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

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.

Do employment contracts in the US not normally have "sole focus" clauses? We have those in my location.

I think Google has that.

Possibly these are becoming more common because of /r/overemployed.

Most companies don't want you working another W-2 job, but realize they can't just ban all consulting.

I think an copyright/IP assignment contract is standard in many or most U.S. software jobs, at least when working for a big enough company that they have a lawyer who handles the NDA/employment paperwork.

That pretty much automatically rules out over employment because you can’t separately promise two different companies that you’re assigning all software copyrights to them rather than you, it’s an incompatible contract (even if it’s limited to work hours - you’re pretending to both companies that you’re working 9-5 solely for them).

A large percentage of U.S. software jobs (and probably nearly all YCombinator startups) are in California. Other states might be different, but stuff you do outside of work doesn't automatically become your employer's IP in California.

There are some nuances and I'm not a lawyer, but the gist of it is that three ways to trigger the IP to attach to your employer:

1. You do it on-prem or during work hours (but work hours are flexible for salaried employees)

2. You do it using company equipment (say, company laptop at home)

3. It's reasonably related to what you or other people do at your day job

If none of those apply, then you own it. That's relevant to the discussion at hand because, at least in California, you could work from home for two companies with unrelated businesses and not break any rules.