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

291 points jshchnz | 2 comments | 02 Jul 25 20:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

Soham Parekh is all the rage on Twitter right now with a bunch of startups coming out of the woodwork saying they either had currently employed him or had in the past.

Serious question: why aren't so many startups hiring processes filtering out a candidate who is scamming/working multiple jobs?

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gargoyle9123 ◴[02 Jul 25 23:50 UTC] No.44450088[source]▶
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 ridiculous and unbelievable, up until it's obvious he's just lying.

Other people in this thread are incorrect, it's not a dev. shop. I worked with Soham in-person for 2 days during the work-trial process, he's good. He left half of each day with some excuse about meeting a lawyer.

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NameForComment ◴[03 Jul 25 15:06 UTC] No.44455825[source]▶
> 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.

It is hilarious that companies that hired a guy who was scamming them are also convinced they are great at assessing the skill level of devs.

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Aurornis ◴[03 Jul 25 15:53 UTC] No.44456309[source]▶
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.

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kgwgk ◴[04 Jul 25 14:01 UTC] No.44464658{3}[source]▶
> Being a good developer and being a scammer are completely uncorrelated variables.

One could expect good developers to be less inclined to fraud as they may not “need” it as much.

That also made me thing of Berkson’s paradox: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

If these were really independent traits they would look negatively correlated as we talk about people who are good OR scammers.

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KaoruAoiShiho ◴[04 Jul 25 14:15 UTC] No.44464772{4}[source]▶
It's not about need, it's about beating the system. The "hack".
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1. kgwgk ◴[04 Jul 25 14:19 UTC] No.44464806{5}[source]▶
The “need” of beating the system. Good developers may or may not have a lower deficit of “it”.
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2. immibis ◴[04 Jul 25 18:53 UTC] No.44466966[source]▶
IMO being a good corporate developer is not very correlated with being a good "hacker" (finding ways to exploit systems). They may be correlated a little but not very. Being a good startup founder is probably correlated with being a good hacker, much more than being a good corporate developer is. Startups have to find and exploit niches.