Soham Parekh has gone completely viral this week. He has unexpectedly become the face of one of the Silicon Valley’s biggest talking points: overemployment in the remote work era. He has also funnily enough set a benchmark, if he hasn’t applied to your startup, is your startup even doing well? Not to take his side or anything, whatever he did was clearly wrong, but like cracking interviews and getting jobs like that is remarkable, isn’t it? His resume must be studied and I think he should start a course. Okay jokes aside, let’s rewind a little and see what went down.
Who is Soham Parekh and How did he get Exposed?
Soham Parekh is an Indian Engineer, who recently got accused of working in not one, not two but reportedly 3-5 startups. He has created havoc in the tech world. So what happened? How did he get exposed? Well, the controversy came into light when Suhail Doshi, founder of Mixpanel posted about this on X.
This post went viral in no time and got millions of views. After which a lot of founders started sharing their stories of hiring and firing Soham for similar reasons. Even the founder of Cluely, the startup that built an undetectable AI tool, shared his experience:
The Overemployment Trend Gains Attention
Overemployment is actually quite common in tech world, it’s not something new. Mostly when the work is remote, plenty of people have been hustling multiple jobs to earn extra income. Moreover online platforms like reddit have communities like r/overemployed where they openly discuss of how to work multiple jobs and reach financial freedom. But then why did just Soham get caught? The answer to that is he was different, the scale, the deception, and the industry he targeted, had to catch attention one day. The industry is of AI startups, which is one the fastest growing and the most competitive in today’s tech world.
Small Teams Take the Hardest Hit
It mostly won’t matter much to the big companies when they hire and fire a fraud. But for a small startup, every person matters, every task they complete matters. Small startups depend on dedicated, hardworking teams. If even one person who has been hired underdelivers or vanishes the whole company suffers. The effort taken, the time given, the resources used all get wasted.
Right after Soham’s action went viral, he came out and laid out his truth. He said he did not do this for greed, but for necessity. As he was facing some financial burdens. But even though such an action done due to desperation highlights how such behavior directly damages small teams far more than large corporations.
AI’s Role in the Story
Here’s the kicker, every single job that Soham landed was in AI. Why you may ask? Because AI is the hottest space in the tech right now. Startups have been hiring like crazy to build tools, chatbots, and coding assistants. Everyone wants the smartest teams, and they want them right now. This rush has led the loopholes slip through.
And if you’ve been thinking about breaking into AI yourself, one of the fastest ways to get hands-on is by joining AI hackathons that are open to beginners and pros alike. It’s where innovation, talent, and real-world projects collide, without the shortcuts Soham took.
Memes, Mayhem and Mixed Reactions
Of course internet did it’s thing and now memes are everywhere. I’ll just let you look for yourself.
