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A software engineer became Xs main character last week after being outed as a serial moonlighter at multiple Silicon Valley startups. PSA: theres a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 34 startups at the same time, wrote Suhail Doshi, the founder of AI design company Playground, on X on Tuesday. Hes been preying on YC companies and more. Beware. PSA: theres a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. Hes been preying on YC companies and more. Beware.I fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying / scamming people. He hasnt stopped a year later. No more excuses.— Suhail (@Suhail) July 2, 2025 In the comments, founders of other Silicon Valley companies shared similar stories of interviewing, hiring, and often firing the engineer. LMFAOOO. I INTERVIEWED THIS GUY YESTERDAY. BRO, IM DYINGG, Cluely CEO Roy Lee posted on X. Digger CEO Igor Zalutski said his company nearly hired him, adding he seemed so sharp and no-bs during the interviews. LMFAOOO I INTERVIEWED THIS GUY YESTERDAY BRO IM DYINGG— Roy (@im_roy_lee) July 2, 2025 Following the revelation, a database named SohamTracker sprang up, revealing that Parekh has held at least 19 jobs since 2021at least five of which he started in just the last two months. This is pretty hilarious actually. lmao. could be a skit on silicon valley, one X user wrote. The /r/overemployed king, another added. On Thursday, Parekh appeared on the podcast TBPN to address the accusations. He admitted he was driven to juggle multiple jobs due to dire financial circumstances. He added: I just thought that if I worked multiple places, I can basically help myself alleviate the situation I was in much faster. Parekh claimed to have been working 140-hour weeksroughly 20 hours a daywith many of the roles requiring in-person attendance. Unsurprisingly, he noted that he’s known among friends for not sleeping. While the hustle might be admirable to some, Parekh is hardly alone in embracing Silicon Valleys so-called grindset mentality. The subreddit r/overemployed currently hosts nearly half a million members, where users trade stories about secretly holding down multiple remote jobs. We roast Soham Parekh, but remember your companys making you do five peoples jobs on one persons salary, one X user pointed out. We roast Soham Parekh, but remember your companys making you do five peoples jobs on one persons salary.— Devaiah Bopanna (@devaiahPB) July 5, 2025 Ironically, Parekhs exposure has ended up working in his favorhe landed a new job at Darwin, an AI video remixing startup. Still, his actions may have consequences for others in similar situations. After the Soham saga, pretty sure very few YC startups will hire remote Indians, wrote Varunram Ganesh, head of growth at payroll platform Warp, on X. Classic case of one guy exploiting a high-trust society, which leads to downfall of all the others around him. After the Soham saga, pretty sure very few YC startups will hire remote Indians. Classic case of one guy exploiting a high trust society which leads to downfall of all the others around him.— Varunram Ganesh (@varunramg) July 2, 2025 But everyone’s favorite founding engineer insists he meant no harm. I dont really care much about the money, he told TBPN. I was really into it for building.
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E-Commerce
Alls fair on Capitol Hill. In response to the Trump administrations wide-ranging science cuts and grant cancellations, researchers and scientists staged a science fair in the lobby of a Congressional building in Washington D.C. to bring awareness to what potential knowledge the United States could miss out on as a result. The fair is being held just days after Trump signed the Big, Beautiful Bill into law, which codifies many spending cuts and funding cancellations for scientific endeavors of all typesfrom climate research to medical trials. Billions of dollars that were destined for researchers and scientists in the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and other organizations. BREAKING: Scientists are staging a science fair in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled. pic.twitter.com/uaSM66Q31q— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) July 8, 2025 In effect, the U.S. is ceding its place as a leader in research and developmenta role it has held for decades, and which has led to the development of cures for diseases and disorders, advanced military technology, and, of course, put a man on the moon. The funding cuts and cancellations are widespread, and its difficult to lasso them all. But even with whats been cancelled or clawed back so far, Trump is looking to reduce spending on science further. In the budget request he released in May, billions more would be cut from NIH, NSF, the Department of Education, and completely eliminate funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, and more. In response, Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), released a statement saying just how dangerous the cuts could be. If enacted, the FY26 budget request would end Americas global scientific leadership. The cuts to science would imperil our nations future health, security and prosperity. This budget proposal stands in stark contrast to the Presidents call for a renewed commitment to American scientific leadership, he wrote. Congress has demonstrated a bipartisan commitment to investment in research and must do so again to answer the Presidents call. Thats all to say that despite the demonstrations by scientists, and the potential long-term economic effects of cuts, the Trump administration may still not be done. Just within the past couple of days, Trump cut off researchers in the U.K. from utilizing data collected by U.S. satellites to study pollution and climate change, according to reporting from the U.K.-based The i Paper. Per that report, Rachel Cauley, OMB communications director at the White House, responded to worried scientists by saying that President Trump ran on defunding woke, weaponized, and wasteful government and his budget proudly does that by cutting funding for the Green New Scam, projects like gender-responsive agricultural adaptation in Guatemala and Mexico, and Equity Climate and Health workshops for transgender women, and those who identify as non-binary. Under Trumps leadership, the US is funding real science again.
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E-Commerce
Trumps big, beautiful bill has a lot of moving parts, but one thing it wont do is end taxes on Social Security benefits, as he has claimed. The bill, which passed last week, slashes Medicaid, food stamps and clean energy incentives to pay for a huge package of Republican priorities, including staffing up ICE and extending tax cuts from Trumps first term. It also makes some changes to Social Security, but the truth is more complex than what Trump is touting. In a press release last week, the White House declared that No tax on social security is a reality under the new bill. Promises made, promises kept, the White House wrote. To further muddy the waters, the Social Security Administration praised the Republican mega-bill in a mass email blast rife with misleading claims to more than 60 million Americans. For nearly 90 years, Social Security has been a cornerstone of economic security for older Americans, Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, a former fintech CEO appointed by Trump to lead the agency, wrote. In the email, the agency claimed the new bill eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries and described it as a historic step forward for Americas seniors. The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation’s economy, the email stated. The problem? The bill doesnt actually change the tax code to end taxes for Social Security benefits. And you wouldnt know it from the grand language in the email, but the tax relief it does provide comes with an expiration date thats just a few years away. For a workhorse agency that generally stays in its lane and doesnt wade directly into political discussions, the Social Security Administration emails tone was enough to raise eyebrows among some recipients. On top of that, the departure from communication norms also set off alarms for some seniors who are wary of being targeted by phishing schemes after years of being warned about exactly that. What the bill actually does While it doesnt actually eliminate federal income taxes on Social Security benefits, the bill does add a new, temporary bonus tax deduction that many seniors over 65 can claim. It offers single filers with an income below $75,000 an additional $6,000 deduction or couples making less than $150,000 a $12,000 deduction. The deduction phases out incrementally above those levels and cuts off above $175,000 for single filers and $250,000 for couples. The new senior bonus deduction will only be in effect from tax years 2025 to 2028, unless Congress intervenes to extend it. The temporary bonus deduction can reduce overall income tax for some seniors, but it is not a direct tax cut on Social Security benefits, nor will it apply to everyone who receives Social Security. The new deduction wont apply to recipients between the ages of 62 and 64 around 5% of people who receive Social Security nor will it move the needle for high earners or Social Security recipients with an income too low to be taxed to begin with. The new bonus deduction is expected to mostly affect middle and upper middle income households that fall within its income parameters. In the short term, fewer Social Security recipients will owe taxes on their benefits, though more than 60% of them already didnt owe taxes on those benefits prior to the bill according to analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Short term thinking The new temporary deduction for seniors will give some households a tax reprieve, but like the Big Beautiful Bills other core achievements, those tax perks may come at a steep cost. Taxes to Social Security were first implemented in 1983 to improve the federal benefit programs long term health. That revenue is specifically earmarked for trusts that benefit Medicare and Social Security, which means any reduction to the tax revenue generated by those taxes takes a bite out of the program itself. The Social Security program is a lifeline for retirement-age Americans, but those benefits as we know them are hurtling toward extinction. Unless a dramatic intervention succeeds, millions of retirees expected to see their benefits shrinking by 2033. But with Trumps Big Beautiful Bill signed into law, that looming insolvency date just inched one year closer, according to new analysis.
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