Russell Pompeo, hiring manager at Topaz Labs, shared three takeaways from a job interview.
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When one recruiter received Silicon Valley’s notorious serial moonlighter Soham Parekh’s job application two years ago, he was immediately impressed.
This was two years before the young Mumbai-based engineer was exposed for working remotely at several Silicon Valley startups simultaneously.
“I was looking at his resume, and his resume was so good that even my CEO at the time pinged me and was, like, ‘Russ, this guy looks awesome. let’s talk to this guy,'” Russell Pompea, recruiting manager at AI video startup Topaz Labs, told CNBC Make It.
Pompea said Parekh sent his application via the company’s career page for a software engineering position on June 2, 2023, and that he decided to interview the young engineer over a phone call on June 12. CNBC Make It verified Parekh’s interview with Topaz Labs via screenshots.
At the time, Parekh listed AI-video startup Synthesia, as well as a lesser-known AI company, Bodo.ai, as previous employers on his resume.
Pompea said this combination of companies made him a really attractive candidate, so interviewing him was a no-brainer.
“I remember him being a very good communicator,” Pompea recalled from the initial screening. “That was one of my first notes: ‘Soham is a great communicator.’ I’ve talked to 1,000 software engineers or something over the last year, and they’re not usually very good at communicating.”
However, during the interview, Pompea picked up on a few red flags that ultimately stopped him from progressing Parekh to the next round.
“I think he learned some lessons from this interview, ” Pompea said.
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.”
Topaz Labs did not verify whether Parekh worked at the firms mentioned on his resume at the time as he did not progress to this stage of the screening process.
‘Red flags’
When Pompea tried to dig into the details of Parekh’s experience in the interview, he identified what he thought were “three major problems” with his responses.
“It looked like an amazing profile, even if it was someone who was relatively junior, but then he was missing a fair bit of actual details in the products that he built,” Pompea said.
When he pressed him about his work for Synthesia, Parekh was vague. “People usually have great command of the details,” Pompea noted.
“You almost never have to fire anybody because they can’t learn a new software language…the people that do end up getting fired have attitude problems, commitment problems.”
Russell Pompea
Recruiting manager at Topaz Labs
Pompea also spotted that the dates between Parekh’s experience at Synthesia and Bodo.ai overlapped, and he wasn’t able to come up with an adequate explanation for why.
“He told me that he was working at both full-time and that there was an overlap in his notice period … I wrote it down, like, this is a big red flag,” Pompea said.
Parekh’s decision to leave Synthesia also didn’t make sense to Pompea. The engineer claimed the company was growing too fast and he felt “pigeon-holed,” according to Pompea’s recollection.
“I asked him, ‘Did you try going to another team or another function?’ And he just totally skirted the question … you don’t usually just leave a top-tier, super high-paying company because you’re frustrated. You try to find another job [in the company] first.”
Topaz Labs requires employees to work on-site at its headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Parekh glossed over details about whether he was going to move to Dallas and said he was in New York at the time, according to Pompea.
More rigorous hiring processes
In early July, two years after Pompea interviewed Parekh, Suhail Doshi, the founder of Playground AI, took to X to warn other startups about the moonlighting engineer who he said is “preying on YC [Y Combinator] companies and more.”
Several startup founders then came forward about hiring Parekh, saying they fired him after seeing Doshi’s post.
Parekh said he started moonlighting in this way 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.
For Pompea, it was a relief that Topaz Labs did not hire Parekh.
“I think I was glad that we were not one of those companies that came out and said that we hired him and had to fire him. I would much rather be somebody who saw through it,” he said. “That being said, I actually feel a little bad for a lot of these companies, because these are people working in good faith.”
Pompea said people like Parekh make the job of a recruiter harder — but also emphasize the importance of vigorous screening.
AI startups move fast
As a hiring manager, Pompea said soft skills like teamwork and collaboration are just as crucial as technical skills — and sometimes fast-moving startups overlook these human qualities.
“What I’ve discovered [while] hiring for Topaz labs for two and a half years, but also lots of other similar companies, is that you almost never have to fire anybody because they can’t learn a new software language, or they can’t learn a new framework, or if there’s some sort of technical problem,” he explained.
“The people that do end up getting fired have attitude problems, commitment problems, or work rate problems.”
He said that many of the AI startups that Parekh applied to work at are “moving at 1,000 miles per hour,” and need to get products ready for launch within days. As a result, they may delay background checks until after the candidate is hired.
“Some of these startups might hire you two days after you do your final interview, and they’re like ‘Hey, it’s Thursday. Can you start Monday?'”
Ultimately, Pompea said that if Parekh cleaned up his act, then he’d have a bright future ahead of him. In fact, a number of startups that employed the engineer praised his technical skills, even amid the backlash against him.
“I also feel bad for the kid, too, like he’s a very smart kid. I hope that he changes and ends up having a good career,” Pompea added.
Soham Parekh didn’t respond to CNBC Make It’s request for comment.
