Soham Parekh, an India‑based software engineer, was caught holding multiple full-time jobs across several Silicon Valley startups at the same time. But the viral story may just be the tip of the iceberg.
Parekh himself admitted that he worked at multiple startups at once. Founders described him as a talented software engineer who crushed interviews. However, suspicions arose when Parekh failed to deliver and lied about his location.
The controversy started on July 2nd, with a post on X by Suhail Doshi, founder at Mixpanel and Playground AI. Doshi warned that Parekh has been “preying on YC companies.”
“I fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying/scamming people. He hasn’t stopped a year later. No more excuses.”
PSA: there’s a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. He’s been preying on YC companies and more. Beware.
undefined Suhail (@Suhail) July 2, 2025
I fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying / scamming people. He hasn’t stopped a year later. No more excuses.
Doshi’s post has already accumulated 22.4 million views, and an avalanche of other founders' admissions soon followed.
Matt Parkhurst, CEO at Antimetal, responded by saying that Soham was its first engineering hire in 2022.
“Really smart and likable; enjoyed working with him. We realized pretty quickly that he was working at multiple companies, and let him go. I can’t imagine the amount of equity he’s left on the table,” Parkhurst’s post, viewed over 2 million times, reads.
“Hiring Soham is a new rite of passage tbh. Any great company should go through it.”
According to Fortune, at least 10 companies confirmed hiring and firing Soham for lying and underperforming, and he’d been offered salaries of up to $200,000. Parekh’s CV lists a master’s degree in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology, among other achievements. However, the institute was unable to find any record of enrollment.
One of the founders told Fortune that Parekh crushed their interview, beating 50 other people, and was “a very likable person.”
Lindy, an AI-powered workflow automation startup, fired Parekh after hiring him in recent weeks following Doshi’s tweet.
“Holy shit. We hired this guy a week ago. Fired this morning. He did so incredibly well in interviews, must have a lot of training. Careful out there,” Flo Crivello, founder at Lindy, posted on X.
Igor Zalutski, the CEO of Digger, told Business Insider that Parekh passed his interviews “with flying colors,” but the hiring process was halted on June 30th because of a background check issue. Founders from Create, Synthesia, and other startups confirmed similar experiences.
Reportedly, Parekh juggled roles at around 34 different companies.
something weird about when we offered soham…
undefined Haz Hubble (@hazhubble) July 2, 2025
he was very pro-equity vs salary
like dramatically so
maybe because he knows that’s what founders wanna hear?
but it doesn’t fit with trying to earn as much money as possible if he knows he’s gonna get fired shortly after
i…
Parekh expressed regret
Parekh appeared on the Technology Business Programming Network (TBPN) and attributed his actions to financial stress.
“I'm not proud of what I've done. Umm, you know that’s not something that I endorse either,” Parekh said. “No one really likes to work 140 hours a week, right, but I had to do this kind of out of necessity, like I was in extremely dire financial circumstances.”
Parekh dismissed speculations that he did not act alone and hired junior engineers or used AI to do the jobs. He said he has “written every single inch of the code.”
“I would like to believe that I was a decent enough, a good enough, engineer to essentially be able to work at three places because that’s the only thing I did the entire day,” Parekh said.
“I think people around me will probably say that I am notoriously known for not sleeping.”
Parekh explained that he chose startups instead of big tech companies and less demanding jobs because he is “passionate” about building products. The engineer also shared his future plans: he accepted a new role as a founding engineer at a video AI startup, Darwin, and had allegedly resigned from all other jobs.
The tip of the iceberg
The controversial revelation has rocked Silicon Valley. Deedy Das, an AI investor at Anthropic backer Menlo Ventures, says Parekh “is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“There are 1000s of Soham Parekhs we don't know about,” the post on X reads.
He also shared another story on Reddit about an anonymous engineer who jumped from three to five jobs and earned $3,000 a day. The community has over 500 thousand members, “where people maniacally discuss this.”
Soham Parekh is just the tip of the iceberg, just like this Redditor pulling $800k a yr working 5 jobs.
undefined Deedy (@deedydas) July 2, 2025
r/overemployed is a ~500k community where people just maniacally discuss this.
There are 1000s of Soham Parekhs we don't know about. pic.twitter.com/UKyH7uqRUf
Similar stories have also been shared on YC’s Hacker News. In one example, a person claimed to have ten fully remote engineering jobs.
“The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for underperformance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me,” the post reads.
pretty sure Soham Parekh was the guy behind that wild “I have 10 fully remote engineering jobs” Hacker News post pic.twitter.com/zsrsDTVZCm
undefined Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) July 2, 2025
This corresponds with founders admitting that a minimal vetting process allowed Parekh to slip through.
“The tech industry needs a ‘Are We Dating The Same Guy’ group,” one of the suggestions on X says, jokingly. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea after all.
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