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I really think people need a hobby or something. Cool we found the 99th percentiler of a thing that everyone knows was happening. All it is is someone who's phe
by sorcerer-mar 1y ago
I really think people need a hobby or something. Cool we found the 99th percentiler of a thing that everyone knows was happening. All it is is someone who's phenomenally good at interviewing and decided to use that to defraud a bunch of companies.
Is there much else to learn? This is simply not as interesting a story as it's being made out to be.
- tuesdaynight 1y agoProbably the reaction is because of who (whom?) he defrauded: some YC founders. People have higher expectations for them, I think.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoIf someone legitimately interviews well and then just decides to stop working, what exactly does that say about the founders/recruiting teams? Literally nothing. Interviews are hackable by bad actors who then incur a bunch of cost to get rid of after the fact -- not news.
- esafak 1y agoIt means you need to be diligent when interviewing people; do background checks.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoWhat sensible level of background check would've caught this without incurring stupid costs given that 99.99999% of applicants are not Soham?
- esafak 1y agoUse your judgement. I do most of my filtering before the interview, from the resume and LinkedIn. Get references from his last company. If something feels off, probe some more. You develop a nose for it.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoGot it, so seems like there's nothing to learn here, like I said initially.
- esafak 1y agoIF you're trying to say that you've interviewed people like Soham in a roundabout way you can just say so. Given everyone else's reaction, they're obviously new to these scammers and will be adjusting their hiring practices. Not everybody has interviewed a North Korean hacker with a real-time deepfake avatar either...
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoNo, I am asking what is there to learn. If there were something to learn, you (or anyone else) could’ve said: “you should do [this thing] differently” “Don’t hire people like this guy” is circular. It’s not meaningful information. There’s nothing to learn! Background checks would not and did not detect him.
- esafak 1y agoI am not saying that at all, am I? I am saying DO BACKGROUND CHECKS. If the previous company says "He hasn't actually done any work yet" you would have avoided the problem. I can't tell you what to do differently because I don't know what you are doing. But I can say you can catch him, and others have caught him, so why can't you?
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoFirst, background checks are obvious and I don't know any startup of any scale that's hiring engineers "without background checks." But typical background checks would not catch someone doing this, and in fact did not catch him several times, clearly. Background checks do not alert you to other business who claim to have recently hired someone, so it's not clear how this helps whatsoever. He had references, he had a LinkedIn, etc. etc. Your solution is made up. If you believe background checks would help, then answer my prior question: which type of background check? The standard ones would not detect this!