An Indian engineer has become the centre of a big controversy in Silicon Valley after several startup founders in the US accused him of secretly working for many companies at the same time. The engineer, Soham Parekh, who is believed to live in India, is accused of working at four or five different startups at once. Many of these companies were supported by Y Combinator, a famous startup accelerator.

The issue started when Suhail Doshi, the founder of Playground AI and former CEO of Mixpanel, posted a warning on X (formerly Twitter). He wrote, “There’s a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3–4 startups at the same time. He’s been targeting YC companies and more. Be careful.” This incident has raised concerns about how remote work is managed and how companies check on employees who work from different countries.

Doshi said that Parekh joined Playground AI for a short time last year but was fired within a week when they found out he was working at other companies at the same time. Doshi also shared what he said was Parekh’s resume, which listed companies like Dynamo AI, Union AI, Synthesia, and Alan AI. Doshi claimed that about 90% of this resume was probably fake. After Doshi’s post, other startup founders shared similar experiences. Flo Crivello, the founder of Lindy, said his team had just hired Parekh a week ago but fired him right away. He said Parekh did well in interviews, which showed he must have practised a lot.

Nicolai Ouporov, CEO of Fleet AI, also confirmed that Parekh had worked with them before and said he had been doing this for years. Matthew Parkhurst, CEO of Antimetal, also spoke up. He described Parekh as “really smart and likeable” but said they had to fire him when they learned he was working for multiple companies at once. Parkhurst even joked, saying, “Hiring Soham is like a new rite of passage; every good company should go through it.”

Michelle Lim, Head of Product at Warp, said Parekh was hired for a trial period, but they cancelled it immediately after the accusations came out. Parekh has not made any public statement yet, but according to Doshi, he did send him a private message. In that message, Parekh seemed sorry and asked for advice. He wrote, “Have I completely ruined my career? What can I do to fix this? I am also ready to tell the truth.”

According to his resume, Parekh has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Mumbai and a master’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. But now, people are questioning if these claims are true. As more people read about this online, it started a bigger discussion about remote work, weak background checks, and whether it is okay to work at multiple companies at the same time. Some people wondered how one engineer could handle so many jobs at once, while others were surprised by how good he was at passing interviews.

One social media user who said they worked with Parekh shared, “When he worked, yes. I saw him finish a task in an hour that would normally take other engineers at least three hours.” For some Silicon Valley startups, hiring Soham Parekh has turned into a tough and important lesson.