They actually also interview for Chinese companies too. I have a friend who got a big shock when he saw someone wearing military uniform on Zoom. Apparently they didn't bother to hide the identities. My friend told me that the interviewee has very, very good skills (e.g. deep knowledge of X11) but he quickly declined him.
He dug a bit deeper and found out that the North Koreans have special programs for gifted kids. They send them to the schools for dedicated CS education. They also (presumably without proof) have access to the source code of various commercial closed source software.
It's a good pay job (comparing to other NKs) and they get to do what they love, so they are pretty loyal. But I always wonder, wouldn't they burn out eventually? Maybe they can switch fields or become teachers, though.
He dug a bit deeper and found out that the North Koreans have special programs for gifted kids. They send them to the schools for dedicated CS education. They also (presumably without proof) have access to the source code of various commercial closed source software.
It's a good pay job (comparing to other NKs) and they get to do what they love, so they are pretty loyal. But I always wonder, wouldn't they burn out eventually? Maybe they can switch fields or become teachers, though.