Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

361–370 of 448 posts

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

#361

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 field would be so much better off good engineering meant being good at following through on projects instead of being good at gaming interviews.

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

#362
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…

THIS. Companies establish the minimum level of productivity acceptable by keeping the lowest performer. There's very little benefit in producing much beyond that level in most organizations. What do you do with all the extra time if you're a superstar? You could give it to your employer for free or sell it on the open market by acquiring another job and profiting off your own performance.

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

#363
post #319
post #294

The amount of people saying “yeah he’s a great engineer” with the only supporting piece of evidence being “he cracked our leetcode interviews” is bonkers.

I wish he was never caught. The companies deserved that

Realize that a lot of candidates who followed the rules and told the truth were screwed out of jobs. Right now there are massive layoffs and lots of good people are out of jobs and this guy is being praised by sticking it to “corporate greed”?

Is Luigi Malione a hero and deserves to be pardoned by this logic ?

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

#364

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.

It doesn't have to be the whole world, just their inner circle. If people are that reluctant to admit fault (50 times!), then that's a dismal statement on how often we see truth in society overall.

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

#365

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.

How many of those are bots? How many are teenagers? How many are playing pretend? 90% would be a conservative estimate.

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

#367

US companies are afraid of litigations or European labour laws (irrelevant if you hire a contractor) but will not hesitate to hire questionable people from 3rd world countries for about the same pay like they would europeans. That's bonkers.

Solution: lie and pretend you're in India and relocating to the US. /s

There are places where pretending to be Indian will help you get a job. Just make sure you choose a good last name.

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

#370
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn't come as a revelation, but it's risky to employ people of low character. There's the risk of theft, lawsuits, etc – not to mention, nobody needs the frustration of dealing with lies and flakiness.

Then fire the CEOs, lawyers, investors, and top management with low character.

I suppose, in that case, it's risky to employ people of lower character than the people managing them.
Post reply on HN