When being over-employed goes wrong...

Key Takeaways

Last week, the entire Silicon Valley startup ecosystem was brought to its knees by one man, the Sohon Perek. If you haven't heard this name yet, imagine this. You are a Silicon Valley startup founder. You've got VC money burning a hole in your pocket for some lame AI business idea. But the problem is that you need humanpowered engineers, good ones, and fast. If you happen to be one of these startup founders, there's a good chance you interviewed Sohon Pere. Hell, he might even be working at your startup right now because he's mastered the art of crushing the computer science interview that tons of companies have given this guy job offers, but rather than limit himself to just one, he decided to work at all of them. He's a developer who turned remote work into a multi-threaded concurrent career and broke the internet in the process. In today's video, we'll take a look at the current state of the job market in tech and find out how Sohon Perk was able to stay 10x over employed. It is July 7th, 2025, and you're watching the code report. The programming job market has been stuck in feast or famine mode for several years now. If you're looking to land your first job, entry-level positions are harder than ever to come by, and layoffs are still consistently happening at big tech. Although not technically fang, Microsoft just laid off 9,000 souls a few days ago. But FANG feels like a very outdated acronym in 2025. Going forward, I'll either use Mango or Gay Man. Just let me know which one you prefer in the comments. The job market's tough to break into right now, but if you have legit skills in machine learning and data science, you might find yourself getting nine figure offers from Zuckerbucks to poach you from scam Altman. Initially, Altman said that nobody took up Zuckerborg on his offer, but the new super intelligence roster at Meta would beg to differ, and OpenAI recruiters are seething on Twitter. Unfortunately though, AngularJS developers like me are not getting any nine-figure offers. The job market might be broken, but if you know how to exploit it, you can still make millions of dollars. So Perek is a talented software developer who focused all of his energy on mastering the interview process to impress people who make the hiring decisions. He would entice them with a flattering email about how awesome their company is, then had the actual lead code skills to crush the interview. Once hired, he would halfass just enough work to stay employed as long as possible while simultaneously doing the same thing at four or five other companies. If he was making 200k per job, he could easily clear a million dollars per year doing this. And even if he underperforms at a job, it could still take weeks or even months to fire him. Initially, people speculated that he was doing arbitrage by hiring a team of interns to make all of this possible. But he claims that he was working 120 hours per week and all of his code was organic and handcrafted by Soham himself. He's been running this grip since 2022 and didn't even rely on AI slop. He only got caught because the founder of Playground AI dropped this bombshell tweet that the guy was taking advantage of them. It quickly went viral because dozens of other startups realized that Sohom was working for them as well. He of course was quickly fired, but he became something of a folk hero in the tech world. And it's truly a badge of honor to have hired Sohom or to at least have interviewed him. If he never reached out for an interview, it's likely because your company sucks. But he's not the only guy doing this. There are many Sohs out there. The overemployed subreddit has 400,000 members with all sorts of people bragging about how they hold multiple remote jobs. Ultimately though, Soh received a lot of hate for his actions online and even said he's not proud of what he did. But the story has a happy ending. He entered into an exclusive relationship with Darwin AI and has a golden opportunity to start his own technical interview prep company. But you have 80,000 hours in your career. 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 40 years. That's a lot of time to make a positive impact on the world. And 80,000 hours, the sponsor of today's video, can help you do that. If you're young, you've probably heard advice like follow your passion, do what you love, and take the initiative. But these cliches are not based on evidence or data. Unlike the work of 80,000 Hours, which is a nonprofit that for the last 10 years has been researching the question of how do you find a fulfilling career that does good, too. Their website, which is entirely free, has tons of collected research on high impact careers along with job boards, podcasts, and a lot more. It's an incredible resource for anyone looking to start a high impact career or make a switch mid-career. Join the newsletter today to get a free copy of their in-depth career guide sent to your inbox. And remember, it's totally free because it's a nonprofit and could be the catalyst that changes your direction in life. This has been the Code Report. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next