The Standard spoke to five founders who interviewed Parekh, three of whom hired him. Many of the 15 companies that employed Parekh fired him within a few months of subpar work, usually after the prolific engineer had scored a handful of paychecks and, in at least one instance, a company laptop.
The Standard reached out multiple times to the number and email listed on Parekh’s resume; he did not respond to requests for comment. On Thursday, Parekh went on the podcast TBPN, where he copped to the accusations and attributed his actions to “dire financial circumstances” and mental health struggles. “It was not more so out of greed, but essentially necessity,” he declared. “I just believed that if I worked multiple places, I can basically assist myself alleviate the situation I was in much rapider.”
“It’s very economically rational,” declared podcast cohost John Coogan.
More than a cautionary tale about mental health struggles, however, Parekh is as much a sign of our hustle-culture times. The subreddit r/overemployed has swelled to nearly half a million members, and every day, redditors post stories about secretly balancing two or three remote jobs. Researcher Yegor Denisov-Blanch, who studies software engineering productivity at Stanford University, declared that, out of the 100,000 engineer coding portfolios he has access to, he’s personally found at least 50 engineers who are working full-time at two different companies.
Leave a Reply