HACKER Q&A
📣 heavygrease

Resume Fraud at FAANG?


I've an acquaintance who is building quite a career at FAANG atop a series of resume fabrications and embellishments, including claiming to have been a SWE despite privately confessing to never in life having written a single line of code, ever.

This person has been job-hopping to and from non-SWE roles at FAANGs and is now arguably much more 'successful' than I financially, despite having no real skills aside from being an extremely convincing pathological liar. This person was nearly fired from a previous role (after HR suspected resume fabrications used to seek a promotion) but the person quit before being fired, citing harassment from management.

My question to the community: Does the house of cards collapse eventually? Is resume fraud common at FAANG and does it frequently go unchecked? I check this person's LinkedIn from time to time out of curiosity and it contains job titles I know to be complete fabrications. It's very disheartening to have built a career upon ethical behavior and be left behind by those younger and less skilled who are lying a way to the top.


  👤 DamonHD Accepted Answer ✓
Sadly some people do seem to do well by lying, eg: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/01/german-defence...

And I've witnessed close-up some fraud where someone got himself hired full time by two companies: bad news for him that they were my clients and he was stationed to sit next to me at both and I knew the senior management well...

It probably does eventually fall apart in most cases: maintaining a lie is hard.


👤 turtleyacht
> ... collapse eventually?

Maybe. Who can predict the future?

"... there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness¹."

> built a career

> ethical behavior

> disheartening

Choose different metrics for yourself. If you are successful by your own measure, it's a blessing. There's always more to do.

¹ Eccl 7:15 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%20...


👤 dekhn
I almost worked with a guy at Google, but his offer was rescinded when it turned out during the background check that he had left out a long history of working for Chinese companies.

At the time I joined, there was a small abckground check that verified all your prior employment and education.