Soham Parekh was the perfect software engineering candidate. The problem was that several tech startups thought so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s remote work practices and the relatively recent phenomenon of tech employees\u2019 surreptitiously holding multiple jobs at once<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parekh\u2019s 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\u2019t respond to emailed requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPSA: there\u2019s a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. He\u2019s been preying on YC companies and more. Beware,\u201d he wrote on X<\/a>, referring to startups that have received funding from the accelerator Y Combinator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying \/ scamming people. He hasn\u2019t stopped a year later. No more excuses,\u201d wrote Doshi, who didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People in the comments shared similar stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe just signed him up for our work trial next week. Saw this tweet. Cancelled work trial. Thank you for sharing!\u201d a user wrote under the post<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLMFAOOO I INTERVIEWED THIS GUY YESTERDAY BRO IM DYINGG,\u201d wrote another<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As claims about him circulated, Parekh began to give interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parekh admitted working at several startups at once in an interview\u2002<\/a>Thursday with the online daily tech show \u201cTBPN.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m not proud of what I\u2019ve done,\u201d Parekh said. \u201cThat\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parekh said that to pull off having multiple jobs at once, he is a \u201cserial nonsleeper\u201d and doesn\u2019t \u201cdo anything outside coding.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an X discussion<\/a> with Andriy Mulyar, the CEO of Nomic AI \u2014 another startup that Parekh worked at \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parekh said in the \u201cTBPN\u201d interview that he began juggling multiple jobs in 2022. He re-emphasized that he did so out of financial necessity, adding that he had deferred an offer to graduate school and opted for an online degree. A picture of his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 posted by Doshi<\/a>, which Lowe confirmed was the one he had received, says he attended Georgia Tech from September 2020 to May 2022. A spokesperson for the school said in a statement to NBC News that it had no record of a student by that name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot being said about me right now, and most of you don\u2019t know the full story,\u201d Parekh said on his X account<\/a>, which he confirmed to be his in the \u201cTBPN\u201d interview. \u201cIf there\u2019s one thing to know about me, it\u2019s that I love to build. That\u2019s it. I\u2019ve been isolated, written off and shut out by nearly everyone I\u2019ve known and every company I\u2019ve worked at. But building is the only thing I\u2019ve ever truly known, and it\u2019s what I\u2019ll keep doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marcus Lowe, the founder of the tech startup Create, shared an experience similar to those of other employers who spoke out online. Lowe confirmed to NBC News that Parekh was the person featured in the \u201cTBPN\u201d video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lowe said Parekh aced his in-person interview back in February and even outperformed most candidates. But as his first day of work approached, more and more issues kept arising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether it was that he was sick or that he had family visiting, Lowe said, Parekh would come up with excuse after excuse for why he couldn\u2019t show up to work. He said that at first they seemed believable, until he began to look into Parekh\u2019s GitHub account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI happen to notice, actually, on his GitHub profile that he was actually committing code the prior two weeks, too, including the week that he was sick,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cSo it was a little odd to me \u2014 I mean, maybe you\u2019re offline if you\u2019re sick. Typically you\u2019re not committing a ton of code.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lowe added that when he did some searching, he found that Parekh was committing code to another company called sync.so. He sent a message to the company\u2019s founder, who confirmed to him that Parekh was working there, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was a huge waste of time for us, a big distraction. We\u2019re a small company,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to survive, and just such direct immoral behavior felt worth speaking out about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parekh can be seen at sync.so in several posts<\/a> by employees at the company, as well as in videos featured on its YouTube channel<\/a>. An employee confirmed that Parekh was employed at sync.so but declined a request for an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parekh now says he signed a deal to work at \u201cone company and one company only.\u201d He told \u201cTBPN\u201d that he would be working at another startup called Darwin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sanjit Juneja, its founder and CEO, said in an emailed statement: \u201cAt Darwin, we are solely focused on building the most innovative software products for both brands and content creators. Soham is an incredibly talented engineer and we believe in his abilities to help bring our products to market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n