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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?

#301

Post by maxnevermind »

anon_2222 wrote: post #63
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…

we interviewed him and passed. he was horrible. it blows my mind seeing these reports of him crushing interviews and being a great dev. the bar for programmers is woefully low. on second thought there's got to be more to this story because he came to us through a recruiter who talked him up big time. did he come to you through a recruiter too? if so then either the recruiter is in on it or he has an army of different…

What type of interview you have, I presume non LeetCode style?

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

#302

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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…

This is what we call a hustler.

Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t, but keeping the myth going even if it comes with bad stories is valuable.

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

#303

Post by hilux »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #209
javagram wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A large percentage of U.S. software jobs (and probably nearly all YCombinator startups) are in California. Other states might be different, but stuff you do outside of work doesn't automatically become your employer's IP in California. There are some nuances and I'm not a lawyer, but the gist of it is that three ways to trigger the IP to attach to your employer: 1. You do it on-prem or during work hours (but work hou…

> You do it using company equipment (say, company laptop at home)

Familiar to fans of HBO's _Silicon Valley_!

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

#304

Post by KPGv2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #95
snthpy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's interesting. I didn't know that.

A lot of people think of "contract" as specifically a written document, but that's not what a "contract" is in law, the written document (if it exists) can be very powerful evidence that (1) there is a contract, and (2) what its terms are, but contracts exist without them. While US employment is usually at will without a defined contract term , there are mutually enforceable obligations, including some definition of…

That being said, "employment contract" colloquially connotes more than "agreement to trade labor for X salary." It implies something other than at-will employment, for one thing.

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

#305

Post by guitarbill »

Teever wrote: post #295
cardanome wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doesn’t mean everyone else should be forbidden from choosing to work more No one is forbidden to work more. You seem to miss that those laws apply to wage labor. You keep bringing up all kinds of work that have nothing to do with this. > You're describing a world I am describing the status quo in Germany and many other developed countries. The US are the outlier. > someone can't become a viruouso cellist No one is…

A world where people are required to work on improving their skill set for free on their own time is not better than a world where they can receive financial compensation for doing so. Many places allow this and mandate overtime payment for doing so. If someone wants to pay me 1.5x or 2.0x as much for time spent on a task over 40 hours a week that seems like a very appealing prospect to me, especially if it was a tas…

> I feel like you're defending the system in Germany not because it's a better system as measured by some objective criteria but because it's the system that you identify with. Is there any sort of data to back up the assertion

This thread started by parent telling you how it is in Germany. Meanwhile, you have provided zero data or objective criteria yourself...

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

#306

Post by cardanome »

Teever wrote: post #295
cardanome wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doesn’t mean everyone else should be forbidden from choosing to work more No one is forbidden to work more. You seem to miss that those laws apply to wage labor. You keep bringing up all kinds of work that have nothing to do with this. > You're describing a world I am describing the status quo in Germany and many other developed countries. The US are the outlier. > someone can't become a viruouso cellist No one is…

A world where people are required to work on improving their skill set for free on their own time is not better than a world where they can receive financial compensation for doing so. Many places allow this and mandate overtime payment for doing so. If someone wants to pay me 1.5x or 2.0x as much for time spent on a task over 40 hours a week that seems like a very appealing prospect to me, especially if it was a tas…

> If someone wants to pay me 1.5x or 2.0x as much for time spent on a task over 40 hours a week that seems like a very appealing prospect to me, especially if it was a task that I was otherwise going to spend my time doing for free.

Again, overtime is perfectly legal, we were just talking about the average working time per week.

> Why should the state mandate a cap on voluntary employment, rather than focus on ensuring that no one needs to work that much to survive?

Because the first one is the easiest way to ensure the later one. You are missing the power dynamic between employer and employee. That is they main point. It is just not possible for the extra work to be truly voluntarily.

It is the same principle why a boss having sex with their assistant is deeply unethical. Because the power dynamic. Even if we assistant is attracted to them. They know refusing could have consequences for their career.

Plus, that unicorn worker that wants to work more than 48 hours to make someone else rich and is otherwise a healthy, non workaholic individual, does not even exist. If someone is that driven they can just go freelancing and earn even more money.

You idea is solid in a vacuum but just doesn't work with the real power dynamics under capitalism.

> Is there any sort of data to back up the assertion that a system where people are not allowed to pay other people for more than 48 hours of their time in a week a better system that leads to better outcomes than one where people are free to exchange their time in exchange for a wage with mandatory overtime?

I mean the US has one of the worst work-life balances of any developed country, so yeah. Meanwhile Germany is pretty good in that regard. Again, most developed countries limit work time somehow.

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

#307

Post by burnt-resistor »

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…

Like a cheater and a jerk. Doesn't matter how talented someone is, if they're too arrogant, then the no *sshole rule means they must adapt to expectations or find somewhere else.

If they're so talented, then they should probably work on their own thing.

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

#308

Post by burnt-resistor »

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?

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.

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

#309

Post by mablopoule »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #277
Aurornis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It blows my mind that overemployed people have become folk heroes. They're obviously not putting full effort into two jobs. What about people that put full effort and then some into jobs with long hours and loads of stress just to get hit with a PIP or get caught in the latest round of layoffs? If that's how companies treat people, what's so wrong with 'overemployed' people having a fallback, especially in today's…

Simple: Two wrongs don't make a right.

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

#310

Post by shankr »

cardanome wrote: post #251
shankr wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am a bit confused why you think it is not easy. In fact you have the right to reduce your hours from full time to part time if your company employs more than 15 people. So you can easily make time for a freelancing job on the side. Also you don't really need to track your hours when freelancing other than maybe for billing purposes so you really don't need to worry about hours anyway. Generally you are considered p…

> In fact you have the right to reduce your hours from full time to part time if your company employs more than 15 people.

Having the right and your employer agreeing to it isn't the same. Do you want people to go to the court if the employer denies it with the risk of losing the job?

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