Soham Parekh was the perfect software engineering candidate. The problem was that several tech startups thought so.
At least 10 tech company executives have said publicly in recent days that they had recently employed Parekh, sparking a wave of internet discussion about the tech industry’s remote work practices and the relatively recent phenomenon of tech employees’ surreptitiously holding multiple jobs at once.
Parekh’s name first began to circulate after Suhail Doshi, the former CEO of the analytics startup Mixpanel, wrote a post Wednesday warning those in the tech industry that Parekh was trying to work at several startups at the same time. Parekh didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.
“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,” he wrote on X, referring to startups that have received funding from the accelerator Y Combinator.
“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,” wrote Doshi, who didn’t respond to a request for comment.
People in the comments shared similar stories.
“We just signed him up for our work trial next week. Saw this tweet. Cancelled work trial. Thank you for sharing!” a user wrote under the post.
“LMFAOOO I INTERVIEWED THIS GUY YESTERDAY BRO IM DYINGG,” wrote another.
As claims about him circulated, Parekh began to give interviews.
Parekh admitted working at several startups at once in an interview Thursday with the online daily tech show “TBPN.”
“I’m not proud of what I’ve done,” Parekh said. “That’s not something that I endorse, either. But, you know, financial circumstances, essentially. No one really likes to work 140 hours a week, right? But I had to do this out of necessity. I was in extremely dire financial circumstances.”
Parekh said that to pull off having multiple jobs at once, he is a “serial nonsleeper” and doesn’t “do anything outside coding.” He also shot down online rumors that he had a team of engineers working for him or that he was using artificial intelligence tools to acquire more jobs.
The share of people in the United States with multiple jobs recently increased from 5.3% and 5.5%, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In an X discussion with Andriy Mulyar, the CEO of Nomic AI — another startup that Parekh worked at — Parekh said the most jobs he had at a single time was four, at least several of which had six-figure salaries. He estimated that he was bringing in $30,000 to $40,000 per month. Mulyar confirmed to NBC News that the account in the X discussion belonged to Parekh and that Parekh was previously employed at Normic AI.
Parekh said in the “TBPN” interview that he began juggling multiple jobs in 2022.