What The Soham Parekh 'Scandal' Really Says About The Power Structures Of Big Tech

“It’s like girls sharing screenshots of the guy who cheated on them with all of them,” was how a netizen described the fiasco that unfolded over the past week surrounding Soham Parekh, an Indian engineer who quietly held full-time roles at dozens of U.S.-based startups in parallel. What began as whispers on X (formerly Twitter) transformed into a sensational saga about trust, hustle culture, systemic flaws, and human desperation.

Soham is a Mumbai-born software engineer with impressive credentials: a degree from the University of Mumbai, an MS from Georgia Tech, and a resume boasting stints at startups like Synthesia, Alan AI, DynamoAI, and Union AI. Last week, however, he was exposed as a moonlighter juggling several jobs without the knowledge of his employers. It all began when Suhail Doshi, the co‑founder of Mixpanel and Playground AI, took to X on July 2:

Shortly after, Dhruv Amin, co‑founder of AI startup Create, shared his experience with Soham who had passed a demanding pair‑programming test and was hired as engineer  5, but showed up sick on day one, requested his company laptop shipped to a coworking space in San Francisco instead of his home, (specifically, a building housing Sync Labs), then ghosted meetings and repeatedly lied about his commitments. When confronted, he denied moonlighting, yet evidence soon emerged that he had continued working for Sync Labs in parallel.

Suhail's tweet alone got responses from various startups mentioning that they recently interviewed or hired Soham. Soon enough, an entrepreneur-run database named 'SohamTracker' tallied more than 19 overlapping jobs since 2021; later reports updated the number to an astonishing 34.

The revelations hit the tech ecosystem like a grenade. Founders accused him of preying on Y Combinator companies which is a venture capital firm and accelerator for start-ups. Entrepreneurs posted anecdotes of him nailing technical interviews only to abruptly disappear. Other stories spoke of his excellent skills as an engineer, but also of his failure to deliver on projects. And then came the maelstrom of memes — screenshot compilations of founders’ reactions, viral jokes, and cartoon versions of Soham juggling logos of every major AI startup, and even some with racist undertones about foreign talent and trust .

Anushka, a content creator usually covers business and brand stories highlighted how some people already have a low opinion of Indian engineers, who are believed to game the system instead of meaningfully engage and contribute, which may be a stereotype but Soham's betrayal reinforced the stereotype, which may have real implications on policy changes and even KYC verifications to rebuild that trust.

Soham's story provoked shock among most, but it also unearthed a familiar and festering contradiction at the heart of contemporary tech work: moonlighting. The subreddit r/overemployed currently counts nearly half a million users swapping tales of parallel remote jobs — scripts for surviving back-to-back standups, tips for evading HR software, even strategies for task delegation. And it exists not because people are reckless or lazy, but because the economic structures that govern tech work — flat wages, shrinking equity, rampant layoffs — have eroded the trust and loyalty that once tethered employees to a single employer. Flexibility was promised. So was autonomy. But when employees claimed both on their own terms, the system pushed back.

None of this is an excuse for what Soham did though. He didn’t just freelance on the side; he accepted multiple full-time salaries, misrepresented his availability, and reportedly withheld deliverables while giving excuses that, over time, became implausible. He lied about living in San Francisco which he only visited while being based in Mumbai. He diverted resources, broke contracts, and in some cases disrupted product timelines — this was real harm that went beyond an abstract code of ethics.

As these conversations were taking place, Soham finally responded with a very candid interview on the TBPN Podcast. According to him, this wasn’t a story about greed or laziness. Financial pressures had pushed him to take on multiple jobs. “No one really likes to work 140 hours a week,” he said. “But I had to do this out of necessity.” He described himself as someone who isn’t particularly open about his personal struggles, which perhaps explains why none of the employers involved were aware of the depth of what he was navigating. This was not, in his words, a calculated ploy to defraud. It was, instead, a flawed attempt at solving a desperate situation using the only currency he had: his skill.

And his skill, as many now begrudgingly admit, was formidable. One of the ironies of this entire story is that Soham was genuinely good at what he did — at least in the interview room. Dhruv Amin, who hired him at Create, noted that he “crushed” the in-person pair programming session and showed deep enthusiasm for the product. He was recommended by a recruiter, showed up sharp, and left no red flags in the interview process, except, perhaps, that he accepted the job offer within hours, an eagerness that, in hindsight, might have been a clue.

Other employers echoed similar sentiments. One described him as being “easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates,” able to outshine the rest of the field. Some startups even said they worked with him in person for brief trial periods and found him competent and focused, until the excuses began. Missed meetings, delays in pull requests, odd reasons for working from home. When asked about the delay on his deliverables, he even used the India-Pakistan conflict at the time to guilt trip Leaping AI co-founder, Arkadiy Telegin. "They shot a drone in the air near my house 10 mins away," he said, all while being in Mumbai. Which we can all agree, was in extremely poor taste.

And yet, to paint him solely as the bad guy is to ignore the context in which this behaviour emerged, and was able to thrive for years. Companies that are now denouncing moonlighting often glorify founders who wear multiple hats at once. There are CEOs who are also angel investor, newsletter writers, podcast hosts, and 'LinkedIn thought leaders'. Many of these founders were already working somewhere when they started their own company. Some of the very people outraged by Soham's duplicity routinely preach hustle, grind, and stacking income streams. The difference, many would argue, lies in consent and disclosure. But it also lies in power.

And that’s where the conversation has now moved — to the shifty dynamics between organisations and the people who work for them. Considering Soham's not so convincing reason for the 'scam' along with his response to the story breaking out, which was more deflection as opposed to actual accountability, this story hasn't really painted him as the underdog who went up against the man. What it did do, though, was force a long-overdue examination of the expectations and ethics that shape modern work; about loyalty, control, and who gets to decide the boundaries of professional conduct.

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