Juha Saarinen: Hirelings weaponise IT skills shortages

The information technology sector is finding recruitment tough going. Photo / 123RF

OPINION:

With unemployment hitting an all-time low, just about every organisation in the land is complaining about how hard it is to find staff. The information technology sector in particular is finding recruitment tough going.

Since IT is growing at Internet scale to meet burgeoning demand, it's to be expected that that industry has to dig deep for skilled workers. There's a fine irony here, as the key point of IT is to be efficient by itself, and automate as many tasks as possible so as to avoid hiring people. Computers are here to take our jobs, right?

There are definitely jobs and entire companies being replaced by IT, but that doesn't mean technology has become any less geek-dependent. Quite the opposite.

With very few exceptions, IT companies are desperate for qualified workers.

How desperate? Well, Taiwan which remains the world's top chip making nation recently banned recruitment ads for jobs in China, as it faces a critical staffing shortages. The chips are not down, but up and up with prices soaring, due to massive demand.

Foundries are raking in the money if they can produce the goods, but that requires workers.

Talent poaching by Chinese companies has led to police raids in Taiwan, and a new law aimed at mainland entities taking shortcuts to illicitly learn about semiconductor tech has made such espionage punishable with up to 12 years in prison.

Nevertheless, the above shortages, exacerbated by shrinking and ageing populations in an increasing number of countries - China and Japan for example - represent an opportunity for some actors.

American authorities last week warned one country you don't normally associate with hi-tech, North Korea, has set up an elaborate money earner using IT freelancers and remote workers.

The "Norkies" as the Aussies call them, pretend they're from elsewhere than the Horrible Hermit Kingdom, while applying for IT contracts in the West, Asia and elsewhere.

They join freelance agencies, fake and obfuscate their identities, and apparently are rather good in many cases.

Thanks to an extensive state education effort at secondary and tertiary level, the North Korean developers are highly skilled and able to create mobile and web apps, hack together cryptocurrency exchanges and coins traded at those, engineer hardware and firmware for devices, and program games, virtual reality and artificial applications, to mention a few things.

The US State Department, Treasury and Federal Bureau of Investigation note that IT workers pretending to be elsewhere than from North Korea earn big bickies compared to their factory worker and labourer counterparts sent overseas.

North Korean IT workers can earn over NZ$466,000 a year, the US says, with teams earning ten times or more. It would be a decent salary in New Zealand too.

Not that the North Korean geeks see much of that money. Some 90 per cent of it goes towards the country's nuclear missile programme and other state projects, as an elaborate way to bypass international sanctions to bring in foreign exchange.

The developers are made to work huge hours under constant surveillance by North Korean government agencies, and live in squalor.

In other words, anyone thinking of being even more relaxed with dodgy CVs and references should think again before they unwittingly hire a skilled North Korean.

It's a bad look for several reasons, especially as some of the North Korean contractors have been caught spying, sabotaging and hacking.

If an organisation's ethics are on the same low level as say oil companies, it's worth bearing in mind that the US makes it clear that hiring North Korean developers could lead to sanctions on companies and individuals. That's a threat worth taking seriously, as US law has a long arm and even longer prison sentences.

Conversely, the US takes the threat of North Korean IT workers seriously as well, clearly.

I'm not for a second suggesting we should emulate the example of a dictatorship that's isolated and heavily sanctioned for being murderous and noxious, but if you wanted evidence that a dogged long-term approach to training and education pays off, Pyongyang proves that point.