of actual competence as an interviewer, and an awareness to check for these kinds of things. Video filters are still pretty obvious in real-time, and, like the one example given in the article, if the person says they are from Poland but can't speak Polish, that's a good sign, too.
- lazide 1y agoThe only reason they paid for them in the first place is because they couldn’t get candidates otherwise. Not a problem anymore. and now they’re trying to reduce staff, hence RTO. nothing confusing about the situation.
- m3kw9 1y agoEventually they will get permission to say it during these operations
- m3kw9 1y ago“We need you to insult him as bad as you can, and we will then send it to NK, wait a month, and if you are still around you are hired”
- bookrecsgalore 1y agoBook recommendation for this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_(novel)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- eestrada 1y agoIn light of this, employee referrals and in person interviews should become increasingly important. Sadly, most corporate executives will learn the wrong lessons from this and instead use this as an opportunity to push RTO even more.
- ugh123 1y agoAs an American, if someone asked me in the middle of an interview to declare "the north korean leader is fat", i'd consider walking out too.
- dgfitz 1y agoWhy? It is just a fact. The guy is absolutely overweight. Who cares? Lots of people are overweight. This is also a fact. Are we not supposed to acknowledge that?
- throw3727374 1y agoIn American culture it's considered rude and gossipy. Unless I knew what the reason was for asking, it would be like if an interviewer suddenly talked about how much weight Adele was gaining.
- wesselbindt 1y agoI'm not the parent commenter, but I feel the same way. Just because something is a fact (although arguably fat doesn't sound very factual) doesn't mean it needs to be discussed during an interview. If someone started Quizzing me on the chemistry of rubber tires for a software dev role, I'd walk too. If someone started listing off the various kinds of sausage there are, I'd walk too. It would make me feel like I'm not taken seriously at best, or that I'm being scammed at worst. Beyond that, if I looked east Asian, I could also see myself walking on this question for another reason. It would feel like a comment on my ethnic background, which has no place in an interview.
- hackable_sand 1y agoPersonally, I won't work with paranoid people.
- 31carmichael 1y agofound the NK spy.
- lsy 1y agoWhat's astonishing to me is the number of companies that will supposedly hire someone and give them credentials without even seeing them on camera. The proliferation of this narrative seems somewhat real and somewhat calculated to further undermine the legitimacy of remote work. But you would think something like "in-person orientation" and requiring that people use their cameras in meetings would solve a lot of the issues here.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 1y ago"deepfaking" video[0] and voice is relatively easy these days, and is definitely being employed by some of these candidates. Lower the "webcam" quality a little bit, and it can be difficult for many interviewers to notice something is off. [0] https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam
- fc417fc802 1y agoSo require a 4k wide angle camera. These are high skill high pay jobs it's hardly an unreasonable burden.
- bilater 1y agoNK planning a heist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYYOUC10aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYYOUC10aM
- eunos 1y ago> "My favorite interview question, because we've interviewed quite a few of these folks, is something to the effect of 'How fat is Kim Jong Un? I wont be surprised if the list of "must-denounce" will be growing and in the future there'd be a litany of "mock the enemy" for every interview.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoHonestly, if hiring standards have fallen so low that NK operatives are able to get through, then more power to them. I'd be shocked if a simple 15-20 minute conversation with the interviewee's perspective manager wouldn't eliminate all chance of this happening. Video filters are still obvious in real time, any decent interviewer can tell if a person is being fed answers, just ask them more detailed information about their background and projects and not just leetcode-type questions. All of this just goes to show how abysmal (in some cases anyway) the hiring process is for offshore workers in the first place.
- not2b 1y agoI'm now seeing this all over the place, and if it worked up to now then that's over. NK will just give people a recommended way of answering the question, and if they follow the script they won't get in trouble. Like perhaps, Kim who? Oh, the North Korean leader? Sorry, I have no idea. Further questions about NK can just be deflected with "I don't follow that stuff, sorry".
- _QrE 1y agoI think it's silly as well, but I also imagine that deflecting this way would also be extremely suspicious. The agent would probably just think that the jig is up and move on to the next target.
- not2b 1y agoPerhaps the thinking is that if someone is asked, how fat is Kim, they've been outed so they might as well quit. But if employers start asking that of any Asian remote work applicant, then they can just brazen it out.
- vt_mruhlin 1y agoYou can weed these people out with basically any question. "What's the difference between an inner join and an outer join". These guys always sound like they're reading out of a textbook.
- creer 1y ago> 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly, A more likely reason is that you just called them out. See how most scams work. There is no reason to stick around instead of pursuing easier targets. On top of that, if necessary and meanwhile, others of the same team might do better at the same time for the same employer and succeed by contrast.
- yieldcrv 1y ago> ask 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly, because it's not worth it to say something negative about that No body positivity in North Korea?
- lifestyleguru 1y agoMy CV has so much experience in so many countries that I'd been nonchalantly asked multiple times "is this or that a lie?". At some point I realised that I don't even have to work anymore and now I don't bother applying. You deserve all this, folks.
- PeterStuer 1y agoI wonder how incredibly naive you have to be about intelligence work to read this article and not facepalm/eyerole this article. Have we realy stooped to kindergarthen level of stories now? Idiocracy seemes to have erred on the safe side reading current media.
- sinuhe69 1y agoI don’t think passing the job interview is too difficult if one works as a team and intended to deceive. More difficult is IMO the transfer of money. They must establish a wide networks with many “stealth” bank accounts. I suppose one can open such bank accounts with a fake identity but it’s not simple. The control of financial flow is much tighter than things on the internet.
- mixmastamyk 1y agoHow are these people getting hired today when I can’t even swing a consistent interview with twenty years experience? Not to mention it seems a VPN to Asia and back would add multiple seconds to every response, plus answer support in earpiece delay. How is that not very noticeable?
- mock-possum 1y ago[flagged]
- Jotalea 1y agoRelated video: https://youtu.be/QebpXFM1ha0 https://youtu.be/QebpXFM1ha0 "I found North Korean Spies on Discord..." by NoTextToSpeech