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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?

#71

Post by Aurornis »

gyomu wrote: post #50
Aurornis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is when the job (or work-trial in our case) actually starts, it's just excuses upon excuses as to why he's missing a meeting, or why the PR was pushed late. The excuses become more ridiculous and unbelievable, up until it's obvious he's just lying. I worked with an overemployed person (not Soham). It was exactly like this. Started out great. They could do good work when they knew they were in focus. The…

> 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?

> 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?

I've worked with several small contracting businesses, including some that came highly recommended.

They were all very inefficient relative to having someone in-house. They also came with the problem that institutional knowledge was non-existent because they had a rotating crew of people working for you.

Hiring someone in-house is more efficient and better for building institutional knowledge. The companies he applied for specifically did not want to contract the work out to a body shop.

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

#72

Post by Aurornis »

NameForComment wrote: post #65
gargoyle9123 wrote: post #23

We hired Soham. I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer. He will blow the interviews completely out of the water. Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well. The problem is when the job (or work-trial in our case) actually starts, it's just excuses upon excuses as to why he's missing a meeting, or why the PR was pushed late. The excuses become more r…

> I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer. He will blow the interviews completely out of the water. Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well. It is hilarious that companies that hired a guy who was scamming them are also convinced they are great at assessing the skill level of devs.

Being a good developer and being a scammer are completely uncorrelated variables.

Someone can be a good developer and also be a scammer. I don't understand why you think this is hilarious or weird.

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

#73

Post by Aurornis »

gk1 wrote: post #60
avmich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this looks like a cargo culting. Don't need work, need the guy to belong only to them...

People who practice overemployment delude themselves that multiple jobs doesn’t affect their performance and therefore there’s nothing wrong with working multiple jobs. Their subreddit is a dumbfounding echo chamber. I had an “over-employed” person on my team (who lied about it) and I can confirm what all others are saying about this guy: they start going AWOL, miss important discussions, miss deadlines, blame their…

> People who practice overemployment delude themselves that multiple jobs doesn’t affect their performance and therefore there’s nothing wrong with working multiple jobs. Their subreddit is a dumbfounding echo chamber.

It blows my mind that overemployed people have become folk heroes. They're obviously not putting full effort into two jobs.

I had the same experience as you with an "overemployed" person: Working with them is really bad for everyone else. They lie, play extreme politics, throw teammates under the bus, make you work harder for everything, and they don't care if it causes you harm because you're just a temporary coworker at one of their "Js"

There's nothing to celebrate about these people. They screw over their teammates far more than the company they work for.

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

#74

Post by Aurornis »

jasonthorsness wrote: post #6

He should pivot to giving talks on landing an interview and interviewing

You the phrase about how when something becomes a metric it ceases to be a useful measure because everyone starts gaming it?

The same goes for hiring tricks. When some hiring signal becomes a trick that gets passed around by influencers, it ceases to become a useful hiring signal because everyone is gaming it.

If this guy started advertising his process, everyone would start doing his process and it would stop working.

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

#75

Post by Aurornis »

occamsrazorwit wrote: post #28
Bjorkbat wrote: post #25

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.

Founders don't like to go around advertising that they got tricked by a scammer. They're trying to impress everyone and raise money. Telling the whole world that you got scammed is not a good look.

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

#76

Post by mkipper »

NameForComment wrote: post #65
gargoyle9123 wrote: post #23

We hired Soham. I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer. He will blow the interviews completely out of the water. Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well. The problem is when the job (or work-trial in our case) actually starts, it's just excuses upon excuses as to why he's missing a meeting, or why the PR was pushed late. The excuses become more r…

> I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer. He will blow the interviews completely out of the water. Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well. It is hilarious that companies that hired a guy who was scamming them are also convinced they are great at assessing the skill level of devs.

Is it so hard to believe that someone can be a great candidate in an interview when you're getting 100% of their attention and then be horrible at their job when you're getting 20% of it because they're juggling 5 jobs?

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

#77

Post by icedchai »

snthpy wrote: post #48
gargoyle9123 wrote: post #23

We hired Soham. I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer. He will blow the interviews completely out of the water. Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well. The problem is when the job (or work-trial in our case) actually starts, it's just excuses upon excuses as to why he's missing a meeting, or why the PR was pushed late. The excuses become more r…

Do employment contracts in the US not normally have "sole focus" clauses? We have those in my location.

I have seen that in employment paperwork at a few companies. Generally, you just mention you have side jobs and they okay it. Or you ignore it entirely and nobody notices.

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

#78

Post by thepasswordis »

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?

The people assessing his talent are falling for the same delusion as the people conducting the interview.

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

#79

Post by icedchai »

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?

Perhaps he's talented at interviewing? Turns out this is the only skill you really need...

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

#80

Post by dragonwriter »

FootballBat wrote: post #69
snthpy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do employment contracts in the US not normally have "sole focus" clauses? We have those in my location.

Employment contracts in the US are rare.

Employment contracts that are reduced to a single explicit written agreement are relatively rare in the US, most employment contracts are implied by conduct.
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