140-hour week: He works for four companies at the same time – then everything is exposed

It's finally the weekend! For most people, five days of work are enough to allow them to indulge in some relaxation. Soham P. probably had little time for that. The programmer living in India had been constantly looking for new, additional jobs – even though he already had several.

This is evident from a veritable wave of social media posts from Silicon Valley. It was sparked by Suhail Doshi, CEO of the AI ​​company Playground AI. "Just to make it public: There's this guy named Soham P. (in India) who works at three or four startups at once," he posted, using his full name on X. "I fired him after his first week and told him to stop ripping people off. A year later, he hasn't stopped."

The post has now been seen by more than 22 million X users – and a surprising number of them have had their own experiences with P. "Oh my God, we hired him a week ago," marvels Flo Crivello, CEO of the startup Lindy. "I just fired him. He was incredibly good in the interviews." Dozens of other high-ranking tech workers reported similar experiences.

Technical skills never seem to have been a problem. Everyone attests to P.'s enormous expertise and excellent programming skills. It's just that companies had always noticed, in one way or another, that he also worked for others. "He was the first programmer we hired," recalls Matt Parkhurst from the AI ​​startup Antimetal. "He's very smart and personable; I enjoyed working with him. But we quickly realized he was working for multiple companies, so we let him go."

Tair Asim, Head of Product at Sync Labs, even takes responsibility. "It's my fault. The last time I spoke to Soham alone, I advised him, knowing we were going to lay him off, to apply to several companies. Because he was so technically good. If only I had known..."

Sohan P. himself has since confirmed the allegations. "It's true, I worked for several companies at once," he admits on the TBPN podcast. He was in financial trouble. "I simply saw the opportunity to get out of that situation faster by working for several companies at once," he explains. Because he doesn't get much sleep, he averages 140 hours of work per week. "Nobody likes working that long." He declines to comment on exactly what his financial challenges were. "I'm not proud of what I did."

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Whether his strategy was successful, however, is questionable. Despite the extremely heavy workload he reported, P. appears to have rarely lived up to his expectations. Marcus Lowe, founder of the AI ​​platform Create, told The Verge that he kept trying to postpone his first day of work. First, it was a trip, then he called in sick. "Something felt wrong," Lowe said.

Then he discovered that P. had continued to upload work to his page on the programming directory Github – even while he was on sick leave. Among other things, he had programmed for another startup. "I started doing some research and discovered that he appeared in their marketing materials," he recalls. "Even though he hadn't mentioned the company on his resume." Ultimately, however, he was fired because he couldn't finish a project.

But the revelations don't seem to be the end of his career: He's just been hired by Darwin, a video AI startup, Darwin CEO Sanjit Juneja confirmed to The Verge. "I will work for this company and only this company. They're the only ones currently giving me a chance," P. assured X. He doesn't seem particularly insightful in the post. "I'm pissed off. But I have something to prove."

This article is a reprint of Stern, which, like Capital, is owned by RTL Deutschland. It will be available here on Capital.de for ten days. After that, you can find it at www.stern.de.