Developer Fired For Outsourcing Job To China

It might seem like a crazy stunt that you would never think anyone would pull off, but it officially happened. A developer at an undisclosed "critical infrastructure company" was caught outsourcing his job to China for less than one-fifth of his six-figure salary. From there, the developer could sit back and relax.

Advertisement

A 2012 case study from Verizon brought forth the story of the sneaky developer. Only known as "Bob", he worked at the unnamed company for a quite a long time, and was earning "several hundred thousand dollars a year." Plus, he received excellent performance reviews along the way, noting that he was one of the best devs at the company, and that his code was very well-written.

However, Bob's code wasn't actually his code, but rather the job of Chinese workers whom Bob paid around $50,000 a year (which says that Bob was being paid around $250,000 a year). Instead, Bob surfed Reddit, watched cat videos, browsed eBay, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and then sent an email to management at the end of the day summarizing that day's work (of the Chinese workers, that is).

Advertisement

Here's where Verizon comes into play. The anonymous company asked Verizon for help in understanding some abnormal activity that the company discovered in its VPN logs, most notably a near-constant connection from Shenyang, China that used Bob's login information. After taking a look inside Bob's computer, Verizon found hundreds of invoices from a Chinese consulting firm in Shenyang that Bob used to get his work done for him. Needless to say, Bob is now unemployed.

Image via Flickr

Recommended

Advertisement