Someone willing to lie to this extent can be assumed to not actually be as productive. Any “productivity” metric they hit can also be assumed to be faked or gamed while on the job.

But, narrowing to just “productivity-wise” is moving the goalposts. I want to work with honest people full stop.

Bad actors won't be respecting confidentiality. You're potentially giving adversaries dev access to your systems, and a copy of the source code.

Even if they're just in it to make a quick buck and then disappear, this kind of internal info is another thing to sell on.

Usually (but not always) the complaint with such scams is the work is being “done” at such low quality that it doesn’t match what’s demonstrated in the interview process; if it’s done at all, that is.

Economically speaking, if the job could be done by AI, why would we pay a person to do it?