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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?

#241
post #210

Most US citizens applying for software engineering jobs can't even get a response to their resume, and then I read stories like this.

all the jobs are being outsourced is why

I'm hoping that the section 174 fix from the latest tax bill will slow this down significantly

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

#242

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…

Well. Was George Santos an anomaly or proving of a hypothesis? If the hypothesis were structured like so:

If we have a pile of shit, surely shit eaters will be attracted to it

In which case George Santos is just a very testable hypothesis (it's like watching a 5 year old walk up to a cookie jar when the adults are gone). Congress attracts a certain type. What did you attract and why is an unavoidable question. In fact, it's scientific. You would think tech people would recognize the locust of non technical people entering the industry as some kind of an indicator, some measurable thing ...

We need to run more formal scientific experiments to document what happened in this industry.

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

#243
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When people with no integrity or ethics defraud their employers, "it's life"?

Yes. It's the same with wage theft.

Wage theft vastly outstrips other forms of theft[0] and it's considered a complete non priority by law enforcement, politicians, and the media.

These kinds of things just aren't a priority for one reason for another. Let's brainstorm some solutions to wage theft and overemployment.

I suggest a synergistic approach -- fix wage theft and it'll have a knock-on effective with things like overemployment or people pretending to work a single job.

What do you think?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft#/media/File:Wage_th...

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

#244
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a particularly terrible cold email, you can tell he didn't even bother applying some basic personalisation to it outside of [COMPANY_NAME]

Nutshell: Toxic founders who want developers to code 24X7 may hired him seeing this.

ding ding ding. both soham + recruiter implied he basically just codes day and night. our founder (yc) was drooling! there's a very specific type of company + founder that falls for this stuff. no surprise he targeted ai startups.

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

#245
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 contr…

You can do anything - the question is whether you'll get caught and then whether you'll get punished. Does the employer have anything to gain by suing the employee in these cases?

All successful big tech businesses - all of them - got that way by openly breaking laws. They don't trigger automatically, but upon a manual review, triggered by someone with at least a couple grand to spend on the endeavour. A lot flies under the radar in practice.

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

#246
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Germany you are currently only allowed to work 48hours per week. Also there are strict laws for companies to actually track work time. So it is absolutely impossible for someone here to have two full time jobs without committing working time fraud. But even if you could, it would make literally no sense two have jobs as you earn vastly more with freelancing anyway. You would scam yourself. The most optimal mo…

Really? Like, in Germany it's illegal for someone to have a full-time job doing software and then a side business making soap and selling it at a farmer's market on the weekend? That's... peculiar.

Yes! It basically means you go full on freelance or just stay put with whatever job you have. I wanted to try freelancing before I quite my full time job but it's not that easy legally.

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

#247
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about need, it's about beating the system. The "hack".

The “need” of beating the system. Good developers may or may not have a lower deficit of “it”.

IMO being a good corporate developer is not very correlated with being a good "hacker" (finding ways to exploit systems). They may be correlated a little but not very. Being a good startup founder is probably correlated with being a good hacker, much more than being a good corporate developer is. Startups have to find and exploit niches.

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

#248
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Germany you are currently only allowed to work 48hours per week. Also there are strict laws for companies to actually track work time. So it is absolutely impossible for someone here to have two full time jobs without committing working time fraud. But even if you could, it would make literally no sense two have jobs as you earn vastly more with freelancing anyway. You would scam yourself. The most optimal mo…

Really? Like, in Germany it's illegal for someone to have a full-time job doing software and then a side business making soap and selling it at a farmer's market on the weekend? That's... peculiar.

No, that case would be fine if the side business would be being self-employed. No one cares how many hours you work if you are self-employed. (Mostly, I am simplifying here)

What is an issue is working employed for two jobs and going over the 48 hour limits.

Working that much is very unhealthy so the state needs to protect people from being exploited. People should be able to live from working full time. Having to work multiple jobs and to destroy your own health is morally abhorrent.

Under German law being employed by a company and being self-employed are legally very distinct things. If you are employed you get protection from being fired, you have to have health care, pay into the retirement fond and so on.

If you are self-employed you are on your own. You can decide if you use public or private health care, you need to figure out how to save up for retirement yourself and so own. You get more freedom but less protection. That is because the law realizes that working people need protection from exploitation but also wants to give freedom to those that want to try their own business.

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

#250
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…

https://reddit.com/r/overemployed

https://youtu.be/IWMngMm3_88

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