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    Software engineer 'outsourced' his entire job to China for a fifth of his salary

    Software engineer 'outsourced' his entire job to China for a fifth of his salary

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    Flickr | China flag
    Flickr | China flag

    Outsourcing has been a reality in the American workplace for years now, but we haven't heard of an employee outsourcing his entire job — until now. According to the BBC, a software engineer was apparently outsourcing his entire job to China by paying a fifth of his six-figure salary to a local firm in Shenyang who handled his job for him. The employee reportedly did this through a "fairly standard" VPN connection that was set up to allow employees to work from home. The man actually mailed his RSA security token to China so that workers there could log in to his account, and on the surface it seemed as if he was performing a normal day's work. However, further scrutiny revealed the connection to China, which at first was believed to be malware. Furthermore, a Verizon investigator told the BBC that evidence "suggested he had the same scam going across multiple companies in the area." It seems this was less a case of sheer laziness and more a case of someone using cheap foreign labor to pull off a fairly involved scam.

    It seems this news is a bit of a case of life imitating art — check out this 2009 video from The Onion.


    Update: An earlier version of this article mistaken said that the software engineer worked for Verizon. His employeer is unknown; Verizon was asked to audit the connection and discovered the link to China.