What Developers Can Learn from the Guy Who Landed Multiple YC Jobs in a Tough Market

How Soham Parekh’s case can help you land a tech job, even from abroad.

If you’ve been following tech news lately, you probably came across the wild story of Soham Parekh, the Indian developer who managed to hold, allegedly, at least five jobs simultaneously, many of them at Y Combinator-backed startups. And he did it while living in India.

While the revelation set up a doomscroll rumble, raised some eyebrows, and stirred up plenty of memes and virtue signaling alike, there’s a bigger takeaway here for anyone dealing with today’s competitive tech job market: How did he even land those jobs in the first place?

The short answer: Parekh’s cold outreach, self-presentation and interview style were exceptional.

Regardless of whether you approve of his “overemployed” lifestyle, there’s no denying he cracked the code of how to stand out, get noticed, and secure offers from top startups when competition is brutal. And he made it by playing by the rules. Even if he used a couple of interesting tactics, which include cold emailing, he didn’t “black hat” his way past an ATS. Neither he impersonated, let’s say, an OpenAI engineer from Stanford. He was purely Soham.

In this article, I’ll break down what developers can learn from Parekh’s approach (without condoning or advocating for juggling multiple full-time roles) and share practical takeaways and blueprints to improve your own job hunt.

Thank you to Eli Gündüz for editing this piece. As a Principal Tech Recruiter at Atlassian and the founder of Careersy Coaching, Eli knows what works. I highly recommend following Eli on LinkedIn, where he shares practical, actionable advice for tech professionals almost every day.

The rise of the “serial moonlighter” and why companies hate overemployment

Moonlighting means holding multiple full-time jobs or working many shifts. This is a common practice in many economies, especially in blue-collar roles. For example, people who work in retail in the U.S. and interact with people in a pharmacy on the day shift might also work in a gas station on the night shift, to make ends meet. And when remote jobs became the norm, maybe during the pandemic, plenty of white-collar workers started their own version of moonlighting, called being “overemployed.”

Overemployed workers have more than one job. Their multiple jobs are always remote, and very frequently are kept a secret. Overemployment is generally frowned upon by employers, especially when it violates exclusivity clauses, poses a confidentiality liability, or leads to poor performance in the workplace. (Critical lesson: Soham got fired because he didn’t do much at his jobs, not because he had many jobs. There’s a difference in that.)

To be crystal clear: I’m not endorsing overemployment. This is not a guide to working five jobs at once. Instead, I will dissect Parekh’s job search strategy, especially the parts that helped him stand out from the crowd.

Parekh took multilevel employment to an extreme: according to TechCrunch, he held jobs at many YC companies at the same time. The sheer fact that he passed interviews at all those companies, and made the final rounds of many more, suggests a few things: Firstly, that his resume was sharp and results-focused. Secondly, that his emails and outreach were customized and compelling. And lastly, that he knew how to pitch his value directly to the right people.

This is perhaps where most jobseekers struggle. They fire off generic resumes and blast LinkedIn messages to any recipient, then wonder why their inbox stays quiet. Parekh, on the other hand, was deliberate, and that strategy is what software engineers who’re looking for a U.S. job can learn from.

📬 Soham’s applications started with an email

One of the most impressive aspects of Parekh’s hustle was his cold outreach game.

I reviewed several of the emails Parekh sent to startups, like Happenstance, Cassidy, JustPaid, Rork, and Moondream, and his applications share some key traits.

But before noting the key traits, I’ll dissect one of his emails: The Moondream email.

Case study: I decode Parekh’s email to Moondream

I want to explain what I observed that Parekh was carrying out. I would suggest you first read the Moondream email so you know what I’m talking about. Here it goes:

The basic substance of his email: He started with a “Hi,” without a name, without even introducing himself, and then proceeded to name-drop a ton of companies, stacks, and systems. Actually, his Moondream email, which I’ll be replicating in a template, name-drops:

Four companies.

1. DynamoAl (dynamo.ai)

2. Union.ai (union.ai)

3. Synthesia (synthesia.io)

4. Alan (alan.app)

Eight distinct tech stacks.

• Frontend: React, Next.js

• Backend Languages: Python, Node, Go

• APIs/Protocols: GraphQL, gRPC

• Infrastructure: AWS, GCP, Kubernetes (K8s, jargony)

Six systems or even buzzwords.

1. Internal micro-services

2. Data ingestion pipelines

3. Production-grade frontend components (React)

4. Complex workflows

5. DAG visualizations

6. Drag-and-drop component canvas

So, Parekh managed to fit a remarkable eighteen distinct keywords or buzzwords in a single ~180-word message.

To finish his message, wrote that he’d love to be part of Moondream and gave the founder a call to action: He told the founder he’d like to hear from them soon. So that was the cue for the recipient to say: “Alright, this guy is inviting me to do something, which is to get in touch with him so he can work with us.”

So curious. He didn’t introduce himself in the usual way by addressing the recipient with their name, yet he got interviews from this email… There’s something to learn from this.

Okay, now that I’ve examined his email, let’s talk about some traits in his messaging. The following traits more or less cover every email I read from him online.

1. Giving them some personalization (and avoiding too much AI)

It's always nice to have a good generic base to go off from. Still, to make your email great, you have to have that specific company in mind.

Tailoring each email to the company is what makes it sharp, memorable, and yours. Most people skip the tailoring. Don’t. Soham clearly didn’t skip it.

Besides, try to add a sprinkle of your personality, so your message doesn’t get lost in a sea of same-sounding emails.

Parekh, for example, wasn’t afraid to be bluntly authentic, albeit a bit self-deprecating. In an email to Happenstance, he wrote: “I don't have many hobbies outside coding. I am not athletic, bad at singing, don't drink, can't dance. Building is the only thing I am good at. At this point, I want to be a part of taking something from 0 → 1 or 1 → 100. I just want to be heads down chasing that goal.”

In some of his emails, he mentions why he’s reaching out to that company; for example, he mentioned, in an email, that he was “inspired” by how the company was “revolutionizing revenue collections,” and that was a reason to reach out.

Another way to say that:

• “I’m reaching out because I’m inspired by how you’re optimizing LLMs so that they’re better at teaching young students to express themselves.”

• “I’m reaching out because I’ve read your AI alignment manifesto and was inspired to work with a group of people who’re clearly serious about the long-term outlook of AI.”

You can borrow from that. Point out a feature you admire, a problem you’d love to solve, or something you read in their blog. And tell them how you can add to their mission. But note he doesn’t do this in every email.

🖊️ Get far away from AI, or work on the message until it looks like yours: If your English skills are rusty, I advise you to write your introductory email in your mother tongue and translate it with DeepL. Every time, each time, do that over generating your email with an LLM. If you end up using an LLM instead, then make sure that you collaborate with it until what’s written sounds like you. It’s another way of showing you did your homework.

Remember that attention spans are very precious, and you have seconds to stand out. Don’t waste your silver bullet with an “I’m not just a developer; I’m a ninja” AI-slop phrase. Since Soham didn't do it, you shouldn't either. (There’s even a spelling mistake in some of his emails.)

2. Being very clear and succinct

His emails weren’t overly long or flowery. They quickly conveyed what he had done and why he was reaching out now. No fluff.

Some of his emails were just at 180 words, while his longest ones were at 240 words. For your reference, that would read like a thread of six 280-character tweets, or would mean maybe just a 1/3 of a fully-printed A4 page. Perhaps stick to that as your limit.

Parekh was very explicit in mentioning what he had worked on. If you check my email dissection, you’ll see how I counted out 18 specific keywords in a 180-character passage. He proved his value by reciting names.

Eli underscores that adding specifics to your outreach makes it easier for recruiters to trust you, match you, and move you forward. Vague gets skipped. Clear gets replies.

Even though we aren’t sure Parekh attached his CV right off the bat, he did have a brief but polished resume on hand (shared on X by Suhail Doshi, CEO of Playground AI and the one who first exposed Soham’s shenanigans).

3. Realizing there was a job opening

Parekh seems to have contacted companies that were actively hiring. I can conclude this after checking some of this email subjects, like “Engineers Opportunity at Skynet.” So, even if he sent cold emails, he wasn’t connecting with companies that were not considering software engineering roles. If this sounds too obvious, sorry that I underline it. But think it’s a smart detail of his strategy: He wrote because there was demand. There is another component which makes him so effective, and I’ll discuss it right now.

4. Knowing whom to contact… and playing it with people of your background

Instead of applying through a dashboard, Parekh seems to have directly written an email to his potential employers. So he found the right person, obtained their email addresses, reached out directly, and pitched himself as a “passionate builder” who wanted to help an idea grow “from 0 → 1 or 1 → 100.” Parekh probably found all those founder names on LinkedIn.

So, how did he determine who was the right person to write to? Was it just because they were founders, and as such decision-makers… or did he contemplate something else?

If you check twice, you’ll notice that a lot of founders Parekh connected with were of Indian heritage. I can’t determine if this made a difference or not, but that’s a pattern to observe, and a hunch tells me that, yes, it did make a difference. Parekh was clever enough to get in touch with people with whom he shares a background. With cold outreach getting swamped by LLM-generated emails, this was, indeed, an excellent strategy to break the ice.

One of my latest articles is about the wealth of networking and I cover how important it is to get in touch with people with a shared background. So if you’re of Brazilian origin, maybe you can try sending those intros in English, but with a pinch of idiomatic Portuguese here and there, to Brazilian-heritage YC founders. Remember that you need to prove you can communicate in English well, but weaving in a saudade or parabéns pra você won’t hurt if you want the founder from São Paulo to recognize a countryman.

You can also get in touch with someone who graduated from your same school. My article on networking has a handy guide on how to filter your connections on LinkedIn so you can check who you shared a school with.

Bottom line. If you’re reaching out to startups, it’s a smart move to contact the founders directly—they’re often still hands-on and open to conversations that could move the needle. As the company grows to a mid-size, your best bet might be the CTO, who typically still plays a central role in hiring and team shaping. Once you’re dealing with larger organizations, you’ll want to shift your focus to titles like VP of Engineering or Head of Engineering, people who have hiring influence but aren’t buried in day-to-day technical firefighting. You need to find the person close enough to the action to care, but senior enough to open a door.

Eli, who’s a Principal Tech Recruiter at Atlassian, says that this strategy applies to big tech companies too, including his own Atlassian, but also Google and Meta. Another great way to find founders, he says, is by Googling recent Seed funding rounds and your target region or industry. You'll be able to find founder names and CTO names very easily.

📄 What his resume got right

While the resume itself wasn’t radical (and couldn’t hold up against a standard background check), it followed many of the best practices I discussed recently on a special page on The Global Move. It's short, clean and shows quantifiable results including metrics and brief project descriptions. Most importantly, it is a resume that speaks to YC-style startups because they value ownership and want product-minded engineers.

Keep in mind that YC, Silicon Valley and the United States all prefer the one- or two-page resume, so Soham’s one-pager was a good fit for his target companies. But, like Eli underlines, here’s the thing about lenght: CV length expectations vary by region. In Australia, Germany, the UK, and much of Europe, 2 to 4 pages is perfectly acceptable, especially for senior or technical roles. What matters more is relevance and readability and not strict page count.

So, if you’re targeting a market different from Bay Area companies, don’t sell yourself short by trimming out your best achievements just to meet an arbitrary length. Instead, aim for impactful, well-structured content that gives the reader a clear reason to move you forward.

You can also check out how to get a job using LinkedIn to help you optimize your profile.

💥Crushing the interview requires you to… be good, and to practice

Look. This guy is a great cold-email drafter and an exceptional connection-hunter. But the other part of the story is that he’s, reportedly, a great engineer, and he’s good at giving that impression during interviews.

Across multiple companies—like Digger, AIVideo.com, Reworkd, and Antimetal—founders used the same words to describe Parekh: he crushed the interview. Arkadiy Telegin, co-founder of AI startup Leaping AI, said, “He really crushed my interview. I interviewed around 50 people in the prior two weeks before talking to him, and he passed, by far, all of the people I interviewed.” Jordan Dearly, co-founder of Vapi, said Soham was “the best technical interview” he’s seen.

Digger went in-depth on why they hired Soham, even though they fired him the same day he started. Igor Zalutski, their founder and CEO, called him “a brilliant engineer.” Digger uses a specific interviewing style modeled on early-stage startup needs: no whiteboard puzzles, no take-home tests, just an open-ended system design discussion based on real-world business problems. Candidates are asked to prototype a solution to a known product and justify their design choices and trade-offs.

Zalutski said the best candidates treat it like a game, and they entertain bold ideas, look into multiple solutions, and keep the conversation relaxed. And Parekh did exactly that. Zalutski actually implied that he has yet to meet someone who excels at this interview style and isn’t an outstanding engineer. That’s high praise.

Want a bottom line? You actually need to prove you’re a good engineer to get a YC job, or, you need to be sensational at clearing interviews, and that comes from practice.

Like Eli, who runs Careersy Coaching, told me: Interviews are like high-stakes exams. And you don’t pass those by being naturally smart. Rather than that, you overcome them by preparing like a builder.

That means identifying your weak spots and training against them with intent. So, if you struggle with algorithms, focus on LeetCode patterns instead of solving random problems. If you tend to ramble in interviews, script and rehearse your stories like you would refine a feature before release.

If system design throws you off, practice structuring solutions under time constraints. Confidence is a byproduct of focused reps.

So when the moment comes, you’re not relying on luck, and instead, you’ve engineered your readiness, just like any good developer would. This is what Soham did so well.

🧠 What you can learn from him

So what are the ethical, sustainable takeaways from this whole saga? Besides knowing that yes, you can get a YC job while still living outside the U.S. Yes, you can get… Advice on how to write better cold emails!

I’ll share two small templates that are inspired by, but are not entirely like, Soham’s emails. I would rather not give you a copycat template and kick off a mimicking-email spree! I’m a recruiter, and I know that doesn’t improve how things work.

Template 1: Based on Parekh’s email to JustPaid—a company in which he didn’t get the job!

Subject: (Company name) Opportunity

Hi (first name),

I have been following (company) since (specific reason), and I’m really impressed by (insert company achievement).

My name is (your name), a (your role and seniority and passion) and would love to bring my experience with (specific skill/project) to (company name).

I'd love to talk to you about the chance to join your team and help (company name) with (specific skillset). Would you be open to a quick 15-minute call?

Thanks,
(first name)

For your reference, this is a screen capture of his email:

Want to hear my take? This looks like the only AI-generated email from the bunch, and the founder who received this email implied that he didn’t hire Soham. So, here you have a confirmation: You shouldn’t use AI if you want to get a YC job. But since he did get a reply, the fair thing is to feature this template.

The second template I’m sharing below is more or less aligned with that Moondream email.

Template 2: Based on Parekh’s email to Rork

Subject: Helping (startup name) move faster on (X feature)

Hi,

I’ve been following (startup name) since I saw your (launch/HN post/product update). Super impressed by what you're building.

Optional personal touch: include personal experiences, hobbies or whatever you feel like. The phrase “don’t drink, can't dance” by Parekh has already been used, so come up with your own!

I’m (your name), a (role) with (X years) of experience in (relevant skill). I noticed you’re working on (specific feature/challenge) and wanted to reach out about joining your team as a (role name). I worked on similar things at (company/project). Besides, I’ve worked at (company Y) as a (role) doing (skills/projects).

In this paragraph, don’t be afraid to name-drop companies, skills, tech stacks or any buzzword that can make an impact on the reader. Don’t just stick to two roles because the template says so— it's meant to feel unique to each user.

I’d love the chance to contribute to (company name)’s mission and help shape its technology and culture. Would you be open to a quick chat?

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Best,
(first name)

Use this as a starting point and tweak it per job. Always personalize. Always be direct.

Final thoughts for engineers

It's clear from Soham Parekh's story that how you present yourself and who you write to are very important to reach the interview stage. But, to get the YC job, you actually need to excel at the interview. You need the full package: First-class PR and ability to clear interviews with technical chops. The latter takes time to learn. But the former? You can actually borrow it from him.

While few would advocate juggling five full-time jobs, his cold emails show how a well researched, human approach targeted to the right people can get you miles ahead of the competition. He chose to name-drop a ton of technology stacks and other companies with .ai domains to call the attention of founders and raise above the crowd. And he certainly achieved it.

So if you have experience in ten or twelve tech stacks and four relevant companies, make sure to refer to them in your human-written email, and avoid the fluff at all costs. His self-deprecating attitude of “I only know how to build, I’m sorry” looks like a stylish move, but he already wore it, so you’ll have to think of something different.

Soham Parekh did not relocate to perform his jobs. He was actually based in India all the time. Many founders commented on this, and implied that Soham had told them that he had the paperwork underway to move to Silicon Valley. And that stunt made many founders hire him because they thought his permits were being processed. As a recruiter, that’s not a ploy I can stand by. If you want to live and work abroad, I’d rather suggest you to start looking for relocation-friendly jobs, like the ones I continually feature.

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