317 points by jshchnz 12 days ago
Soham Parekh is all the rage on Twitter right now with a bunch of startups coming out of the woodwork saying they either had currently employed him or had in the past.
Serious question: why aren't so many startups hiring processes filtering out a candidate who is scamming/working multiple jobs?
Maybe we don't need to take the word of a self-proclaimed fraudster at face value.
That's a hell of a gambling addiction when he's making about 10 times what I am. You'd think you'd stop if you were just flushing that money down the toilet and not winning anything from the gambling
Well if you are winning money, you need to keep going as to not waste your lucky streak. If you are losing, you need to double down to win back what you lost. You need to keep going, as long as you do, the loses are not real, you can still turn it around. You need to play one more game. One more. You don't want to face she consequences of your action, you are in too deep. Your life will be ruined. There is no escape. It is to late to stop anyway, might as well keep playing.
Many people don't understand how serious gambling addictions is. It destroys families. I can be as bad as any drug related addiction if not worse.
Though that was just one guess. There are many money sinks. Porn, gacha games and so on.
About twenty years ago there was a story in Melbourne, of a young foreign student at the casino.
He withdrew $1,000 from the ATM from his home back in Asia. Was duly given the cash. He noticed though, that looking at online banking, his balance hadn't changed. Odd, but maybe it was a vagary of international transactions (and again, 20+ years ago).
Nope. So he took out another $1,000. And another. Every time, got the money, no transaction posted.
Not just one ATM, any.
Over the course of 2 years when it all came out, he had gotten $2M+ from this.
Know how he got caught? He took some of that money gambling. And sat at a table all night, constantly replenishing his stash. That tipped off the casino that something was odd, because they had loaded the ATM with $250K, which usually lasted ~48h, but he emptied out in a few. "Didn't we fill this this afternoon?".
Once they got the financial institutions it was also fairly quickly revealed.
And in court, the local banks admitted that there had been nothing flagged in their system, and presumably it would have kept working until (at least) his card expired.
There you have a literal money printing machine, and "No, let's see what I can win gambling". I suppose here's other factors like "Maybe it's easier to launder a big winning" but nonetheless, it actually appeared more that he was just addicted to gambling.
Do these teams know about version control? It’s quite simple to see who’s doing actual work and contributing…
Some claims he was brilliant, doing exactly what? Copying and pasting LLM output?
Did he participate in any hourly, daily technical conversations? Did he replied to others quick enough? Do these teams even know how to use slack, discord, etc? Are they having video meetings all the time and only person speaking like a podcast maybe?
Honestly feels like the whole Soham Parekh thing on Twitter is one giant joke with the one sincere / honest remark being the original from @Suhail.
Like, I can't wrap my head around this many people having some kind of experience with a single guy who's claim to be fame is basically gaming the interview process at an incredible amount of Y Combinator startups.
Yeah, I'm surprised someone who's been working at over 50 companies in only 3 years wasn't caught sooner. Some of the stories are wild enough that they had to have been shared with others at the time.
Years ago I was hired as an Engineering Manager at a small company, within about the first month on the job I had to have the awkward conversation about firing two of the employees on my team.
See it turned out that the boss worked remote 4-1/2 days of the week, and the employees were in office.
One would show up at 10, take 2 hour lunch around 11.30 and leave around 2.30. He did not work remote. This employee was as always behind on his work.
Second wasn’t even a programmer. He just lied on his resume and got the job over beers and a handshake. He was a graphics designer, he played off a few WordPress template installs as his portfolio.
To keep a story short, the owner spent months doing everything but firing the two employees, demanding I try to teach the designer some computer science and ignored the other scammer. He refused to believe he paid these men 6-figures for years on end. That I must be coming in here to lie and wreck his company, that I left my cushy high-frequency trading job to ruin his startup.
When I asked the sole good engineer on the team what in the hell was going on at this company she simply told me “Oh, the old manager just did all the work for the other two guys since he was their buddy and hired them originally.”
It doesn't have to be the whole world, just their inner circle. If people are that reluctant to admit fault (50 times!), then that's a dismal statement on how often we see truth in society overall.
I wonder... did any of those simultaneous jobs consider him a bad performer?
Did any of those simultaneous jobs even have someone who could evaluate their technical employees based on what they do and not signaling?
What I don't understand is why he updated his public profiles with all those simultaneous jobs..
My understanding from what I saw on twitter about this yesterday was that a number of the companies that did hire him ended up firing him very quickly soon after, I think
Interviewing is a skill. I think that he got really good at it, both in tailor his CV as well as the process itself. It probably worked on the process and make adjustments. Based on the what I’ve read, it seems that he was interviewing all the time.
So, IMHO, he focused in the interview process over everything else, including understanding and exploiting the blind spots. He iterated and refined it, until, he became a master of it.
He really seemed to be not great at the work itself, though. He was being fired after a couple of days, which I don’t think is common. You really have to do it very badly to be fired so quick after being hired.
This is what happens at top consulting firms. Top 5% interview skills, especially as smoothing your way through a case study. But when they actually come consult for your business, it’s just not what you pay for given what you’ve been led to believe with those case studies.
Related links that have been posted in other threads. Others?
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/03/who-is-soham-parekh-the-se...
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/man-goes-viral-working...
How come all the companies that hired him are "X but with AI"? Any several state he "aced" their algo-focused interviews. That's like winning a long drive contest; it doesn't mean you're good at golf.
You must understand, these startup founders did extremely well on Raven's Progressive Matrices in grade school.
the issue is hiring processes do not verify what is on resume. ppl lie about even their education/degrees and what school they went talk less the company they worked at. Most people know companies do not verify any of those and background checks are usually about real name and criminal records only; they do not check employment history and education history. Hint, start a company that does this and become the next unicorn overnight and help companies verify these right before offer stage. Good luck!!!
It's because in the leftist bay area tech scene, of which ycombinator is the absolute epicenter, no one does bias training. Among leftists, indians are the "model minority" and everyone is looking for an indian golden boy. You have no idea you are even doing it because you have implicit bias you are always crowing about. India is one of the poorest nations on earth and has many smart people, but there is an infatuation among the monied west coast left.
In a way the leftist tech scene has adopted eastern mysticism and shows how far california has moved from westernism. Hindu and Buddhism are religions that worship living humans and believe in divine incarnation. A young person might be a llama in hinduism or a tulku in buddhism. It's not to say that these tech startups are worshiping their newly discovered india programmer, but it is the culture that does not fall far from the tree.
the issue is hiring processes do not verify what is on resume. ppl lie about even their education/degrees and what school they went talk less the company they worked at. Most people know companies do not verify any of those and background checks are usually about real name and criminal records only; they do not check employment history and education history.
Hint, start a company that does this and become the next unicorn overnight and help companies verify these right before offer stage. Good luck!!!
for companies who hired him and let him go, you should be reviewing your interview system. it looks like we are going back to old argument "coders who are good at interviews (most likely leetcode), but terrible at delivering actual work."
People like him are going to accelerate the death of remote/hybrid roles
The answer is that startups almost never do any meaningful personnel vetting.
That’s why they also keep hiring North Koreans.
What is the difference between this and leadership being in the committees, boards and executive seats of multiple companies?
Why is it the social expectation that an IC must devote 100% of their time and energy to the operations of a single company, when their senior leadership often manages their time between the affairs of many companies in their purview?
IME, employees are on committees and boards (though not public company boards all that often) all the time. The issue here taking multiple full time positions. A CEO being the CEO of multiple companies at once is not common, and when it does happen it tends to draw a lot of scrutiny. CEO is considered a full time job, showing up to a board meeting every quarter is not.
The second part of this is disclosure, which was not done in this case.
One particular CEO in the news is at the head of 3 companies
"at the head" of large - especially publicly traded - companies is not the same as trying to run all aspects of the day-to-day. It also rarely (ever?) happens when they don't have a big ownership stake, or are there primarily as a figurehead.
We can debate if the executive timeline is too short and that's what destroys companies, but I don't see how this is the same as an over-employed engineer who's spread too thin.
> Incidentally, why aren't there more part time positions?
It is obviously easier to manage a small group of people who work full-time than a larger group of people who work part-time. So, if there does not exist a strong wish for part-time positions from the employees, few will be created.
Also, a lot of employees are there "for the money". So getting paid much worse for a part-time position is considered to be the worse deal by many employees.
Interesting. So elon's terms and conditions says he's a part-time employee?
>What is the difference between this and leadership being in the committees
That this involved lying to your employers. There is no social expectation that you only work one job, plenty of people work multiple jobs, but there is a social expectation that you do what you said you'd do, and it turns out you have a bit of a mathematical problem if you try to work 4 eight hour jobs in a 24 hour day.
Which is, as per the article, how he was caught. Turns out if you call in sick at one place and then push code to github for your other jobs most employers aren't paying you for that.
Please. Employers are going after the your last drop of blood. The only reason that’s socially accepted is because they have the power to do so, and because it has been like that since ever. You make one mistake and you’re fired (sometimes even you’re fired randomly); the company is not earning as much as last year? Layoffs! AI can do part of your job? Layoffs!
It’s silly and servant-like to think you are in an equal-to-equal position when dealing with a company and that you cannot dedicate your time to other endeavors just because they wrote that in a paper. If it turns out that they don’t like how you perform while doing multiple jobs, they will fire you, just like they will fire you even if you work just for them.
Employment contract is a contract and usually it's fixed hours per workday for a salary. So basically you as employee swap X hours per Y amount of money.
If one of the parties is in breach of that contract it's normal it to be dissolved. If you don't want to work, you don't need to sign that contract.
The really moral part of free market economy is that both parties are voluntary entering a contract. You as a person sell your skilled time, the company buys your skilled time. If you have super unique skills, like Andrej Karpathy you sell something on the market that is very valuable and you have the upper hand. If you know "Microsoft Excel" I'd bet there are many people (or AI agents) that will do the same and what you're selling can be bought in many places (and time zones).
Basic microeconomics... In a free market you need to do something for the others to have something for you. And if it's not useful, they won't pay you for that.
I'm in an equal to equal position to not sign any contract I don't like. What is it with this whiny attitude in this industry? We're talking specifically about software engineers. The guy worked four six figure jobs raking in 40 grand a month and didn't show up to work. Can we stop pretending we're oppressed workers because we have to show up from 9-5, Jesus.
In my experience I have no leverage and the contract is too vague to mean anything. The contract I signed says my job conditions and work hours are subject to change at any time. I understand I took a risk, but things were fine for years before they wanted me to start being available 24/7 or work late into the night. In environments like this the only sane thing to do is reluctantly accept the terms of the contract and push as many boundaries as I can.
Just because the employer pays me and I signed a contract doesn’t mean I can’t complain or push back. Do you think I should also dance like a Walmart employee in the morning if my employer tells me to? The contract I signed says yes but in reality it doesn’t matter
You've answer your own question. If you are hired to work full-time you are expected to do that (as per your contract). If you are on a board or committee the expectation is a number of hours per month.
But fulltime is a contract thing (at least here) and defined by 40 hrs a week. In my country 32-36 in contracts is also called fulltime. So after those hours, I did my fulltime and now you do not own me until the next 40 hours. Unless working for competitors currently here you cannot make valid contracts to prevent it either.
However, if you are in the EU, then all your employers are jointly responsible for ensuring that your collective working hours don't breach the Working Time Directive, which means 48 hours as the maximum average working week, calculated over a 4-month period, across all employers (excluding certain statutory roles like seamen, law enforcement, and military).
There are contractual terms, including things that are likely to be conflict of interests or impact performance. And depending on jurisdiction there are also laws on working hours: 48 hours max. per week on average in the UK and EU across all jobs (it is possible to opt out) and with minimum rest times. Because employers can be held liable, if they find out they won't let you.
The comment I was replying to does not make sense.
> when their senior leadership often manages their time between the affairs of many companies in their purview?
This is extremely rare; generally a CxO is a full-time job. Elon Musk is a notable exception, and, ah, it doesn't seem to be going _great_. Being a _board_ member isn't usually a significant time commitment.
when their senior leadership often manages their time between the affairs of many companies in their purview
It is kind of tiring for me to read people equating "Elon Musk" with "all those rich guys being CEOs".
When you really are a business owner OFTEN you have to devote 120% of your time and energy for running the company and single one.
People you see on TV flying private jets to expensive holiday destinations are not your average business owners. Elon and the likes are the exception not the norm.
He is not in their social class. The rules for the peasants don't apply to the lords.
The moral of the story is that the current interviewing process is easy to cheat for people like him.
Rather, since by basic economy markets are controlled by incentives:
He is the kind of person that companies actually want. (Otherwise these companies would have set up a different interviewing process (i.e. different incentives)).
:-)
this reminds me of dating apps
instead of all the women chasing the same guy
its all the companies chasing the same dev
soham is a chad
has hiring turned into tinder?
The technologies aren't that groundbreaking after all. Resources on both side of supply and demand remain the same. There was no paradigm shit, no miraculous influx of extraordinary candidates. It's the illusion of choice creating the standoff. You have to lie and cheat to be considered a choice.
This shouldn't come as a revelation, but it's risky to employ people of low character. There's the risk of theft, lawsuits, etc – not to mention, nobody needs the frustration of dealing with lies and flakiness.
He's not going to get much sympathy. Because:
1) from the employer side, this runs afoul of all MBA theory and practice, so he could have been more profits. Almost by definition, this means you're not getting the maximum out of the guy. Oh and there's jealousy of course.
2) from employee's side, this runs afoul of union thinking. Those jobs could have employed 5 people, maybe more. Oh and there's jealousy of course.
I saw several anecdotes that were: “when he did the job, it was great, but he rarely did the job because there was always someone sick, meeting with a lawyer, or any excuse to not deliver”.
So I think that finding about multiple employment is actually about realizing he was lying the whole time with the excuses.
We had a guy like that... the thing is you cannot really pass any responsibility on him because he will eventually be distracted with other stuff. You will never know when you have him 100%. You don't want to keep checking on your employees week by week day by day, if they deliver.
You need some degree of trust in your employees (you cannot "verify" all the time), and you cannot trust some guy you KNOW is cheating on you.
Lots of YC companies copy each other process and selection criteria. Basically- they all have the same blind spots and look for the same type of engineer.
So, super easy to scam all of them with the same skillset and mannerism.
People underestimate how widespread this actually is.
This guy, and guys like him, are the reason why it's such a pain to do legit business in the modern world.
Try getting a code signing certificate, opening a bank account for a new business or listing an app on the App Store. You'll quickly see the effects of this kind of behavior.
This guy should be absolutely ostracized.
[Edit: not to mention the countless brilliant Indian software devs for whom he just directly put Silicon Valley out of reach.]
Ostracized? I don’t know. If the companies he works for are happy enough with his output, then what’s wrong? What’s silly is that we have to work for 40 years to afford a living place that can hardly accommodate you and your family. What’s silly is that you have executives earning 5 times what you earn jumping from company to company and doing nothing but maximizing their own profits. So, yeah, fuck companies. He guy is playing the game the best he can, and if any company doesn’t like his output they can just fire him.
Bigger question is do you think he really wants everyone on the Internet targeting him one way or another?
Why didn't he get the option to remain an anonymous scandal?
We don't need to know his name to discuss his actions.
That’s an excuse for poor behavior.
Relevant people can share it privately and put out a public warning about obviously noticeable behavioral patterns.
Couple issues here:
1) Sharing it wide open on the Web for the whole world to see and everyone to poke fun of is a massive intrusion.
2) It's also a gateway to bunch of nonsense and false information all over the Internet. Half the stuff I see about this person under allegations, I just don't trust. Not to mention all of a sudden there are tens of impersonators.
3) There are many people with the same name who’s going to get a backlash FYI.
All this is happening too close to people openly talking about what AI researchers are being traded on every social media platform. Idk if any of these people ever wanted to be so famous.
> 1) Sharing it wide open on the Web for the whole world to see and everyone to poke fun of is a massive intrusion.
If this person had done a single violation I'd agree. He's a serial manipulator, though, and he's been scamming people throughout the startup community. Once your behavior starts becoming a problem for a community, you shouldn't expect that community to also protect your identity.
The person was targeting a startup community (YC) and had learned how to game their system. The person posting the info didn't even post it immediately. They posted it a year later after hearing multiple stories of the person continuing to do it.
> 3) There are many people with the same name who’s going to get a backlash FYI.
There's a photo of him right in the thread specifically so people can determine if they're talking about the same person. He was also highlighted on a Meta open source developer blog a few years ago.
We all know people can have similar names.
That’s great I don’t trust anything that’s said about him because it’s publicized.
I’m not even sure if this guy is real or a made up story to poke fun at YC community.
Either way, I’m not losing sleep over it.
Just letting all of you know that someone’s always watching
> He estimated that he was bringing in $30,000 to $40,000 per month
Doesn't sound like "extremely dire financial circumstances" to me...