Ask HN: Going to tech interviews for a 3rd party shop?

> complimenting me on specifics about my work experience.

First off, that to me is a sign that it is a bot who contacted you - recruiter bots are absolutely sophisticated enough to pull details out of your profile to make it sound like they are not a bot (Thanks, LLMs!) Actual recruiters tend to be short and snippy, just to see if you respond before getting into any conversation at all.

That being said, even if this does turn out to be legit, you are just signing up to be part of them scamming their customers. If one person does interviews, while someone else does the work, that is what we call a lie.

And even if somehow that turned out to be reasonable, splitting profits 50/50 just for being part of a sales effort? Too good to be true.

This whole post sounds like a big old pile of red flags to run away from.

Yup, I haven't replied to the email and wasn't going to. I was just wondering if there is a scenario where the arrangement is legit, or alternatively, if there's a particularly interesting scam going on here.

> If one person does interviews, while someone else does the work, that is what we call a lie.

If you see my sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41649280), I explain how that lie is actually quite typical.

> splitting profits 50/50 just for being part of a sales effort? Too good to be true.

Agreed. But sales commissions can be higher than 50%, so you never know.

"Beyond the interviews, I can be involved with the actual work as much or little as I want. We'd split any profits 50-50."

Mostly likely a scam. They will have you interview, win the project and then pay someone else dirt cheap to do the work making a huge profit.

There is no free lunch in this world. If they are claiming that you wont be involved much after the interview, you know where this is going.

> developers working as full-time employees at multiple jobs, which is clearly unethical

Okay, I see where you stand.

> that I perform in tech interviews to help land projects for them... It seemed like the kind of thing that could be legit, unethical, or possibly a scam.

How's that could be a legit thing? It's way way more unethical than working 2 full time jobs.

OK, to clarify:

1. Most dev shops work in a similar way:

During my career I have worked as a middle manager at multiple companies where I was on the other side of the table. That is, I outsourced projects to dev shops. All of them would bring a technical lead to the initial interview, and all of them would pass the work to one or more junior devs. Of course, they'd say that the tech lead was overseeing the work, but in some cases it was only marginally true.

I came to expect that this bait-and-switch is how larger oursourcing shops work, so later I tended to hire individual contractors where it wasn't a problem. However, since that meant more of my time was spent overseeing the contractors, this approach didn't always sit well with my own boss who wanted higher volume output. So often I was forced to play this game with outsourcing dev shops.

Are those dev shops being unethical? If they got the job done, and they told the client that the junior employees handled the work and the tech lead simply approved the final submission, then I think most employers would be ok with it.

2. Working 2 full-time jobs is ethical IF the employers know that's what you're doing:

If an employee is so proficient that they can do their work at two different full-time jobs, then most employers shouldn't have much reason to complain. But generally we're talking about lying to the employer and since employment contract almost always include an exclusivity clause then it's no minor verbal lie. There's no way this is more ethical than what the dev shops do.

If they're leading on prospective clients by indicating that you will always have a supervisor or managerial level role in the actual projects, and you're not going to be there at all, then it's effectively misrepresentation / borderline fraud and 100% unethical.

Furthermore this kind of activity exacerbates the distrust between employers and prospective employees and makes the interview process even worse in the future for all of us.

Yes, please don't misunderstand, I agree with you on both points, with regard to both outsourcing and full-time employees.

And everyone on this thread is basically saying the same thing.

My point about the way most dev shops currently do business is that there's a grey area where there's not a bright clear line. As a manager who hired these dev shops, and as someone with a boss who wanted me to hire these dev shops, I was forced to deal with this issue every time.

I'd call that "fraud".

A realistic arrangement might have you be a part of certain projects, or maybe hiring you on as a consultant or lead, and you'd get paid for your time.

Showing up for an hour or two, faking an interview, and then keeping half the profits? Definitely a scam.

This sounds sketchy as hell to me. I'd avoid such an arrangement, personally.

They're trying to do native advertisements via interview candidates now? Geez... really scraping the bottom of the tech hiring crisis barrel.

Whatever you do, don't ruin your reputation or get ripped off or doxxed.

They want to scam under your name and reputation which could leave you holding the bag. And they will take 1/2 and do all of the work.

I can't see this turning out well.

Not only a scam but it might (probably) be from some country that is in the US sanctioned list, if that might influence you.