Engineer caught juggling multiple startup jobs is a cautionary tale of ‘extreme’ hustle culture, experts say

The tech industry is reeling after a software engineer was exposed as working at several Silicon Valley startups at the same time — and experts say it's a lesson on hustle culture gone too far.

Soham Parekh, a software engineer from Mumbai, went viral on social media after being accused by Playground AI founder Suhail Doshi on X of working at a number of startups simultaneously.

Doshi wrote: "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 [Y Combinator] companies and more. Beware. I fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying / scamming people. He hasn't stopped a year later. No more excuses."

The post racked up 25,000 likes with more founders coming forward about hiring Parekh, including AI startup Lindy, which fired him after seeing Doshi's post.

Doshi confirmed to CNBC Make It via email that Parekh worked at the company. "We realized he was working multiple jobs shortly after he joined, based on constant large fluctuations in his availability and the quality of his output. He also attended an off-site, where it became pretty clear," Doshi said.

Soham Parekh did not respond to CNBC Make It's request for an interview.

Matthew Parkhurst, founder of software startup Antimetal, said Parekh was the company's first engineering hire in 2022 and was smart and likable. "We realized pretty quickly that he was working at multiple companies and let him go," Parkhurst said on X.

Other founders like Haz Hubble, the co-founder of social media scheduler Pally, also came forward about offering Parekh a founding engineer role.

"Around one week ago we offered him a role as founding engineer, with a total package worth $250k per year, but withdrew after he wouldn't live with us in San Francisco — now we know why!" Hubble told CNBC via email, explaining that as the company is early-stage, the team living and working together is crucial.

"To me it seems he must be addicted to the game of getting job offers, rather than actually making money, given he never lasts more than a few weeks and rarely gets paid. It begs the question — why?"

Lindy and Antimetal did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

In an interview on tech show TBPN on Thursday, Parekh admitted that it was true he was working for multiple startups at once and wasn't proud of what he had done.

"No one really likes to work 140 hours a week, but I had to do this out of necessity," Parekh said in the show. "I was in extremely dire financial circumstances."

Parekh said he only started doing this in 2022, and the grueling lifestyle meant he became a "serial non-sleeper."

He added that he "cared about these companies" and "greed wasn't an incentive," despite his financial situation. He said he always took the lower pay, higher equity offer at companies.

The tech community on social media is divided, however, with some questioning the ethics of secretly working multiple jobs, while others wonder how Parekh pulled it off.

The tale of Parekh is not unique within the tech industry, with many tech workers covertly working multiple jobs in recent years in an effort to shield themselves from mass layoffs and job market uncertainty.

A subreddit called "r/overemployed" was created in 2021, with users sharing advice on how they manage to balance multiple jobs without being detected.

"During the peak of Covid, there was this rush from tech companies to fire talent, and there was this intense competition for talent," Alexandru Voica, head of corporate affairs and policy at AI company Synthesia, told CNBC Make It in an interview.

"It caused, in some cases, this type of behavior to be more widespread than it was during non-pandemic times."

Voica noted that the rise of remote work was instrumental in enabling this behavior amongst tech workers. "That led to obviously incredible benefits for hard-working people, but also allowed people who have maybe this type of attitude to, all of a sudden, get jobs that they wouldn't have before."

Having at least two jobs is also common within India's IT sector. There was a 25-30% increase in moonlighting seen between 2020 and 2023, according to Randstad India, with workers citing factors such as low pay and remote work.

While Parekh's grueling work hours are unusual — even in tech — it's a reminder of how deeply hustle culture is entrenched within the industry.

"Silicon Valley's obsession with productivity metrics and fast hiring has created conditions where a person can juggle five roles — and not because it's efficient, but because no one is truly looking," Dmitry Zaytsev, founder of talent management company Dandelion Civilization, said to CNBC Make It.

"What we're seeing is the extreme end of hustle culture: when work becomes performance, and identity becomes fragmented."

Zaytsev explained that Parekh essentially passed multiple rounds of technical interviews because soft skills aren't as valued in tech. Qualities like commitment, reliability and team presence "are often overlooked until there's a crisis," he said.

"Burnout is a predictable outcome when the workplace culture rewards overcommitment and treats exhaustion as a badge of honor. Soham's admission that he worked 140 hours a week is not just unhealthy, it's a reflection of a system that equates worth with output," he added.

It comes as European tech startups face pressure from some VCs to adopt a more rigorous work schedule — such as China's "996" or Silicon Valley's 24/7, always-on culture — to better compete on a global tech stage. This has been met with backlash, with founders telling CNBC Make It that overwork can lead to a crisis of productivity, burnout, and even resentment.

Suranga Chandratillake, general partner at Balderton Capital, said this debate came about due to "a fetishization of overwork" and a glorification of hustle culture in the tech and startup scene in Silicon Valley.

Synthesia's Voica warned that workers who take advantage of flexible working policies risk painting other engineers in a bad light, and could have these benefits taken away.

"Most of the engineers that I know are very hard working, very dedicated, very passionate, and then when you have this type of more cavalier behavior, it sets this tone that this is normal behavior in the community," Voica explained.

This might cause employers to second-guess whether they should keep hybrid working policies in place, he said.

"This is going to impact women. It's going to impact people with disabilities [and] the more vulnerable, who actually benefited from this [flexible] work arrangement, and now they're going to be impacted by this type of behavior," he added.

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