[nostrademons]

Basically you're lending your name and identity as a front for someone with malicious intentions.

There are a few different angles to this. Other people have already mentioned the North Korean state-sponsored espionage, but honestly I think this is a small minority of this market.

The other two big ones are visa fraud and employment fraud. With the first one, you have a developer, possibly even skilled in a low-wage overseas company (say Thailand) that wants to make American wages. If he applies as who he actually is, he makes Thai wages, which can be as low as $10K/year. If he uses your identity to apply, he makes American wages, say $200K+/year. He can split that with you and make 10x what he would otherwise, while you get $100K/year for doing nothing (assuming he's honest enough to pay out, which is not a guarantee. There's no honor in thieves).

With the second, they use his interview skills and your identity to get the job, and then do nothing except get other jobs. It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits. If the employer does seem to catch on, he has a lawyer and a psychiatrist on the payroll too. The psychiatrist produces a doctor's note that you are disabled, the lawyer threatens to sue if you are fired. "You" go on disability, where you can stay for up to a year and they can't fire you. Collect the salary, move on after the year. In the meantime, "you" (or the organization using your identity) has done the same thing to hundreds of other corporations. I personally know 2 managers that have been victimized by this scam.

In all 3 cases, you're not the direct victim of the scam. They're using your identity as a shield to legitimize the scam. When it's discovered, it's you who suffer the reputational risk and/or criminal charges.

[mcphage]

> It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits.

That’s… not really true.

[idontwantthis]

Yeah not my experience at all. I am an at will employee and I can wake up tomorrow to a locked laptop.

[nostrademons]

I said "without risk of lawsuits", and that phrase is doing a lot of work. Also, you're looking at it only from the employee's side.

Multiple statements can be true at once:

An ordinary employee who is just doing their job and hoping to continue doing their job can be laid off for any number of reasons that are outside of their control. The most common of these is company financial performance, which is both completely invisible and completely uncontrollable for an ordinary employee. Behind the scenes, the decision-makers in these layoffs have very scrupulously designed them to ensure that the people deciding who is laid off have no knowledge of an employee's membership of anything that might be construed as a protected class. This is why they often look so illogical.

A manager who has a problem employee can have a terribly difficult time getting rid of that employee in a way that is legal. My boss had one such problem employee, who did literally zero work after being hired. When my manager had an experienced engineer pair program with him, he literally had to be told what to type, keystroke by keystroke, to get him to produce anything. When my boss called him on this, he produced a doctor's note saying he was depressed and went on disability. Short-term disability can last up to a year, and you cannot fire someone on disability without a paper trail that says "You fired someone on disability, you knew they were on disability, and that is a protected class." Now your lawyers have to argue in court that the fact they were on disability had no bearing on why they were fired.

A person who takes the law as a tool with which to screw others over will do a better job screwing people over than the employee who is just trying to do their job and incidentally wants to keep it, or the manager who is just trying to provide a supportive environment for their reports to do their best work. Because that's what they're paying attention to. If you've got a lawyer combing over case law and statutes to understand the fine points of what you can and cannot be fired for, you can act in ways that ensure that you will win a big payout if you are ever fired. These ways probably bear no resemblance to what our notions of a "good employee" or even a "decent human being" are. But they are effective at collecting a paycheck, potentially from multiple employers at once, and being able to collect a bigger paycheck if your employer tries to get rid of you.

[paulcole]

> I said "without risk of lawsuits", and that phrase is doing a lot of work.

It is like saying that it is hard to go swimming without risk of shark attack.

Mostly wrong until you share a bunch of cherry-picked scenarios to support your own beliefs.

“Well yes I knew a guy who liked to splash around in the ocean at sunset wearing his seal costume after ladling chum into the water all afternoon.”

[taurath]

I've gone on disability, its insane the loops one has to jump through to get it, especially if you want the private disability insurance to kick in. It took months of paperwork and re-filing appeals. I'm in a state with a better safety net, but I had to work at my place for several years to qualify to earn what amounted to be around 45% of my salary while on short term disability.

Sadly people really do think that your story (which I'm sure is true) is more common.

[nostrademons]

Those are all huge hoops for an individual that just wants to live their lives, and trivial for an organized crime operation with a lawyer and doctor on staff that can amortize the disability paperwork across multiple employees and potentially hundreds of jobs.

[zerr]

Can one negotiate a different type of permanent contract? (e.g. with a France-like job security)

[malfist]

In the US? Not generally. Typically you only get those for highly sought after people with lots of leverage, think c suite or someone you can send on a speaking circuit for your company

[butlike]

Technically you would be the one paying out since your name would be in on the W2 since you're the one who interviewed.

[sam_lowry_]

> There's no honor in thieves

The explanation was fine until this point (

[sjducb]

I think they will create fake candidate identities. So you’re just the person who passes the interview for them. You might find that you spend most of the time interviewing and fill many positions per year. Providing lots of work for Indian developers.

Obviously it’s fraud so don’t do it.

[citizenpaul]

>It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits.

This is absolutely not true. The amount of remote tech jobs with right to work protection is so close to zero to be a rounding error.

You can sue anyone/company at any time for any reason for like a $20-75$ filing fee. The case will be dismissed if it has no merit but there is no way to stop the filing aka "suing" which is why legal departments exist.

Government jobs are basically it and are again so rarely remote to make it non existent.

I suspect that the reason people think this is that so many companies are brazenly breaking laws that when they fire someone it is easy to sue them.

[array_key_first]

I think the most wrong thing about this is the disability thing.

In the US, you don't just get paid for disability. No. The closest thing is FMLA, which:

- is unpaid - only granted after 1 year of work, and - does not guarantee your position

[nostrademons]

This is employer-by-employer. There's no mandated minimum, however many large corporations will give you full benefits. Mine, for example, pays 100% of your salary and your stocks continue to vest during that time.

[malfist]

That's really nice of your company, but far from common. Amazon in particular only allows RSUs to continue vesting.

[alp1n3-dev]

You're saying a psychiatrist in the U.S. would put their license to practice at stake and write fake disability notes? This would also continuous documentation as long-term disability would be through the company's provider, who don't operate in an easy peasy 1 letter and you're good system, they require a ton of paperwork up front and continuous supporting paperwork for a valid medical claim that can be supported by patient evidence. They even have their own doctors on staff verifying these claims. Those insurance companies are itching to find a reason to stop covering someone / deny long-term payments.