How to understand that an employee outsources the code on the side?

Question

Project management

There is a remote employee who performs a certain part of the work. By the way he completes his tasks (through a certain cycle of edits), and how he swims in places in the code, it seems that someone else is writing this code. For security purposes, we need to confirm or refute our fears. How can this be understood? They didn’t see anything on the commits, everything comes from his machine.

Answer 1

Actually, why waste time on this investigation? You can spend it with greater benefit for your business and yourself. The main question is - are you satisfied with the result of the work of this developer for the money you pay? If yes, then it is better to deal with another problem, if not, just change the developer.

Answer 2

We have many remote branches and there was also such a question. We periodically invite remote employees on business trips, here we have team building and exchange of experience, and everything is immediately visible.

Answer 3

Better to ask yourself. Any time trackers will not give anything new, but will bring inconvenience and discontent.
UPD: The thing is that in 98% of cases the developer does not need "YOUR CODE", and any fear about its use is meaningless. Exceptions may be if you have a "revolutionary program" or top-secret software.
Well, I strongly recommend not to store secret data in the code (any access keys to services, tokens, etc.)

Answer 4

You need to see what files are being used. Since many programs store author data in file information, such as the Microsoft Office package. This data is often taken from the computer's username and computer name. Often people don't think about them. If these data are different for the files, you can understand that the work is being done from different computers.
Or, as the speaker above (@ocatoll) pointed out, watch screenshots while working.

Answer 5

The time doctor application will help you track the process of working with screenshots, or something like that.

Answer 6

How about working with him through upwork? You will see screenshots of his screen, maybe this will help you identify the real artist.