Comment by gargoyle9123
12 days ago
We hired Soham.
I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer. He will blow the interviews completely out of the water. Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well.
The problem is when the job (or work-trial in our case) actually starts, it's just excuses upon excuses as to why he's missing a meeting, or why the PR was pushed late. The excuses become more ridiculous and unbelievable, up until it's obvious he's just lying.
Other people in this thread are incorrect, it's not a dev. shop. I worked with Soham in-person for 2 days during the work-trial process, he's good. He left half of each day with some excuse about meeting a lawyer.
> The problem is when the job (or work-trial in our case) actually starts, it's just excuses upon excuses as to why he's missing a meeting, or why the PR was pushed late. The excuses become more ridiculous and unbelievable, up until it's obvious he's just lying.
I worked with an overemployed person (not Soham). It was exactly like this.
Started out great. They could do good work when they knew they were in focus. Then they started pushing deliverables out farther and farther until it was obvious they weren't trying. Meetings were always getting rescheduled with an array of excuses. Lots of sad stories about family members having tragedies over and over again.
It wears everyone down. Team mates figure it out first. Management loses patience.
Worst part is that one person exhausts the entire department's trust. Remote work gets scrutinized more. Remote employees are tracked more closely. It does a lot of damage to remote work.
> Other people in this thread are incorrect, it's not a dev. shop. I worked with Soham in-person for 2 days during the work-trial process, he's good.
I doubt it's a dev shop because the dev shops use rotating stand-ins to collect the paychecks, not the same identity at every job. This guy wanted paychecks sent directly to him.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to hire other devs to outsource some of his workload while he remained the interaction point with the company.
> He left half of each day with some excuse about meeting a lawyer.
Wild to be cutting work trial days in half to do other jobs. Although I think he was also testing companies to see who was lenient enough to let him get away with all of this.
> However, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to hire other devs to outsource some of his workload while he remained the interaction point with the company.
What a silly waste of his time and reputation (in addition to other people's).
If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?
> If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?
Much much easier said than done.
99% of companies that want to hire employees won't hire a contractor/consultant instead for that job.
How do I know? 15 years experience, top candidate in many interviews, great salary / employment. Yet every time I've tried to get a consulting arrangement set up it's been extremely hard and ultimately unprofitable (i.e. pays significantly less than full-time job, on average).
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> If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?
I've worked with several small contracting businesses, including some that came highly recommended.
They were all very inefficient relative to having someone in-house. They also came with the problem that institutional knowledge was non-existent because they had a rotating crew of people working for you.
Hiring someone in-house is more efficient and better for building institutional knowledge. The companies he applied for specifically did not want to contract the work out to a body shop.
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Or work at Meta or Microsoft and make $600k-950k and become a sr production engineer or principal engineer quickly.
Being disloyal and breaking trust and reputation for temporary gain is crazy.
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> I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer. He will blow the interviews completely out of the water. Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well.
It is hilarious that companies that hired a guy who was scamming them are also convinced they are great at assessing the skill level of devs.
Is it so hard to believe that someone can be a great candidate in an interview when you're getting 100% of their attention and then be horrible at their job when you're getting 20% of it because they're juggling 5 jobs?
he had no proof he can code, no projects, no github, only hired because he gave them a lowball offer, it was lowball because he was scamming
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Being a good developer and being a scammer are completely uncorrelated variables.
Someone can be a good developer and also be a scammer. I don't understand why you think this is hilarious or weird.
It's hilarious because companies use such scammable ways to define who is "top 0.1%"
Also there's a ton amazing engs out there who want and need work but the companies all only want that one "perfect" guy (or gal), as if such a thing exists
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> Being a good developer and being a scammer are completely uncorrelated variables.
One could expect good developers to be less inclined to fraud as they may not “need” it as much.
That also made me thing of Berkson’s paradox: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
If these were really independent traits they would look negatively correlated as we talk about people who are good OR scammers.
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Exactly. It's so bleak that this industry throws integrity out the window in the name of productivity.
With due respect, they probably just asked leetcode-esque and sys design questions.
There’s literally no evidence they did either of these things. I really hope these companies can explain their hiring process as it reflects badly on them that they keep calling him top 0.1% without any explanation of their process.
One of them didn’t. They just said they have the best system to pick candidates, that they’ve learned at their respective FAANG places, and that it can’t fail.
This.
The had 100 candidates and hired him. Top 1% QED. (/s)
> I can tell you it's because he's actually a very skilled engineer.
> Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates -- other startups will tell you this as well.
People who regularly don't show up for work are by definition not "top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates" - in fact quite the opposite.
That'll get you fired from PetSmart, let alone some bullshit $250k/yr software job.
I think startups' freewheeling management and hiring practices need examined because this would be caught by the most basic of background or reference checks at any traditional business.
Can't wait for Paul Graham's next essay on "How to Not Hire People Who Smoke Crack In the Toilets Instead of Showing Up for Work" for more informative life lessons.
You're replying to a quote about where their skill falls compared to others, and then saying it's wrong based on their contribution to the company. You're not wrong that it means they aren't top 1% in terms of value as an employee, but it's a separate topic to the quote you're replying to.
A disinterested Richard Feynman is a better physicist than a very interested highschooler. Skill and value extraction are not the same thing.
we interviewed him and passed. he was horrible. it blows my mind seeing these reports of him crushing interviews and being a great dev. the bar for programmers is woefully low. on second thought there's got to be more to this story because he came to us through a recruiter who talked him up big time. did he come to you through a recruiter too? if so then either the recruiter is in on it or he has an army of different recruiters getting him in front of yc people. also you say you worked with him in person but other reports say he was in india. something not adding up here. i can verify my story by giving you the Nth character of the quirky email address he uses. can you do the same?
It’s probably because the interview process relied heavily on leetcode questions. If it did, one can effectively prepare for that and only that and can be overemployed.
I assume its because his resume showed hes worked at sexy startups recently (true or not)
Having worked at sexy-startup for 9 months recently with a good excuse why you left would get your resume to the top of the pile if it was read
Is it still common to ask leetcode questions during interview?
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No explanation has been provided to show hes good at leetcode either.
I'm intrigued by this guy, he could only have a few years of experience. What does he have to show for it resume wise? Has he ever built something, oversaw a large project, contributed meaningfully - and does he back this well in his interviewing?
What type of interview you have, I presume non LeetCode style?
> he's actually a very skilled engineer
By that you mean more like "he is top 0.1% at leetcode and whatever broken hiring process we have" ?
Why would really top 0.1% engineer go for all the hustle with small startups. If he could score a single job at some overfunded AI company and get even more with less risks?
This doesn't add up at all, sorry.
> If he could score a single job at some overfunded AI company and get even more with less risks?
There is a high risk that the AI bubble will collapse.
> Easily top 1% or top 0.1% of candidates
How do you measure that ? It seems like he wasn't a good candidate after all. I hope y`all learn a lesson about hiring and moving away from things that aren't signal to a job.
Do employment contracts in the US not normally have "sole focus" clauses? We have those in my location.
I think Google has that.
Possibly these are becoming more common because of /r/overemployed.
Most companies don't want you working another W-2 job, but realize they can't just ban all consulting.
I think an copyright/IP assignment contract is standard in many or most U.S. software jobs, at least when working for a big enough company that they have a lawyer who handles the NDA/employment paperwork.
That pretty much automatically rules out over employment because you can’t separately promise two different companies that you’re assigning all software copyrights to them rather than you, it’s an incompatible contract (even if it’s limited to work hours - you’re pretending to both companies that you’re working 9-5 solely for them).
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I have seen that in employment paperwork at a few companies. Generally, you just mention you have side jobs and they okay it. Or you ignore it entirely and nobody notices.
I don’t think so. Or at most it talks about “reasonable effort” or something vague like that.
/someone who discovered an over-employed person on his team and wondered the same thing
Fascinating. My locality is usually kinda lax but it's something that we have.
I would have thought that with the litigious culture in the US and non-competes etc... this would all be watertight. Seems kinda ridiculous that with a non-compete you can't work for a competitor once you've quit but you're free to do so while you still work for your employer, lol.
I think these might soon be called Soham clauses, to be a bit cheeky.
Employment contracts in the US are rare.
Employment contracts that are reduced to a single explicit written agreement are relatively rare in the US, most employment contracts are implied by conduct.
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> Employment contracts in the US are rare.
Really? Does that mean what it say: you get a job and you do not get a written contract?
I don't think, in 38 years of working in 3 different countries, I've ever NOT had a written contract, even for temp or contractor roles. WTAF?
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Maybe Earth could stop policing entire populations (a very profitable enterprise) of various ecosystems and return to policing the small percentage of the population that abuses the ecosystem for their own selfish gain? Generally, a small percentage of any population abuses the ecosystem and creates restrictions for the population as a whole. Fix THAT problem, and you solve a myriad of other related problems for entire populations. Character questions are forbidden in the USA as they might lead to 'discrimination.' But 'discrimination' is where one discerns a preference between something desirable and something undesirable? Historically the abuse of 'discrimination' created the legal restrictions that foster this situation where a candidate's character cannot be assessed accurately. Soham proves that the people doing the interviewing are less discerning than they believe themselves to be. Good character seldom is discerned during an interview. Also 'good' character relative; what 'Christians' or 'Westerners' consider to be good character is different from what other cultures accept or tolerate. In summary, caveat emptor.
I'm worried people are going to start going after burnt out employees thinking they're over employed because it looks the same from the outside and there's no way to prove a negative.
I don't think anyone has the morals or trust anymore for the way we used to do corporate work.
Like a cheater and a jerk. Doesn't matter how talented someone is, if they're too arrogant, then the no *sshole rule means they must adapt to expectations or find somewhere else.
If they're so talented, then they should probably work on their own thing.
This field would be so much better off good engineering meant being good at following through on projects instead of being good at gaming interviews.
Source: anonymous account created one day ago.
k
did you notice any hints of him cheating on the interview with LLMs? If he's actually that good for real, I'm surprised why he won't want to do it legit, he'd go way further than scamming people
> If he's actually that good for real, I'm surprised why he won't want to do it legit, he'd go way further than scamming people
If you can get and hold dozens of concurrent full-time engineering jobs by scamming people, you can get much further much more quickly than is possible in any one of the full-time engineering jobs you can get.
This is obviously unethical, relies on non-guaranteed success, and falls apart if people are able to effectively claw back your gains from scamming, but that's not (obviously) enough to outweigh the desire for quick returns for some people.
> effectively claw back your gains from scamming
Do you really think several busy startups are going to band up and sue a person (esp in California)?
Well. Was George Santos an anomaly or proving of a hypothesis? If the hypothesis were structured like so:
If we have a pile of shit, surely shit eaters will be attracted to it
In which case George Santos is just a very testable hypothesis (it's like watching a 5 year old walk up to a cookie jar when the adults are gone). Congress attracts a certain type. What did you attract and why is an unavoidable question. In fact, it's scientific. You would think tech people would recognize the locust of non technical people entering the industry as some kind of an indicator, some measurable thing ...
We need to run more formal scientific experiments to document what happened in this industry.
What was your interview process like? I think that would be helpful information in helping design a better vetting procedure to avoid this in the future.
This is what we call a hustler.
Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t, but keeping the myth going even if it comes with bad stories is valuable.
Do companies not call references or former places of employment anymore? I am surprised he kept the scam so long when these jobs could've just called his previous work who'd tell them a story like you said.
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I don't doubt he's in the 1% or 0.1% of candidates you're interviewing, but there is one very simple solution startups could apply to make it easier to find top talent -> remove "US ONLY" from their job listings.
You might not be aware, but hiring outside of the country causes a whole slew of other points of friction and complexity. It actually isn't "one very simple solution" in practice, which is why many startups don't do it.
I have done it as a hiring manager, it's really not that hard.
1. You can use an employer of record service which costs a few hundred bucks a month – it seems like a lot... but if I'm already paying a recruiter £12 to £25k to find me a senior data engineer in London on £80 to 120k that is going to want to WFH 3/4 days a week, I will gladly pay £400/mo for an EOR service
2. You can also not hire them, and use their services as independent contractors instead. I've never had an issue doing this with my finance teams, as long as the contractor submits a valid invoice they don't care who they are. Plus, it's good for cashflow (net 30 to net 90 is pretty standard) and the hire gets a nice tax save on their end.
I do understand that at large companies it can be tricky, but IMHO at startups there is little excuse. I suppose it all doesn't matter if you're playing with unlimited silicon valley VC money, I've only ever had to deal with european investors and they love a bit of smart frugality.
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Lol because foreigners aren't known for being scammers.