Tech Employee Soham Parekh Is Working The System

Soham Parekh, a software engineer living in India, has sparked a frenzy in the tech world after it was uncovered that he’s been moonlighting for three or four companies simultaneously over the past several years.

Why It Hits: Silicon Valley is a secretive place, so working full-time for multiple companies — which some overly ambitious people have started doing in recent years — really flies in the face of the various non-compete agreements employees have to sign when joining a firm. But Parekh shows just how easily the system can be manipulated in 2025.

Between the Roles: Does anyone have an application success rate as high as Parekh’s?

• Eyebrows were raised after Playground AI CEO Suhail Doshi posted on X that Parekh has been “preying on YC companies” (YC meaning “Y Combinator”) by working at multiple companies simultaneously.
• Tech execs from Lindy, Antimetal, Sync Labs, Pally AI, Rework, Agency, and Mosaic quickly joined in, having either hired him, offered him a position, or been impressed with him during interviews.
• But whenever he started working somewhere, they soon discovered that he wasn’t living in the US as he claimed and was also working at various rival firms. That was a no-go for employers over and over again.
• While it was true that Parekh was a gifted engineer, it also appears that parts of his resume weren’t accurate, including claims of holding various graduate degrees.

The Future: Despite what many think, Parekh told TechCrunch that he didn’t use AI tools or an army of junior engineers to carry his unsustainable workload. Instead, he says he’s a workaholic who logs 140 hours a week (unlikely) and needed the various jobs to get out of “financial jeopardy.” However, many founders say he negotiated for more equity rather than a higher salary in his compensation packages, which contradicts his claims. They believe it’s likely Parekh is actually in the business of stealing company secrets or IP more than anything else.

Clearly, it doesn’t matter: Parekh already has another job, now working at Darwin Studios.

Prediction: In this day and age, expect more people to get gutsy and use AI tools to forge multiple identities, allowing them to hold jobs at various companies simultaneously.