[underlines]

I'm a Swiss working in Bangkok (I'm fluent in Thai). So I'm quite a bit acustomed to people cheating in many situations of life. When we started hiring a couple of Indian coworkers for management level as well as data science roles, I became close friends to the whole group.

Whenever we discussed frauds like that, I always said that we shouldn't think people (or Indians in particular) wanna game the systems and not everyone would act in malicious self beneficial ways, tricking systems like that. But: Whenever I held this position in our discussions, my indian friends smiled at me. They were the ones saying that you usually can't trust a bunch of people to follow rules there. That most would simply game the system for their own benefit. I tried arguing that this is probably the same for all human beings, if they just have the chance and live in a system where there are no (or little) consequences of doing this. They kept arguing that it's part of the indian mindset to just game systems like that, from state schemes, to work to anything. It's shocking how one nation can see themselves in such a negative way.

I still believe though that Swiss or Indians or whatever nation doesn't matter. Humans will game systems if the circumstances are right.

[thelittleone]

At business school one of my living group was an exec at a prominent indian Telco. He described how, when the quarterly revenue was short, they would enable paid features on random customer accounts (at huge scale). This predates smart phones and only a small fraction noticed, complained and got a refund. He mentioned it casually and was a surprised we collectively recommended he quit that company, change that practice, or quit telling people.

[gernb]

I got scammed 4 times in 24hrs when I was in Istanbul. I ranted about it on my Facebook. A Turkish friend claimed it was part of Turkish culture. If you can take advantage of someone it's their fault they got taken advantage of and your lauded skills that allowed you to.

I have no idea if that's actually true but it that's what he told me.

[riekus]

Same here, in Istanbul we almost got in a huge fight because they tried charging us like couple hunderd dollars for a simple haircut. Also cab drivers fucked us over every single time.

[PakG1]

With the way currency is managed in Turkey over the last few years, I imagine the incentive for such behaviour will increase, rather than decrease.

[james-redwood]

I feel it's common in most cultures. As a former Rhodesian and South African, it's seen as fair game due to viewing things as a 'rigged system'. I always used to think we were far more corrupt and nepotistic than the rest of the world due to the insane scale of said corruption and nepotism in both the private and public sector, and yet when I came to the UK it's still a pretty universal thing, albeit on a lower magnitude and far more covered up.

[rdtsc]

> It's shocking how one nation can see themselves in such a negative way.

Wonder if the issue is that it's just perception, i.e. they just "see" it that way, or it is actually that way as in reality? It would seem the people who have first hand experience would be more familiar with the environment.

> Humans will game systems if the circumstances are right.

I think one interesting aspect is whether they view it as a negative or illegal thing or it's merely a cool "hack". They might not even feel guilty at all about it, and if caught would just try harder tomorrow.

[Jolter]

In this case (with IMDb resume fraud), I don’t even see that it’s illegal. Probably in violation of some EULA but probably not fraud until and if they get an actual job based on that fake resume.

(I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.)

[rdtsc]

Fair point in regard to the original story. I was mainly responding to the GP discussing hiring for management level, assuming hiring had happened as well. But, yeah it doesn't have to be illegal but can still be fraud.

I find it interesting that perceptions can be wildly different. In some societies people who don't game the system or try to commit fraud can be seen as naive or stupid. In others, the complete opposite - those who try all these things, are shunned and held in low regard even if they haven't actually broken any laws, because they are breaking social mores.

[walterbell]

> Humans will game systems if the circumstances are right.

Systems where caste and societal roles are constrained at birth?