We found North Korean engineers in our application pile

Personal experiences with fraudulent applicants

• Multiple commenters report similar remote-hiring scams: fake locations, fake employers, and candidates who collapse under basic probing about cities, companies, or schools.
• Tactics include: someone else taking the technical interview, then a different person showing up for the job; camera-off video interviews with strong performance, followed by an obviously different person on day one.
• Some say fraudsters treat this as a numbers game, A/B-testing resumes and interviews across many stolen or fabricated identities.

Red flags vs discrimination

• Common “signals” discussed: no online presence, implausible work locations, weak English for claimed background, highly scripted answers, refusal of non-remote work, and background noise suggesting a “call center of interviews.”
• Several people warn that some of these strongly overlap with protected characteristics (race, national origin) and normal behavior (no social media, desire for remote work).
• There is concern that “name doesn’t match ethnicity” or “English level doesn’t match name” is close to illegal stereotyping under US employment law.

North Korea-specific debate

• Some accept the NK attribution, citing prior talks with law enforcement and known DPRK programs training developers abroad and assigning them to earn foreign currency or support hacking groups.
• Others argue that the same patterns exist in many other countries (China, India, etc.), so labeling weak applications as “North Korean” is speculative.
• Several stress empathy for ordinary North Koreans coerced by their state, while still acknowledging sanctions and security risks.
• A few question whether the supposed NK engineers are even competent, or whether companies are just bad at hiring.

Skepticism about the article and ex-intelligence framing

• Multiple commenters doubt the story’s strength of evidence; “suspected North Korean” is seen as doing a lot of work.
• Some note the piece repeatedly highlights the founders’ CIA background and see it as marketing, propaganda-adjacent, or “trust and safety industry” puffery.

Hiring practices, legality, and ethics

• Discussion touches on legality of probing location details (“what metro stop?”) and using accents/names as signals, with warnings about US anti-discrimination law.
• Some defend verifying resume truthfulness; others say many supposed “red flags” are normal traits of privacy-conscious or non-traditional candidates.