She had interviewed and met both remotely and in person, this guy was merely an HR drone confirming her documentation. I was a little bent when she told me he had asked her to remove her blur filter “to have a look at her working environment, make sure it’s not cluttered” (something along those lines). No one else at this company requested such. Was he way out of line?
I should note, this is my PC in our living room and not where she will be working from. And this guy wants a look around our home?! Told my wife to bring this up once she’s settled in, ask HR if this is policy. She started today!
She thinks it’s a racism thing. I’m not so sure, but I don’t have any other explanation.
I work in tech and needed to do this as part of onboarding after receiving an offer. Asking during the interview is a little weird but if they’ve had problems where their desired candidate didn’t have the necessary documents then it makes sense. I wouldn’t assume they’re wanting to see your house, they’re likely just wanting to make sure you won’t need H1B sponsorship to get the necessary documents to complete the I-9.
She’s not H1B, in fact, I’m worried about her PC skills for this position! But I get your drift.
Another weird thing is checking her docs online when she’s been to the office already. She’s there now! You would think for something so important to the employer in-person would be required .
This is common for i9 verifications.
Common =/= acceptable
I wouldn’t call that kosher, personally.
You really shouldn’t hire a wife, that seems wrong
I mean I bet he got a really good deal for it otherwise he wouldn’t be bragging on the internet
It sure sounds like racism and poorphobia to me. HR trying to make sure her surroundings don’t look like what a “typical poor person” would have (clutter, children, signs of disability, “drugs”, etc.) It’s not super common, but it’s common enough that I hear about it every so often.
I can’t offer any kind of legal advice, but it sounds like this job will be potentially problematic and HR will definitely be one to watch out for.
ETA: There’s a lot of paranoia in the US right now about “laptop farms”. Remote jobs are paranoid about people getting remote work to send money back to North Korea. It’s completely ridiculous, and it’s causing issues for a lot of people, mostly marginalized people. I think it’s useful context to know why this kind of thing is happening more lately.
This could be raised as discrimination. Not only regarding income, but could also be against disabilities. People with ADHD (hello it’s me!) are really bad at organizing, especially desks and work areas (I work in layers of papers like sedimentation). I would definitely take notes on this incident and if it continues or if he job gets changed following.
Ah the sedimentary filing system. I can tell you exactly when I last touched each layer of each pile and what’s there but if I file it all away somewhere I can’t tell you shit.
My wife moves my personal piles around and royally jacks me up. As to work, I’m much more organized because of deadline and customer expectations.
Definitely! However if your first experience with HR is being discriminated against, raising concerns about discrimination can be dangerous. Who do you go to when HR is causing the issues? HR is there to protect the company, not you. If the easiest way to protect the company is to fire someone, HR will probably do that.
I’m not trying to talk OP or anyone else out of going to HR, they aren’t always sharks waiting to fire someone. It’s just good to be careful here and OP and their wife should be aware of the risks before taking any action. Definitely document this incident. If this becomes a repeat issue, documentation can be the difference between getting fired and winning a wrongful termination lawsuit.
That’s why I said keep notes. Recount the event with timestamp. If things continue or get worse you now have a file with all occurrences. And if you get fired for calling out HR, that’s an easy lawsuit.
Agreed. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t have a union, and sometimes unionizing just isn’t possible.
HR can protect the company by reigning this guy in. I really feel it was a lone wolf thing, not policy.
I’d like to approach them anonymously, but it might be obvious who I was talking about.
HR can protect the company by reigning this guy in. I really feel it was a lone wolf thing, not policy.
Very true! Like I said, I’m not trying to convince you to not bring it up, just that it’s something to be careful about, and to make sure you have evidence or documentation.
Exactly what I was referencing! I’ve known a few people who were recently fired from remote jobs under very strange circumstances. I can’t prove anything of course, but I distinctly got the feeling that they were fired because the intersection of their marginalizations made them look like “evil North Korean spies” to management.
That was knowbe4, a fairly large player in the information technology security game, failing to vet its own employees and potentially exposing its customers to a foreign hacker.
If I hadn’t seen the blatant discrimination she’s faced job hunting, I’d be more skeptical. She’s Filipino, but that’s “Mexican” to many. When I say blatant, I mean to say heads would roll if we had some of this on camera. She’s mostly unhurt by these things, just figures that’s the way of the world. But damn. One lady asked if she was Asian and was visibly appalled. Another said she would have to attend their church, and barely stopped short of asking her to renounce Catholicism. There’s much more I’m not remembering ATM.
What’s shocking is that this employer is widely considered to be the best in the whole area. Solid pay and benefits, really cares about their people. My ex-wife worked there and loved them. I’m guessing their HR folks would have kittens if they knew this guy had pulled this.
Also, just read your edit, makes much more sense. Still, I would have said, “This is not where I will be working. If you want to pick this back up in 5, I can be in my home office.” (We hadn’t set up proper video cam or setup the laptop so I had her use my machine.)
Having said that, this is a hybrid position, so the laptop farm shouldn’t be an issue. She’ll be in 3 times a week.
I completely believe all of that, and I’m sorry she’s had to deal with so much crap. Lately a lot of employers seem to be showing their asses by being overtly racist, ableist, and transphobic. Everyone I know who isn’t a white straight cis man has had employment troubles in the last six months.
I hope this is just a strange interaction with one HR person and you have a better time with everyone else!
AHRAB
All HR Are Bastards?
That’s a bingo
I initially read it as someone saying ‘Arab’ in a stereotypical Southern drawl, and I was confused.
I don’t know if they’re all bastards, but HR is absolutely not your friend. Human Resources <> protections for employees. Instead, Human Resources = protection for the company
I don’t know if they’re all bastards
As it’s not likely that all people who work in HR have unmarried parents, it’s probably less literal language that labels them as belonging to a group of people who would harm you if it suited their interests.
All the HR people I’ve known who were not like that eventually left their job, because what they were asked to do went beyond their moral boundaries. Leaving HR to be the ones who were, indeed, those who didn’t feel such qualms.
Technically anything that is a “resource” for a company is something that is meant to be exploited for profit.
My I-9 verification is birth certificate, so no photo. Not sure how unblurring would help? I’ve never done it remotely though. Wanting to see work environment isn’t so great. I set up for a video interview a while back by carefully positioning the camera so there was nothing interesting around or behind me. I had trouble getting the video working though, so we did a voice-only phone interview instead, which was much better anyway.
I was a little bent when she told me he had asked her to remove her blur filter “to have a look at her working environment, make sure it’s not cluttered” (something along those lines).
Creepy.
Is this the US? Because iirc there’s some workplace injury stuff in some EU countries, where the company might be liable and so they might need to advise you to do certain things to prevent injury if you work remotely.
Not trying to take the wind out of your sails, just making ppl aware.
… except they ask you for a photo in the other direction, showing your chair and desk and keyboard. And not by surprise, just “send us a picture sometime for the audit.”
Idk, every company is different and so is every country.
But let me also make clear, I’m not arguing this isn’t odd. Just some things to rule out before going mayhem.
I’ve had similar language in employment agreements in the US and in Japan, framed around safety and insurance compliance. I never had to send an actual picture, but I’m pretty sure they said they reserved the right to ask for one.
US, yes. But the worker’s comp code for this position would be “clerical”. Nothing is rated safer by the comp insurance companies. Having worked for an employee leasing firm, I never heard of any sorts of safety requirements beyond normal office stuff. Fire extinguishers and first-aid kits, and that’s only for a shared office environment.
Same thing in Canada. When we transitioned to fully remote we had to ensure that our workspace is safe.
It’s actually a really nice thing to know that (a) your country makes sure you get into less accidents and (b) that your company usually pays for any workplace accidents, even if it’s remote.
I work remotely at a company in the EU where they actually host seminars about posture and stuff because it’s better for them than dealing with workplace injury from bad posture.
Not a racism thing. Happened to me at my last two companies (white guy, both remote jobs).
I’m inclined to agree, and was surprised my wife though it might be a racist thing. She’s not one to pull the race card, quite the opposite in fact.
What was the reasoning for the company’s request and at what part of the onboarding process was it?
No judgment here, and to be clear I don’t mean to invalidate her suspicion or yours. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were unethical individuals in HR who take things like this as an opportunity to call out things they don’t like… But in my experience, the asking part is pretty typical, and I doubt it was targeted.
For me, I-9 verification was very early on in the onboarding process. A list of eligible I-9 documents was provided in the onboarding paperwork and HR scheduled a time in my first day or two to show them on camera. Took maybe 2 minutes once we were actually on the call.
I didn’t press them on why when asked to unblur, but given I-9 is about presenting documents that verify your identity / eligibility to work, I suspect it’s best practice to avoid any obvious image processing as a matter of policy. At the very least, not having to worry about the paper getting blurred just makes things easier. Ultimately, they’re keeping these images on file to cover their own ass, so they want them to look as clear and legitimate as possible.
Same here. It’s company policy to review remote workers space to make sure it’s not in a place where client information can be overhead/people can see the screen. My boss is really lax about it and just requires me to unblur for a minute, tops.
For me it was strictly during onboarding for verifying I-9 documents. I assume it’s just to ensure any documents you present aren’t getting software blurred.
I can see this as a one time verification to help verify the video isn’t being faked / you aren’t working out of a remote cube farm in another country.
Clearwater firm KnowBe4 accidentally hires North Korean hacker
She’s met them in person and the 6-week training is in person.
Long before Covid, the company I worked for started trialing work from home for some call center agents. They had a whole list of requirements for an acceptable work from home space: dedicated work area with a desk, locking file drawer (why??? I don’t know), first aid kit, fire extinguisher, etc. Someone would actually go out to physically inspect the space to make sure every box was checked.
My guess is someone from legal wrote up the requirements from a workplace safety standpoint. They probably could have just had the employee sign a statement agreeing that they met all of the requirements, but someone in the middle got overzealous about their role. During Covid, everyone got sent home permanently without any regard to any of those rules, so clearly they weren’t that important in the first place.
We need to provide a photo of our home work area as part of our application for work from home. It’s needed as part of the employer’s duty of care - managers are supposed to examine the photo and determine its a safe work area
Really all that happens is a photo is attached to the application and never looked at
I doubt American employers have any duty of care towards work from home employees.
I bet the unblurring was about being able to see the documents. AI blur is pretty aggressive at blurring anything that isn’t a face
The post was about being asked to disable background blurring specifically.
She had already met them in person and will be working in the office 3 days a week. I understand the concern, but this is not that.
I get it. I misread the post earlier. If unblurring the background was useful to uncover anyone helping her during an interview then maybe, but it’s not. We do a lot of these and my clients have requirements like what I wrote before (when I misunderstood), but I have never come across someone objecting to a privacy setting like that. It’s fucking weird.
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That would be fair, but the stated reason was to look at her background.
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There was just a news article about US corporations hiring North Koreans for remote work unintentionally, and the north Koreans then did a sabotage and stole secrets… Strikes me as HR is freaking out across the board and they were looking to confirm you aren’t actually based in a foreign country. It is very easy to hide where you are(phone numbers can be forwarded, addresses can be false). If it’s a 1 time thing, not racism, if they consistently single her out, is there anyone else of her race being singled out? Did HR maybe get a derogatory report from someone that doesn’t like her and they wanted to see if she was sober? That’s happened to me.
Seems like something sufficient IT security could prevent easily enough.
KnowBe4 has an article about their experience.
They also covered at least one other instance in the US.
That is the reason why identification documents are needed. How can they hire people without knowing who they are?
NK stole the identity of other Americans. They dotted i’s and crossed t’s to get into knowb4 via social engineering. Really fucked up.
Edit: check out the link above for full story
North koreans proving that a north korean can do the job of the average american tech worker lol
