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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?

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

roll20 wrote: post #51
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…

did you notice any hints of him cheating on the interview with LLMs? If he's actually that good for real, I'm surprised why he won't want to do it legit, he'd go way further than scamming people

> If he's actually that good for real, I'm surprised why he won't want to do it legit, he'd go way further than scamming people

If you can get and hold dozens of concurrent full-time engineering jobs by scamming people, you can get much further much more quickly than is possible in any one of the full-time engineering jobs you can get.

This is obviously unethical, relies on non-guaranteed success, and falls apart if people are able to effectively claw back your gains from scamming, but that's not (obviously) enough to outweigh the desire for quick returns for some people.

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

#82

Post by dragonwriter »

thepasswordis wrote: post #78
nickip wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If passing their interviews isn't the same as being a good developer, then those people have to not only admit that the people they hire may not be good at the jobs they are hired for but they themselves aren't good at the job they sell themselves as doing. It's obviously easiest to accept an explanation that doesn't require them to reach that conclusion.

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

#83

Post by swah »

gk1 wrote: post #62
dalemhurley wrote: post #42

This is insane, there is a Reddit, of course there is, of almost 500K people, https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/ , who discuss all of the strategies to do this. Just imagine being one of the people who legit joins a startup, is passionate, working long hours, earning your vest, to have your coworker pretending to be working.

Every manager and employer should skim through that subreddit. When I stumbled onto it I felt like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense, where the truth was revealed and every flashback moment suddenly made sense and lined up. Until then, things just felt “off” but it was hard to put a finger on what was actually going on.

I guess impromptu Slack huddles work for quickly finding this out in the first weeks...

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

#84

Post by hilux »

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 think Google has that.

Possibly these are becoming more common because of /r/overemployed.

Most companies don't want you working another W-2 job, but realize they can't just ban all consulting.

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

#85

Post by jsbg »

What I find cringeworthy is @Suhail saying they thought he was in the US but actually was in India—outing his company as not checking employment eligibility [0]. If he was actually allowed to work in the US—which doesn't seem to be the case since he hasn't responded to any replies asking about this—then they hired someone who underperformed, or in the worst case violated a company policy they might have that employees cannot have another job. Hardly seems like something worth shouting from rooftops.

[0] https://x.com/Suhail/status/1940441569276158190

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

#86

Post by alpb »

bibek_poudel wrote: post #4

I read through one of his emails. This guy is great at communicating his interest and signaling himself as a "high performer". Perhaps, he is also genuinely good at cracking these interviews. No wonder, he's been through so many of them.

this email? https://x.com/var_epsilon/status/1940492841232584745

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

#87

Post by Aurornis »

jsbg wrote: post #85

What I find cringeworthy is @Suhail saying they thought he was in the US but actually was in India—outing his company as not checking employment eligibility [0]. If he was actually allowed to work in the US—which doesn't seem to be the case since he hasn't responded to any replies asking about this—then they hired someone who underperformed, or in the worst case violated a company policy they might have that employee…

The Tweet clearly says they fired in him the first week and confronted him about the lying/scamming. It seems very clear that they figured it out right away and confronted him about it.

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

#88

Post by data_yum_yum »

Aurornis wrote: post #68
data_yum_yum wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 targeti…

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

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

#89

Post by javagram »

hilux wrote: post #84
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.

I think Google has that. Possibly these are becoming more common because of /r/overemployed. Most companies don't want you working another W-2 job, but realize they can't just ban all consulting.

I think an copyright/IP assignment contract is standard in many or most U.S. software jobs, at least when working for a big enough company that they have a lawyer who handles the NDA/employment paperwork.

That pretty much automatically rules out over employment because you can’t separately promise two different companies that you’re assigning all software copyrights to them rather than you, it’s an incompatible contract (even if it’s limited to work hours - you’re pretending to both companies that you’re working 9-5 solely for them).

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

#90

Post by tuckerpo »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #54
dalemhurley wrote: post #42

This is insane, there is a Reddit, of course there is, of almost 500K people, https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/ , who discuss all of the strategies to do this. Just imagine being one of the people who legit joins a startup, is passionate, working long hours, earning your vest, to have your coworker pretending to be working.

There are plenty of people employed at a single job who only pretend to work. That's life.

Anecdotally I'd argue that it's not just "plenty", but the majority of people who only work one single job barely and/or pretend to work. I regularly see Principal+ engineers, VPs and Directors waddling around looking important or just staring at their monitors with a glazed over look.

Most corporations don't need nearly as many employees as they actually have, so if you can deliver exceptional results in 20 hours, why not dedicate the remaining 20 hours to another corp, and double your comp? Everyone wins.

HackerNews dudes claiming they do a true minimum 40 hours per week, every week, forever, of heads-down hard-work are deluding themselves. I really don't understand the overemployment hatred this forum has. There are plenty of folks who really do solid work at 2+ jobs, not half-assing and politicking.

Disclaimer: I am not OE.

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