Overview of Chameleon — Episode: "Engineering to Deceive: The Talented Coder Who Just Keeps Getting Jobs"
This episode of Chameleon (The Weekly) — hosted by Josh Dean and produced by Campside Media/Audiochuck — traces the viral saga of Soham Parekh, an extremely talented software engineer from India who repeatedly scored jobs at startups (often in-person) while simultaneously working for other companies. The story begins with a viral tweet that prompted dozens of founder confessions, unspooled into podcast appearances, and sparked a broader conversation about "overemployment," "ghost engineers," hiring vulnerabilities in startups, and how remote/hybrid work and culture incentivize questionable behavior.
Key facts & timeline
- Origin: A tweet by Suhail Doshi (founder, Playground AI) accusing Soham Parekh of working at 3–4 startups at once went viral and invited many similar reports from founders.
- Scope: A community tracker compiled after the thread showed Soham had been in conversations with ~55 companies and was hired/paid by at least 19; days worked ranged from 3 up to 250 at different companies (e.g., 3 days at Ponder in June 2025; 250 days at Command AI in 2022). Data likely undercounts true totals.
- Notable founder case: Dhruv Amin (Create) hired Soham as engineer #5; Soham attended in-person interview, asked for a week off, then repeatedly missed or produced inconsistent work; GitHub activity showed contributions to other startups; Soham denied concurrent employment but was fired.
- Public appearances: Soham appeared on tech podcasts (TBPN and Singh in the USA) where he framed his actions as a mixture of financial pressure, love of the game, and hustle. He admitted wrongdoing in places but often gave incomplete explanations (e.g., suggested—then contradicted—being enrolled at Georgia Tech).
- Outcome: Despite exposure, Soham resurfaced at an AI company called Darwin; at least one company publicly defended hiring him. The episode notes Silicon Valley’s tendency to forgive or rehire controversial figures.
Main characters & notable quotes
- Soham Parekh — the engineer at the center of the story. Memorable self-description: "I don't have a life." Called himself “everyone's favorite founding engineer.”
- Suhail Doshi — the founder whose viral tweet catalyzed the thread.
- Dhruv Amin — founder who hired and ultimately fired Soham; shared his painful experience publicly.
- Igor Denisov Blank (Stanford researcher) — studied engineer productivity and the prevalence of underperformance/overemployment.
- Notable tweet excerpt (paraphrase): founders recount hiring him, seeing amazing coding during interviews, then witnessing him disappear or juggle multiple jobs.
- Podcast impressions: Hosts often treated Soham’s story as a hustle case study rather than pressing deep ethical questions.
Themes & analysis
- Talent vs. trust: Soham’s technical ability legitimately impressed multiple founders in live, in-person interviews; ability to code was not in question. The issue was deception about availability, loyalty, and actual output.
- Ramp-up exploitation: Soham appears to have leveraged onboarding "ramp-up" periods — when new hires are given slack — to collect multiple paychecks while producing limited work.
- Remote/hybrid work enabled behavior: COVID-era remote norms, asynchronous work, and latitude for engineers made it easier to hide concurrent roles. GitHub transparency often exposed overlaps, but not always immediately.
- Culture of hustle and moral ambivalence: Silicon Valley often celebrates extreme hustle; many interlocutors framed overemployment as savvy optimization rather than simple fraud. That cultural sympathy partly explains why some hosts and companies treated Soham’s story as an intriguing playbook.
- Ghost engineers: Research indicates a non-trivial share of engineers are severe underperformers (estimated around ~9% in Igor’s sample), overlapping with the “overemployed” phenomenon.
Data & research called out
- Tracker: Community-built tracker listed ~55 companies in conversation and at least 19 that had paid/hired Soham (likely incomplete).
- Igor Denisov Blank’s research: Found evidence of both overemployment and a significant rate (~7–11%, roughly ~9%) of engineers producing very low output (so-called ghost engineers) across studied data.
- Overemployed subreddit: A community sharing tactics to hold multiple jobs; normalized the practice for some technologists.
Risks and systemic issues highlighted
- Hiring vulnerability: Small startups desperate for talent and willing to onboard quickly are especially exposed.
- Measurement problems: Engineering output is often hard to measure in a way that detects low performance immediately.
- Equipment and IP risk: Soham’s habit of receiving company laptops at coworking spaces, and not returning them, raised asset- and IP-security concerns.
- Reputation/ morale damage: Short-lived hires that are part of founding teams can severely set back small startups’ momentum and team trust.
Practical takeaways & recommendations for founders and hiring teams
- Verify persistence and presence
- Require verification of permanent work location or acceptable remote arrangement before shipping equipment.
- Ask for references and confirm recent employer details, including physical work habits where relevant.
- Protect assets and IP
- Ship laptops/equipment to verified addresses and include clauses for immediate return on termination.
- Use device management tools and require company logins to be used exclusively for company work.
- Improve onboarding visibility and probation metrics
- Establish concrete, time-bound deliverables and measurable goals during the probation ramp-up (week 1, week 2, 30 days).
- Tie early equity vesting milestones to objective outcomes rather than mere start dates.
- Monitor contributions publicly and privately
- Check GitHub contributions and commit histories for cross-company activity or conflicting project traces.
- Use internal code review and pull-request processes to track ownership and velocity.
- Consider stricter contractual language
- Include non-compete/sole-employment clauses where legally appropriate and explicit reporting requirements about external work.
- Culture and compensation
- Be transparent about compensation options and flexibility (higher pay vs. equity), which might reduce incentives to hide side gigs.
- Offer better onboarding support and early feedback loops to catch absence-of-work quickly.
Final takeaway
The Soham Parekh story is not just about one individual’s deception; it exposes structural weak points in how startups hire, onboard, and measure engineering work — and a cultural ambivalence toward extreme hustle. It also highlights that talent can mask unethical behavior for a long time, but community reporting (founders on Twitter), public code traces, and research into engineer productivity can help surface patterns earlier. Despite the controversy, the episode ends noting Silicon Valley’s capacity for second chances: some organizations still bet on talent over transgressions.