Last week, social media users have been sharing dozens of stories about their encounter with Soham Parekh, a software engineer who appears to be working simultaneously with multiple Silicon Valley startups (known to companies) over the past few years.
But who is Parev, how did he separate his career as a serial moonlighter, and why can’t Silicon Valley get enough of him?
The origin of viral
Saga all began when Suhail Doshi (CEO of Image Generation Startup Playground AI) shared an X post on Tuesday.
Doshi claims he fired Parekh from Playground AI almost a year ago after finding out he was working for another company. “[I] I told him to lie/stop fraud. He hasn’t stopped a year later,” Doshi wrote.
That post from Doshi received around 20 million views and prompted several other founders to share the run-in as well as Parev.
Lindy CEO Flo Crivello, a startup that helps people automate workflows with AI, said he’s hired Parekh in recent weeks, but fired him in light of Doshi’s tweets.
Matt Parkhurst, CEO of Antimetal, an automated cloud management startup, confirmed that Parekh was the company’s first engineering employment in 2022. Parkhurst tells TechCrunch that Parekh will be heading to early 2023 after realizing that Parekh is in the moonlight at another company.
Parekh also appears to be working with Sync Labs, a startup that creates AI lip sync tools, and he appeared in a promotional video. He was eventually let go.
At one point, Parekh was applied to several Y-combinator-assisted startups. Haz Hubble, co-founder of Pally AI, a Y-combinator-supporting startup that builds the “AI-related management platform,” says he has provided Parekh with the role of founding engineer. Adish Jain, co-founder of YC-Backed Mosaic, said Parev also interviewed him about the role.
TechCrunch reached out to these companies for comment but did not respond immediately.
It turns out that Parekh has worked very well in many of these interviews and received the offer, mainly because he is a talented software engineer.
For example, Rohan Pandey, a founding research engineer at YC-backed startup Reworkd, told TechCrunch that he interviewed Parekh about his role and told him he was a strong candidate. Pandi, who is no longer in the startup, says Parev was one of the top three performers in the interview focusing on the algorithms he gave candidates.
Pandey said the Reworkd team suspects Parekh and something is wrong. At the time, Parev said he was in the US – a job requirement, but the company didn’t believe him. They ran an IP logger on Zoomlink from Parev and placed him in India.
Pandey recalls other things that Parekh often said he doesn’t add up, and some of his Github contributions and previous roles also made little sense. It seems to be a common experience when dealing with parev.
Adam Silverman, co-founder of AI Agent Observability Startup, told TechCrunch that his company also interviewed Parekh. Silverman says Parev sent him a cold DM about the start of his work at the agency and they set up a meeting. According to an email from Parekh viewed by Silverman and TechCrunch, Parekh had to reschedule those five meetings.
Silverman also says he was impressed by Parev’s technical capabilities, but in the interview he insisted on working remotely. Like reworkd, it was a red flag for the agency.
Roy Lee, CEO of “Cheat On Everything” AI startup, told TechCrunch that he had interviewed Parekh twice. Lee says that Parekh interviewed very well, “it seemed to have a strong knowledge of the reaction,” referring to the popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
Lee says Cluely didn’t end up hiring Parekh. However, several other companies have revealed.
Parev’s perspective
Parekh appeared on Technology Business Programming Network (TBPN) on Thursday, co-hosting John Coogan and Jordi Hays his side of the story, explaining why he worked for so many companies.
He has admitted that he has been working in multiple jobs simultaneously since 2022. Parekh claims they are not using AI tools or are not hiring junior software engineers to support their workloads.
He believes that all of that made Parev a much better programmer, but he points out that it was a sacrifice.
Parev said he was infamous among his friends for not sleeping. He repeats several times throughout the interview, and he works 140 hours a week, which is 20 hours a day, seven days a week. It seems that the boundaries are impossible – at least, very unhealthy and unsustainable.
Parev also said he had acquired multiple jobs because he was in “financial dangers.” He claims he has postponed going to a graduate program where he was accepted, and instead decided to work at several startups simultaneously.
In particular, Dosi shared a copy of Parev’s resume, claiming to have earned a master’s degree from Georgia Tech.
When the TBPN co-host asked why Parev didn’t help one company with his salary and financial struggle, Parev said he liked to maintain the boundaries between his professional and personal life. (However, he also chose low pay and high fairness for all his jobs, but that doesn’t make him a complete story about his financial crisis. However, Parev refused to share more about it.)
Parev told the host he really loved his job, but it wasn’t just about money. He says he was very invested in the missions of every company he worked for.
He also admits that he is not proud of what he has done, and he does not support it.
What now?
Some call Parev a scammer and a liar, but in classic Silicon Valley fashion, Parev appears to be trying to turn his viral moment into business.
Parekh has announced his latest employer. It claims to be working only at Darwin Studios, a startup working on AI video remix.
However, as was the case with the startup founder and CEO Sanjit Juneja, Parekh quickly deleted the post after announcing it.
TechCrunch contacted Parekh and requested an interview about this article, but he has not yet accepted. Instead, a spokesman representing him sent a statement to TechCrunch from Darwin’s CEO.
“Soham is a very talented engineer and we believe in his ability to help bring products to the market,” says Juneja.
Last year, we’ve seen countless startups turn viral, controversial moments into businesses. One of the most famous is Cluely, known for creating provocative marketing campaigns. It’s bait for rage, but it was something that caught my attention and was enough to land a solid $15 million seed round from Andreesen Horowitz.
Perhaps Parev will land similar property in the future.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect the current name of TBPN and includes additional comments from anti-metal.
Source link
