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Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#331

Post by anon_e-moose »

austin-cheney wrote: post #311
ungreased0675 wrote: post #291

I suspect most companies are cargo culting their hiring process. This guy is one more piece of evidence. He knew what hiring managers wanted to hear, and used that to get in the door. My advice to companies is to stop chasing unicorns and 10x engineers. Intentionally try to hire ordinary average engineers. Your company making a SaaS app doesn’t need talented programmers, it just needs ordinary ones. Ego leads founder…

No. First of all we are developers only. Calling ourselves engineers is a sociopathic lie. Almost none of us are capable of doing anything that resembles engineering. The problem with software is permissive tolerance of gross incompetence. I have been doing this for 20 years in the corporate world and can easily say 15% of the workforce knows what they are doing. The rest is reliant on other things to do it for them:…

> First of all we are developers only. Calling ourselves engineers is a sociopathic lie. Almost none of us are capable of doing anything that resembles engineering.

What if you did engineering before and just moved to software engineering because that somehow pays more than the noble profession of engineering?

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#332

Post by Eisenstein »

joshuanapoli wrote: post #314
ungreased0675 wrote: post #291

I suspect most companies are cargo culting their hiring process. This guy is one more piece of evidence. He knew what hiring managers wanted to hear, and used that to get in the door. My advice to companies is to stop chasing unicorns and 10x engineers. Intentionally try to hire ordinary average engineers. Your company making a SaaS app doesn’t need talented programmers, it just needs ordinary ones. Ego leads founder…

There is obviously some distribution of productivity in software developers. In young startups, a highly productive developer has an outsized impact. A delay in product development can mean the company is entirely blocked from advancing its growth. The cost of a “slow” developer can become the entire burn rate of the company, as everyone waits for X to be finished. A more productive developer has a better chance of s…

And how much delay is caused by waiting for that developer to show up and get hired?

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#333

Post by nemothekid »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #308
gyomu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to hire other devs to outsource some of his workload while he remained the interaction point with the company. What a silly waste of his time and reputation (in addition to other people's). If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?

Or work at Meta or Microsoft and make $600k-950k and become a sr production engineer or principal engineer quickly. Being disloyal and breaking trust and reputation for temporary gain is crazy.

>Or work at Meta or Microsoft and make $600k-950k

Getting that kind of pay at Meta at least, is less skill and more politics. If he had the soft skills to get that job he would be probably doing that.

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#334

Post by austin-cheney »

anon_e-moose wrote: post #331
austin-cheney wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. First of all we are developers only. Calling ourselves engineers is a sociopathic lie. Almost none of us are capable of doing anything that resembles engineering. The problem with software is permissive tolerance of gross incompetence. I have been doing this for 20 years in the corporate world and can easily say 15% of the workforce knows what they are doing. The rest is reliant on other things to do it for them:…

> First of all we are developers only. Calling ourselves engineers is a sociopathic lie. Almost none of us are capable of doing anything that resembles engineering. What if you did engineering before and just moved to software engineering because that somehow pays more than the noble profession of engineering?

Much like many attorneys that instead choose the less noble profession of police officer. Yes, that does happen, but it’s not the scenario that most software people consider when arbitrarily choosing such lofty false titles. Most software people were never licensed electrical/mechanical/civil engineers.

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#335

Post by dazzeloid »

pwthornton wrote: post #330
StackRanker3000 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the person you’re responding to said he did a solid job for almost a year.

That’s pretty faint praise.

He was a solid middle of the pack contributor on net, but it was clear he was way stronger than his net output just from interactions with him (he had great products ideas, clear technical understanding of many areas, etc).

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#336

Post by dazzeloid »

robswc wrote: post #14
dazzeloid wrote: post #10

he's a really talented engineer, crushed our interviews. the funny thing was that he actually had multiple companies on his linkedin at the same time, including ours. we just thought they must have been internships or something and he never updated them (he felt a bit chaotic). but then it turned out he was working at all of them simultaneously. worked for us for almost a year and did a solid job (we also let him go…

Did he just lie and say he wasn't working at those places? Or did the question never come up? When I used to interview I always had to check a box that said I wasn't currently employed, or they would ask at some point.

funny thing was he had other places on his linkedin under "active employment" but we never really dug into it (until we learned he was full-time there) because he just seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't keep his LinkedIn up to date.

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#337

Post by dazzeloid »

the_real_cher wrote: post #15
dazzeloid wrote: post #10

he's a really talented engineer, crushed our interviews. the funny thing was that he actually had multiple companies on his linkedin at the same time, including ours. we just thought they must have been internships or something and he never updated them (he felt a bit chaotic). but then it turned out he was working at all of them simultaneously. worked for us for almost a year and did a solid job (we also let him go…

Why would you let him go if he was doing a solid job?

trust. he was not forthcoming when confronted with the "this other company says you are full-time and just went to their offsite - is that true?"

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#338

Post by dazzeloid »

nickip wrote: post #55
dazzeloid wrote: post #10

he's a really talented engineer, crushed our interviews. the funny thing was that he actually had multiple companies on his linkedin at the same time, including ours. we just thought they must have been internships or something and he never updated them (he felt a bit chaotic). but then it turned out he was working at all of them simultaneously. worked for us for almost a year and did a solid job (we also let him go…

How was he talented? All the stories are the same. "Talented" etc. But then it leads to he never did any work. How can you assess his talent?

mid-level output, clearly had more capability than his output suggested from his ideas and some particularly strong contributions

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#339

Post by surajrmal »

Tade0 wrote: post #155

Being employed in four companies is obviously not sustainable, but half of that is fairly common. I know several people who spent months working for two companies: one full time, the other part time. The most productive few would reach two full time positions and actually keep delivering for over a year. The reason this happens at all is that sufficiently large organisations expect performance to be in a specific ran…

Your definition of common is likely not the same as most people's. If this even broke 1 in a thousand I would be in awe. Most folks can't even keep up with their single job and life (family obligations and what not). Managing multiple is not something that will cross their mind.

Re: Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

#340

Post by pwthornton »

Aurornis wrote: post #44
the_real_cher wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you let him go if he was doing a solid job?

When we had an OE person they could do good work if you gave them a lot of time, but getting them to communicate and be present with the team was hell. You had to always be tracking them down, getting them to respond, and working any meetings (which we had few of) into some narrow time slot where they were available. It also drags everyone else down. The team figures out what's going on. They get tired of adjusting t…

Yes. He could do solid work when you narrowly define it but he probably sank the productivity and morale of people he was working with.

Individual performance doesn’t matter. Team performance does. All of this work to find 10x engineers is meaningless if they can’t raise the output of the team itself. People can make their teams better (sometimes with elite communication skills instead of technical), but we should be focusing more on building 10x teams, not trying to find unicorns.

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