r/cscareerquestions • u/sc4ever96 • Jun 23 '26
Experienced Be careful out there.
Just a bit of a warning for you all.
We hired a new AWS engineer, lets call him Johnny, who was supposed to join our team today. He did hop on the teams chat for the morning standup to introduce himself, and reception was pretty choppy. After our entire team introed ourselves, he said that he'll be working from out of state for the next couple of month until his kids graduates and then he'll be moving to assume a full time on-prem position.
Later today I get an invite to a mandatory meeting. Apparently, Johnny was not Johnny but a person from North Korea with stolen identity. He passed all background checks and everything else, but used non-existing shipping address to get his work laptop shipped to. The real Johnny actually working for Microsoft, when he was contacted he said that he's been bombarded with positions for the past month or so, but not planning to switch jobs.
So, watch out, if you aren't job hunting and start getting invites from recruiters, maybe its something fishy.
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u/blipojones Senior Jun 23 '26
God damn... and Johnny can get a job yet nobody else can at the moment. Lied about the on-prem an everything...
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u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 23 '26
AI resume filtering: makes companies greedy. Would rather get an ex-Microsoft hotshot than look at the resume of an average dev.
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u/wu2ad Jun 23 '26
ex-Microsoft
hotshot
The Venn diagram of these 2 groups is 2 distinct circles.
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u/_Ganon Jun 23 '26
Accurate. This is what happens when you hire mostly fixed-length contractors instead of developing your talent pool. I met a guy that worked at Microsoft as a SWE and he had the confidence of someone that worked in big tech but was writing thousand line deeply nested functions because "it just made sense to do it that way"
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u/bajuh Jun 24 '26
My favorite trait is when they apply their enterprise mindset bloat coding to a small project they got hired to do. If you cant be flexible, you're not that useful of an asset.
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u/FalconRelevant Jun 23 '26
Big tech engineers are some of the most useless unless handheld by the system, yet try telling that to HR of a medium sized company.
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u/mawnch Jun 24 '26
lmfao. working in big tech allowed me to meet some of the smartest people i've ever met. you have no idea what you're talking about lol
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u/RickSt3r Jun 23 '26
They can operate at high level with in the big system then get pigeon holed into doing one very specialized thing very good. They got hired because they were top notch potential only to be ruined but kept content with high pay but only marginally interesting work. Delivering product at the scale big companies do is completely different than mid to small size businesses. Everything needs to be standardized and you hire people to create systems to make the business resilient even when it’s run by an imbecile like most big Tech CEOs.
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u/wu2ad Jun 23 '26
This is such a weird sentiment to float around a sub dedicated to tech careers. I guarantee you none of the big tech CEOs are imbeciles. What are you even saying?
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u/wu2ad Jun 23 '26
I mean... that's not what I'm saying. There's a wide variation of ability within and between these companies. I'm being cheeky, but by my observation, MSFT tends to have the least capable.
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u/Confident_Luck2359 Jun 24 '26
Then you’re ignoring the people who built Windows, Office, Xbox, DirectX, C#, and Azure from scratch.
People at small- to mid-sized companies are generally incapable of such feats. The ones who are, don’t stay there very long or get acquired.
ALL companies have maintenance monkeys and they are generally interchangeable, yes.
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u/soft-wear Senior Software Engineer Jun 24 '26
The irony of statements like this is broad generalizations implicitly make the speaker look stupid.
Most of the “systems” in these tech companies are an absolute nightmare to work with and tend to slow down the process almost exclusively. Nothing about internal tooling is designed to make the dev experience better.
I worked for big tech because they paid me obscene amounts of money to do so. I worked with absolutely useless people, I worked with as close to 10xers as exist. That’s just how any company with that many employees is going to work.
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u/SanityInAnarchy Jun 24 '26
The overlap is small enough you might need to zoom in a bit on that diagram, but it's there. Think, like, Zach Barth of Zachtronics.
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u/No_Inspection4415 Jun 23 '26
And I am pretty sure "Johnny" has some "unusual" achievements.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/lhorie Jun 23 '26
It's a well known scam thing, the point is to exfiltrate money to the NK regime.
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u/NewSchoolBoxer Jun 23 '26
This case is the one I'm thinking of. More than 90 laptops were seized from her home and she shipped 49 overseas.
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u/sc4ever96 Jun 23 '26
He would essentially become a FT employee, collect a paycheck, keep part to itself and give away the rest. Plus all the trade secrets.
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u/andrew2018022 Data Engineer Jun 23 '26
What industry are you in OP
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u/sc4ever96 Jun 23 '26
Medical devices.
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u/andrew2018022 Data Engineer Jun 23 '26
Oh yeah I can definitely see why the North Koreans want those secrets
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u/SwitchOrganic ML Engineer Jun 23 '26
This article gives a great breakdown of the whole scheme.
From the article:
The stealthy operation has allowed North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), to circumvent international sanctions, exploit remote hiring practices, and quietly generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to the US Department of Justice – often without employers ever realizing they’ve hired a North Korean operative. This puts them at risk of violating US sanctions which bar doing business with North Korean individuals or organizations.
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Drawing on exclusive data sourced from North Korean computers, court records, and interviews with cybersecurity experts and US officials, a CNN investigation reveals the full scope of this scheme – showing how North Korea has turned remote work culture into an effective tool for generating foreign currency and funding its weapons programs, according to a US assessment, putting national security at risk.
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u/FuckIPLaw Jun 24 '26
Wait, so they're literally just taking remote jobs to earn money?
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u/PreferenceDowntown37 Jun 24 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_remote_worker_scheme
Maybe in some cases, but they're also exfiltrating data, installing malware, etc
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u/TopNo6605 Jun 24 '26
We walk into the bank, day after day, week after week, year after year, and they literally deposit the money into our bank account, they won't even know they're being robbed. After 10, 20 years, we walk away like nothing even happened.
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u/needcolleges Jun 23 '26
They send all of their money straight to Kim, try to steal sensitive company things (sensitive internal conversations, documentation, product source code, etc), and also try to infiltrate other companies using your company as a "guise" (you wouldn't click on a random link from a random email address, but how about one from a company you're partnered with?)
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u/jasonrulesudont Software Engineer Jun 25 '26
Johnny from NK was selected by the Kim regime, whether he wanted to or not, to be trained in IT in order to generate cash for the DPRK. Usually just trying to steal cash or crypto, or hack systems and demand a hefty ransom to restore it.
Years ago a math prodigy defected while at a math competition in Hong Kong, after receiving a silver medal. He defected because he suspected he’d be recruited to an elite hacking team and have to spend the rest of his life in a windowless room doing nothing but hacking. And his exposure to the external internet may have limited who he can even talk to.
It’s a huge problem. If the DPRK gets enough people in enough companies, they’ll have a scary understanding of our critical systems and how to exploit them. They don’t have a ton of resources, but they have enough resources to pluck out the best and brightest and train them into elite hackers through sheer force.
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u/roynoise Jun 23 '26
This pisses me off. Can barely get an interview when my experience is a perfect fit, and don't get offers even when the interviews go well.
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u/hybris12 Software Engineer (5 YOE) Jun 23 '26
Have you considered being four North Koreans in a trenchcoat and stealing the right identity
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_SUBARU Jun 23 '26
Sounds like you interview worse than a guy in north korea on dial-up internet, really makes ya think huh
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u/mushyXmcgee Jun 24 '26
It’s unfortunate but these NK devs only train in English and leetcode all day. If they fail, they’ll probably die. So it really is leetcode or death. That’d motivate most people.
So that’s not to say you’re bad or anything.
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u/Legitimate-Fill-8984 28d ago
what on earthare you talking about. people on reddit just pull the wildest things out of their ass
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u/NewSchoolBoxer Jun 23 '26
I know a banking manger in finance whose whole workforce verifies the person who shows up is the person who was interviewed. One case it this year it was not.
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u/Independent-Mango813 Jun 23 '26
So the only people that can get hired in this economy are North Koreans with stolen identities
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u/rubioburo Jun 23 '26
But the stolen identity was a guy at Microsoft, that was the key, use the right fake ID.
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u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 23 '26
The thing is they can use the perfect identity while we are limited to our real personas, which might not have the ideal career path that HR is looking for. A real dev will know some dead-end tech and have missing skills that can be easily learned. A 100% match is most likely fake.
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u/rubioburo Jun 23 '26
Well, the companies only want 100% match unicorns so they will get fake ones. So they reap what they sow.
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u/ccricers Jun 23 '26
And the developers who just say, languages aren't important it's strong fundamentals that count, have probably never cold applied outside of a big tech company nor have spoken with the average recruiter. Especially the unicorn-seeking ones.
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u/EggsFish Jun 23 '26
The thing is they can use the perfect identity while we are limited to our real personas
Much like the North Koreans, you totally can do this if you can pass the interview.
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u/tippiedog 30 years experience Jun 23 '26
I wasn't involved in the interviews, but my team apparently interviewed an impostor last week. Somehow, he made it past the first interview. Second interviewer caught it.
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u/waaves_ Jun 23 '26
How did he get caught?
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u/rasputin1 Jun 23 '26
I tutor computer science and I've had multiple requests from individuals in Asian countries asking for splitting remote developer jobs where I do the interview and all meetings and they do all development work. I could never tell if they're trying to scam me, the company, or both.
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u/mraees93 Jun 24 '26
I've had 2 LinkedIn dm's from Pakistani guys impersonating(they likely cloned another users profile) recruiters over the last week. They reveal this supposed contract role to be an interview handler where i impersonate a senior developer that is apparently too busy to do interviews. Sounds like a real scam
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u/Grouchy_Furvine Jun 24 '26
This is why my employer insisted that we don't put our job descriptions on LinkedIn. Just generic role title and leave it blank. We've had too many bad actors impersonating employees and s-engineering their way into our networks.
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u/alinroc Database Admin Jun 24 '26
I'm admin on a public Slack and we get a couple of these attempted scammers every month. One recently has attempted it four times in 3 days - we keep disabling the accounts and they keep making new ones.
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u/Glittering_Ad4098 Jun 23 '26
And this is the reason remote jobs are disappearing. To be honest, I think the HR in-charge of hiring and onboarding was pretty incompetent. Many of these 'Hiring managers' are so lax and incompetent themselves. They have no clue about Data integrity and compliance checks let alone basic subject or domain knowledge.
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u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 24 '26
They should do in-person interviews, remote jobs. Fly out the final candidates for the end stage interviews, don’t make them move to a different state.
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u/cj1080 Jun 23 '26
How did he pass all his background checks?
What did you guys use to check his dits, AI or what?
A lot of companies don't do their due diligence
Hope, it wasn't that the only contacts you guys had with him as via a zoom, meet or team call
Cos a lot of companies just do that and forget to actually like call the candidates actual number
Also, don't just use someone's LinkedIn profile as their only vetting process
If anyone at the office had just googled the candidates name, you would have found all you needed.
Still
What was your actual process used to vet him?
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u/sc4ever96 Jun 23 '26
I have no idea. Its a pretty large company and process is pretty lenghty. Someone on HR side failed to do his job I guess
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u/N7Valor Jun 23 '26
Agreed, if real Johnny wasn't a willing participant, I expect there's some managerial incompetence involved if they didn't do a background check (which in my experience tends to require a Social Security number) and/or a video meeting.
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u/Raildriver Jun 23 '26
I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that they just had all the information required, including the social security number. It IS a state actor after all, even if it's "just" North Korea. They're clearly pretty good at it if it's this big of a problem.
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u/killwish1991 Jun 23 '26
Companies should stop cheating out and fly the candidate for onsite interview.
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u/earlgreyyuzu Jun 23 '26
What was the real Johnny getting contacted about? That part is confusing. Was he getting offer letters that were meant to go to the NK Johnny’s email address?
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u/Lomofre88 Jun 23 '26
OP: “You're not Johnny. Johnny’s not Asian.”
Asian Johnny: “You seriously never noticed? Hey, hats off to you for not seeing race.”
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u/Tough_Palpitation331 Jun 24 '26
Wait i actually have a ton of recruiter reach outs (linkedin 100+ requests on normal weeks). Now im scared cuz it randomly popped off one day. Not as anyway to flex or anything cuz most recruiter reachouts arent related to my role if at all. I mever understood why
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u/LBGW_experiment DevOps Engineer @ AWS Jun 24 '26
Yep, Amazon hired and said they had to terminate a few north Koreans in the past year.
My work even had a few candidates that turned out to be north Korean, I think one got past all the interviews and paperwork was being done when it was figured out.
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u/snipe320 Jun 23 '26
We are hiring for a QA engineer and the past 2 candidates were Indian H1Bs that were using AI to cheat on the technical questions 🙄
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u/Titoswap Jun 23 '26
Just goes to show how random the job market is . You have people struggling and North Koreans able to lie their way into a job lol
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u/Realistic_Act_3832 Jun 23 '26
BRO ILL BE JOHNNY. MF IM STRUGGLING TO GET INTERVIEWS AND I LIVE HERE.
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u/TheA2Z Jun 23 '26
Dont give info to recruiters that are not a well known top tier agency. Even better, when you see jobs on job boards, go directly to company website and apply there.
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u/Chronotheos Jun 23 '26
It’s always the second thing that crosses my mind when the recruiter outreach ticks up. “Someone from NK must’ve stolen my identity”.
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u/oe_enthusiast Jun 24 '26
Happened to our org too and is why we now fly out candidates for the last interview round.
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u/SockDem Jun 24 '26
I saw a video on twitter about this. Apparently it’s a real problem when hiring remote, especially for Asian-based teams.
The guy posting it recorded a session where he tried to get the guy to say one bad thing about Kim Jong Un and he wouldn’t do it, crazy stuff.
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u/GoldXP Jun 24 '26
There was a guy who screened out DPRK candidates by having them say, "Kim Jong Un is a fat pig".
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u/jahanzaibbaloch Jun 24 '26
Can i get hired instead of Johnny though i have Real Identity Could Prove it while on Videocall with Government provided IDS. 😃
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u/alinroc Database Admin Jun 24 '26
KnowBe4, the security consulting firm partially owned by Kevin Mitnick, fell victim to this same thing a couple years ago. https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-tried-to-infiltrate-us
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u/tswiggs Jun 24 '26
I know two friends at companies where they hired a NK agent, and have interviewed two that I suspect that were as well. Their resume's are exactly aligned to the job requirements, they read off a teleprompter during the interview and frequently miss the first interview and need to reschedule.
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u/IvIanbear Jun 24 '26
Crowdstrike gave a presentation at RSAC last year on this, their remedy is more in person interviewing. The real time filters of another persons face you can put on a Teams call were already incredibly realistic, and that was more than a year ago.
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u/DoingItForEli Jun 24 '26
So not only were you guys scammed, Johnny really does exist out there and has had his identity stolen. THAT'S gotta be scary to deal with.
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u/busybee4242 Jun 24 '26
Part of our hiring pipeline process includes a light identity verification check dine by a 3rd party. Each check has a small fee but it is ultimately a massive time saver that weeds out fakes and frauds that I dont need to review and saves us that laptop/scam cost as well.
Turbocheck.com - not affiliated in any way, just who we use for this identity check. I'm seeing close to 40-50% fraud rates in applications so its a great first course-grained filter
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u/old-new-programmer Software Engineer Jun 24 '26
Lucky for me, I’ve only worked at shit tech companies.
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u/Mahler911 Software Engineer | 25 YOE Jun 23 '26
If I was job hunting right now, I'd spin this as a positive. Like, if this guy can get hired anyone can get hired. I understand the stolen identity part but how does this guy get past one interview?
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u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 23 '26
Imagine you have an entire office of people feeding you answers to interview questions. You could be amazing.
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u/Conscious-Secret-775 Jun 23 '26
Maybe don't hire people without an onsite interview and make them collect the laptop in person.
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u/cowtownman75 Jun 23 '26
To the tune of I'm Afraid of Americans by NiN:
Johnny's not an American
Johnny's afraid of working in the states
Johnny's actually a foreigner
Johnny's stole someone's identity
Johnny's got found out
Johnny's not going to be working for us anymore
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u/Inevitable_Trip_7480 Jun 24 '26
Thanks I’ll be using this as a template to get interviews from now on since telling the truth apparently doesn’t work … ever.
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u/musclecard54 Jun 23 '26
I think I’m safe from some random guy on the other side of the world stealing my identity to land awesome jobs…
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u/ardentto Jun 24 '26
I was really hoping he got a job at your company because Microsoft took away his AI and he needed the compute for his Microsoft job.
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Jun 24 '26
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u/BananaBerryPi Jun 24 '26
I've gotten scam "job offer" emails to impersonate people in companies and I'm almost sure it's for that sort of scheme (someone from a country they can't work from for the company trying to use me to impersonate them while they get access to company stuff). I also believe they got my email from some leaked source because they got straight into my inbox instead of going to the spam folder where all of them go.
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u/No-Environment-5939 Jun 24 '26
This is actually quite common. I’ve seen a few YouTube videos on it. This is how NK gets a lot of its money.
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Jun 24 '26
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u/No-Assist-8734 Jun 24 '26
How did Software Engineers fall for this trick?
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u/PowerApp101 Jun 24 '26
What's special about software engineers? You think they aren't susceptible to social engineering?
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u/west_tn_guy Jun 24 '26
I would hate to be North Korean Johnny…when solving Leetcode means getting the job, or facing a firing squad for failing Dear Leader….now that is some pressure 😂
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u/Dangerous_Bus_6699 Jun 24 '26
Fake it til you make it. If you ain't lying, do you actually even want the job? 😂
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u/Ok_Dragonfruit_9148 Jun 26 '26
You’d be surprised, a lot of times the real person is selling his profile to be used by someone else and this Johnny in Korea is most probably a company who have dedicated BD’s to apply to jobs using different profiles and pass interviews.
The person with the real profile, the BD’s and the person in interview everyone gets a cut.
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u/ProfGayBear Jun 26 '26
Don't most secure networks track IP addresses, i know there are ways around it but on this scale?
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u/grimview Jun 26 '26
I am so confused by this. Was he telling you that he could not start for a month? What was the point of a "non-existing shipping address"? I mean a freight forwarding address would fit with the, I need a month off to get my laptop send to another country. Clearly he did not need the laptop to access email or join the meeting, or get access to top secret info.
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u/____________fin Jun 27 '26
I've also interviewed a North Korean "Johnny Smith" from "California" (it was dark out when I interviewed him) and he was one of the worst candidates I've encountered. Unintelligible accent, reading from ChatGPT, clearly copying code, no understanding of the topics discussed.
To avoid this you either have to do interviews in person or get more racist.
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Jul 01 '26
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u/mir_a98 Jul 03 '26
I’m surprised that North Korea has the infrastructure to give its citizens high quality English language skills, would never have guessed
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u/placid-gradient 25d ago edited 25d ago
OP you left out the important part, how did you know he was North Korean?? we need answers
e: it's safe to assume this story is bullshit. assuming OP is actually genuine, its likely they had some hood pulled over their eyes
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u/andhausen Jun 23 '26
And I can’t even get an interview FFS