Indian Youngster Fakes 90% of Resume, Holds Multiple Jobs, and Outperforms Silicon Valley AI Startups}
A young Indian professional faked 90% of his resume, held multiple positions simultaneously, and outperformed several Silicon Valley AI startups, raising questions about talent authenticity.
It’s not just Ultraman who’s in trouble this time.
In the era of large models, talent is the most scarce resource.
On this Thursday, half of Silicon Valley’s CEOs were discussing a talent named Soham Parekh, not because of his AI skills, but because of his extraordinary versatility.
The incident broke out on July 2nd when the founder of AI startup PlayGround posted a warning on Twitter:
The founder, Suhail Doshi, had previously recruited an Indian guy named Soham Parekh as an engineer. However, he found his work unsatisfactory and that he was holding multiple jobs, leading to his dismissal. Little did he know, this was just a small part of Soham Parekh’s astonishing story.
Who is Soham Parekh? The employer, Suhail Doshi, shared Soham’s resume, which seemed impressive at first glance: a CS master’s degree from Georgia Tech, with experience at several startups.
But Suhail estimated that 90% of the content was fabricated, and most links were dead.
Additionally, the claimed work locations were fake. After hiring Soham Parekh, PlayGround even sent a laptop to a fake address, which was returned unopened. During his employment, Soham did little meaningful work and kept making excuses.
As the CEO of the startup, Suhail said he tried to persuade Soham, explaining the consequences of holding multiple jobs, and gave him a chance to reform. But after a week, he had to fire him.
It might seem like just a typical resume fraud story, but the founder of PlayGround revealed that at least six other companies had encountered similar situations.
The cheated founders shared screenshots of messages from other company founders complaining: “We just hired Soham Parekh,” “He’s in our dev team,” “I invited him for a trial next week.”
Soham Parekh appears to be a master at passing interviews quickly.
The incident drew widespread attention in the AI community. Well-known AI blogger Sebastian Raschka responded, questioning: “His GitHub projects, blog posts, and papers are all public. How can he fake those?”
Suhail could only express his frustration, saying all these were fabricated.
Some also pointed out that Soham Parekh once asked them for a recommendation during job hunting, and they had already suspected something was off.
The companies that fell for this scam are clearly not few. Soon, Marcus Lowe, founder of Create.xyz, commented: “We also hired Soham Parekh. The absurd part is that our company required him to work on-site, but he only stayed one day before making a series of lies claiming he couldn’t come.”
Another manager who employed him said he was confident and eloquent in meetings but had hardly completed any work. Other developers often had to take over his tasks to keep projects moving. He even behaved inappropriately at times.
One CEO said, “I was interviewing him yesterday, and I was stunned.”
Haz Hubble, founder of Pally.AI, shared his experience: “We once offered Soham Parekh a founding engineer position, but he refused because he didn’t want to live with us.”
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Some onlookers asked: If Soham Parekh is juggling multiple roles, why does he use the same name in different companies? Isn’t that more likely to expose him?
But another hypothesis emerged: perhaps Soham Parekh is a collective role used by multiple people?
Engineer as a Service—what a human role-playing as an AI agent.
Public opinion is growing more skeptical. Some now wonder: if your company’s CEO never received an email from Soham Parekh, is it because your company isn’t influential enough?
As investigations deepen, more evidence surfaces. There is some indication that Soham Parekh might be a real person. Back in June 2021, Meta’s blog featured his story as an open-source contributor.
The author interviewed Soham Parekh, who contributed to WebXR, creating immersive AR/VR media experiences funded by the US Hackers Union (MLH).
He also left a blurry photo:
The author appreciated Soham Parekh’s ongoing contributions to Facebook’s open-source ecosystem. Now, with his career taking such a strange turn, what do you think?
Recently, Soham Parekh reached out proactively.
Is this a rising star in AI?
References:
https://x.com/Suhail/status/1940287384131969067
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2021/06/01/webxr-contributor-story-soham-parekh/