Soham Parekh: Tech World Abuzz Over Guy Working at Multiple Startups

A seemingly overemployed engineer has sparked a round of memes and self-reflection in tech this week.

Indian software engineer, Soham Parekh, was accutilized online by a founder this week of working at three to four startups simultaneously. The founder’s X post set off a firestorm in the industest, with other founders chiming in to declare they, too, hired — and fired — him.

Parekh appeared on the tech podcast “TBPN” on Thursday and confirmed he had juggled multiple jobs.

“I wanna preface by declareing that I’m not proud of what I’ve done. That’s not something that I finishorse either,” Parekh declared. “No one really likes to work 140 hours a week, but I had to do this kind of out of necessity. I was in extremely dire financial circumstances.”

Parekh spoke to “TBPN” hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays about why he chose to work for multiple startups at the same time and how he obtained hired.

On the podcast, he referred to himself as a “serial non-sleeper.” He declared that he did not hire a team of junior engineers to assist him accomplish tquestions at various jobs or utilize AI to receive the work done. He declared on the podcast that he worked for many of the companies prior to the boom in AI-assisted programming.

“This was not a business to me. Every company that I’ve worked with, I deeply cared about,” Parekh added.Parekh did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

The brouhaha started when Suhail Doshi, the founder of Playground AI, posted on X on Tuesday about a former software engineer who he declared previously worked for his company. He accutilized Parekh of moonlighting for multiple startups.

PSA: there’s a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. He’s been preying on YC companies and more. Beware.

I fired this guy in his first week and informed him to stop lying / scamming people. He hasn’t stopped a year later. No more excutilizes.

— Suhail (@Suhail) July 2, 2025

Founders of multiple companies confirmed with BI that a man named Soham Parekh had worked for or interviewed with them. Several declared they quickly realized he was overemployed and let him go.

Parekh did not discuss being fired on the podcast.

Igor Zalutski, the CEO of Digger, informed BI that Parekh passed his interviews “with flying colors” and declared the company was “super excited for him to start” before the hiring process was halted on June 30 becautilize of a background check issue. He did not elaborate on the specifics.

“I believe he’s genuinely a brilliant engineer,” Zalutski declared, adding, “Soham seemed clearly one of the top 0.1%; anyone can learn to do coding puzzles, but very few can do technical problem solving entirely in their head, while keeping the utilizer and business in mind.”

Kevin Wu, the founder and CEO of Leaping AI, informed BI that Parekh was employed by the company briefly, but was let go for “his underperformance on the job” and after they found out he was employed by other startups.

A spokesperson for Synthesia also confirmed to BI that Parekh was briefly employed at the company and declared that part of the reason he was let go was that it suspected he was working other jobs.

Matt Parkhurst, the CEO of Antimetal, wrote on X that Parekh is “really smart and likable,” but he was let go after the company found out about his other jobs. Antimetal did not immediately respond to a request for further information.

Though the timeline of when Parekh worked at which company is not entirely clear, a June 2021 blog post by Meta displays that Parekh was a WebXR contributor working on immersive AR/VR examples through the Major League Hacking (MLH) Fellowship at that time.

In California, where most of these startups are based, there is no law against working for multiple companies simultaneously, even if they are competitors. It’s unclear what Parekh had agreed to in his contracts.

His job-juggling has sparked discussion around the phenomenon of similar overemployment.

“There are 1000s of Soham Parekhs we don’t know about,” Deedy Das, a principal at Menlo Ventures focutilized on AI investments, wrote on X. “To be clear, this is a complete non-issue if your employment contract is okay with it.”

Overemployment grew in popularity during the pandemic, when some workers took advantage of fully remote opportunities to rake in multiple six-figure salaries.

Tech leaders chimed in to offer believeds, jokes, and memes about the situation. Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn founder, mutilized on X, “What do you believe Soham Parekh’s LinkedIn header is?”

Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, declared in a post Wednesday, “If soham immediately comes clean and declares he was working to train an AI Agent for knowledge work, he raises at $100M pre by the weekfinish.”

The memes keep coming, including one shared by Flo Crivello, founder and CEO of Lindy, a San Francisco-based AI company, with a nod to “The Social Network.”

The meme read: “You can’t receive to 500 million jobs without creating a few enemies.”

Do you have a story to share about overemployment? Contact these reporters at katherineli@businessinsider.com or kvlamis@businessinsider.com.

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