Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 448 posts

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

#341

Post by tabs_or_spaces »

I don't think anyone who hired him has any future credibility when it comes to hiring

* "He's a great engineer" - Yet he's ineffective at doing the job and touch fired him? * "He's top 0.1%" - Of what exactly? How can it be the case when you fired him?

You literally didn't do reference checks properly and you got caught out. And it's all written like these companies are the victims. You're better off admitting that you don't know how to hire.

Soham's behaviour is one thing, but working for any of these companies he was at is a literal red flag.

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

#342

Post by betaby »

oceanplexian wrote: post #181
ponector wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It blows my mind that overemployed people have become folk heroes. They're obviously not putting full effort into two jobs What blows my mind is people think overemployment of an engineer is bad, but it is more than acceptable for CEO to held top positions in different companies.

CEOs get fired too when a board with sufficient power doesn’t feel like they are performing. The difference is in most cases the CEO owns the business or a good chunk of it so they’re actually capital owners and employees in name only. If you own the business you make the rules.

> If you own the business you make the rules.

To the extent.

I own my skills and I make the rules. To the extent.

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

#343

Post by seattle_spring »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #224
tomp wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Much much easier said than done. 99% of companies that want to hire employees won't hire a contractor/consultant instead for that job. How do I know? 15 years experience, top candidate in many interviews, great salary / employment. Yet every time…

I think this is a US specific thing. I work as a contractors with all my clients (who know of each others) and they all pay significantly more per hour compared to an employee. As an employee I could expect to make 1/4 of what I actually make. The only exception in this arrangement was when I worked with an US company, they wanted to hire me as an employee and paid 1k per month to some company in my country just to h…

In the US it's not uncommon to have a $200k base. Not even taking into account stock compensation and benefits, you'd need to command about $400/hr contracting to fit your 4x figure. Does that sound comparable to your setup?

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

#344

Post by sfn42 »

ojr wrote: post #270
mkipper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

he had no proof he can code, no projects, no github, only hired because he gave them a lowball offer, it was lowball because he was scamming

The OP said he blew interviews out of the water. Presumably they mean technical interviews, that's how he proved he can code. By writing code.

Lots of devs don't have personal projects. I love programming but after spending the whole day programming I don't particularly want to go home and continue programming.

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

#345

Post by sfn42 »

conartist6 wrote: post #169
Aurornis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's hilarious because companies use such scammable ways to define who is "top 0.1%" Also there's a ton amazing engs out there who want and need work but the companies all only want that one "perfect" guy (or gal), as if such a thing exists

I've seen a lot more employed shitty devs than I've seen unemployed amazing devs. In fact I don't know a single competent developer who has trouble getting work.

This is in Norway, maybe it's different elsewhere.

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

#346

Post by jaimebuelta »

Interviewing is a skill. I think that he got really good at it, both in tailor his CV as well as the process itself. It probably worked on the process and make adjustments. Based on the what I’ve read, it seems that he was interviewing all the time.

So, IMHO, he focused in the interview process over everything else, including understanding and exploiting the blind spots. He iterated and refined it, until, he became a master of it.

He really seemed to be not great at the work itself, though. He was being fired after a couple of days, which I don’t think is common. You really have to do it very badly to be fired so quick after being hired.

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

#347

Post by antonymoose »

Aurornis wrote: post #75
occamsrazorwit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Years ago I was hired as an Engineering Manager at a small company, within about the first month on the job I had to have the awkward conversation about firing two of the employees on my team.

See it turned out that the boss worked remote 4-1/2 days of the week, and the employees were in office.

One would show up at 10, take 2 hour lunch around 11.30 and leave around 2.30. He did not work remote. This employee was as always behind on his work.

Second wasn’t even a programmer. He just lied on his resume and got the job over beers and a handshake. He was a graphics designer, he played off a few WordPress template installs as his portfolio.

To keep a story short, the owner spent months doing everything but firing the two employees, demanding I try to teach the designer some computer science and ignored the other scammer. He refused to believe he paid these men 6-figures for years on end. That I must be coming in here to lie and wreck his company, that I left my cushy high-frequency trading job to ruin his startup.

When I asked the sole good engineer on the team what in the hell was going on at this company she simply told me “Oh, the old manager just did all the work for the other two guys since he was their buddy and hired them originally.”

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

#348

Post by Vaslo »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #346

Interviewing is a skill. I think that he got really good at it, both in tailor his CV as well as the process itself. It probably worked on the process and make adjustments. Based on the what I’ve read, it seems that he was interviewing all the time. So, IMHO, he focused in the interview process over everything else, including understanding and exploiting the blind spots. He iterated and refined it, until, he became a…

This is what happens at top consulting firms. Top 5% interview skills, especially as smoothing your way through a case study. But when they actually come consult for your business, it’s just not what you pay for given what you’ve been led to believe with those case studies.

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

#349

Post by smilebot »

swah wrote: post #83
gk1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Only when all jobs do this at the same time.

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

#350

Post by dhruv_xyz »

tabs_or_spaces wrote: post #341

I don't think anyone who hired him has any future credibility when it comes to hiring * "He's a great engineer" - Yet he's ineffective at doing the job and touch fired him? * "He's top 0.1%" - Of what exactly? How can it be the case when you fired him? You literally didn't do reference checks properly and you got caught out. And it's all written like these companies are the victims. You're better off admitting that y…

We hired him — and plenty of other great engineers after who didn’t pull his stunt.

You never really know what someone will do after they’re onboarded, even if they ace the interviews. When people say he’s a good engineer, they mean he crushed pair programming and skill tests. When he actually showed up, he did good work. Problem was he was juggling so many jobs he was always making excuses as to why he wasn't available. And he wasn’t upfront as to why.

We do reference checks. But when someone kills your interviews, you have to move fast or risk losing them to another offer. Time kills deals - and the best candidates usually get multiple offers. Waiting for every reference isn’t always an option. Most people are ethical, so you trade some risk for speed. In Soham’s case, one reference checked out, the other never replied. A few unaffiliated references said they remembered him from previous stops on the resume but hadn't worked with him directly.

If someone starts making excuses right away or seems off, it’s your job to cut them loose fast. Most companies did just that.

Post reply on HN