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

291 points jshchnz | 3 comments | 02 Jul 25 20:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.794s | 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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mkipper ◴[03 Jul 25 16:37 UTC] No.44456809[source]▶
Is it so hard to believe that someone can be a great candidate in an interview when you're getting 100% of their attention and then be horrible at their job when you're getting 20% of it because they're juggling 5 jobs?
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ojr ◴[04 Jul 25 20:39 UTC] No.44467700[source]▶
he had no proof he can code, no projects, no github, only hired because he gave them a lowball offer, it was lowball because he was scamming
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1. sfn42 ◴[05 Jul 25 17:23 UTC] No.44474157[source]▶
The OP said he blew interviews out of the water. Presumably they mean technical interviews, that's how he proved he can code. By writing code.

Lots of devs don't have personal projects. I love programming but after spending the whole day programming I don't particularly want to go home and continue programming.

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2. ojr ◴[08 Jul 25 14:41 UTC] No.44500444[source]▶
you wouldn't and he wouldn't get past me, lots of devs don't have personal projects? That is a good filter, give me the ones with higher agency that do. Maybe my standards are too high. I usually contribute the most lines at work, and have personal projects that helped get me the job in the first place.

With agentic coding on the rise, it's easier to make a side project after a year of nights and weekends.

Nobody wants to go home and make a project that proves to future employers you can do the job, everybody wants to get paid though.

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3. Greed ◴[09 Jul 25 05:26 UTC] No.44506582[source]▶
I am like you, I'm someone that can happily code for eight straight hours on task and then happily jump to a side project afterwards in a totally different language / domain. Take it for the single point of data that it is, but: I have met equally as many high performers who do NOT code at home as I have mediocre ones that did. And the number of programmers who code solely on the job is far, far more common than those who take their work home with them. Statistically speaking, at least in my personal experience, that makes the at-home coder notably worse on average. As someone that used to think like you, I think the only thing you're really doing is the boys-club-esque equivalent of what the old Ivy League managers used to do (Oh, he's from MIT! That's perfect, we only hire MIT grads here). You're hiring what you know because you understand people with that background more.

You might find on the opposite end of the spectrum that someone with a perfectly equal skillset is laughing at the idea of taking on personal projects when he can just optimize for getting hired somewhere where they prioritize paying you to learn on the job.