‘Pissed, then impressed… not sure how he pulled it off’: Startup founder details red flags, chaos from hiring Soham Parekh

The tech world is still reeling from revelations that Soham Parekh, an Indian engineer, secretly held as many as five to six full-time jobs at elite US startups, pocketing up to $800,000 or Rs 6.8 crores a year, by juggling overlapping work schedules and fake credentials.

Now, Dhruv Amin, co-founder of Create, an AI “text-to-app” builder in San Francisco, has spoken publicly about his costly experience hiring Parekh, calling the ordeal a “drain of 1 month of time, focus, and energy.”

In a detailed post, Amin recounted how Parekh was initially recommended by a recruiter and “crushed” the in-person programming interview. “I believe he’s actually a good engineer,” Amin wrote. “some have said ‘this is the danger of credentials.’ we didn’t care, we cared he could ship.”

Yet red flags began appearing almost immediately. Parekh went dark before his start date, then called in sick on day one, offering an address at an SF office building instead of a home for shipping his laptop. Suspicions deepened when Amin’s co-founder discovered Parekh’s GitHub account was active with commits to other private repos, even as Parekh claimed illness.

“My co-founder was ready to move on then (too much smoke),” Amin said. Although Parekh performed impressively on his first in-person day, things unraveled quickly. “the next few days it all fell apart,” Amin wrote, citing repeated sick days, claims of a new chronic condition, and incomplete work that should have taken half a day but lingered for days.

Amin eventually discovered Parekh was still linked to another startup, Sync Labs, despite repeated denials. The final straw came when Sync Labs dropped an employee-of-the-month video featuring Parekh on the very same day Amin confronted him.

“Told him working 2+ places same time was breach of FTE contract so not going to process first payroll. no argument from him. he just dipped,” Amin wrote. He added, “it was embarrassing until yesterday when i realized how widespread. then i was pissed. then impressed. still not sure how he pulled it off for so long with in person startups with long hours, but appreciated the hustle. hope he had a good reason. feels like a stressful way to make money.”

Parekh, meanwhile, has broken his silence on the controversy. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done. But, you know, financial circumstances, essentially. No one really likes to work 140 hours a week, right? But I had to do this out of necessity. I was in extremely dire financial circumstances,” he said, insisting that he accomplished all the work without help from AI tools or other engineers.

Parekh has since announced he’s joined Darwin, a new AI firm in San Francisco, and says he has no plans to hold multiple jobs again.

Despite the fiasco, Amin concluded on a note of cautious goodwill: “he’s a good eng so will probably be fine. biggest mistake was lying repeatedly which just kills any team’s trust fast. off the chest so moving on :)”