US software worker outsources his job to China
‘Bob’ was a model employee – until an audit found someone in Shenyang doing his work
A US-based software engineer shocked his bosses and inspired some of his industry peers by outsourcing his job to a company in China for less than one-fifth of his six-figure American salary.
The 40-year-old, whose identity was reported only as "Bob", was at one stage awarded the company's "best developer in the building award" for maintaining a work schedule that in reality consisted mainly of taking long breaks, chatting on Facebook and shopping on eBay.
Bob's fraud was discovered after his employer turned to US telecom services provider Verizon for "help in understanding some anomalous activity that they were witnessing in their VPN [virtual private network] logs", Andrew Valentine, a senior investigator, wrote on his website.
The US company had begun to allow its software developers to work from home occasionally and had set up "a fairly standard VPN concentrator" to facilitate remote access, Valentine wrote.
When its IT security department started monitoring logs being generated at the VPN, "what they found startled and surprised them: an open and active VPN connection from Shenyang ", he said.
"Plainly stated, the VPN logs showed him logged in from China, yet the employee is right there, sitting at his desk, staring into his monitor."
Valentine described Bob as a "family man, inoffensive and quiet. Someone you wouldn't look twice at in an elevator."