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- 🙅🏻♂️ Soham's saga
🙅🏻♂️ Soham's saga
Inside: Ciena is hiring in engineering and customer support. Plus: Zillow CEO doubles down on remote benefits, early Prime Day home office deals, nomad life turning sour, and more.
Remote Source
July 07, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Good Morning,
The internet was taken aback last week by a young man named Soham Parekh, when it was revealed he conned his way into working remotely for multiple tech companies at once — at least 10 tech companies at various times that we know about — in recent years.
On paper, he knew how to look like an ideal candidate, and it’s likely he’s a pretty good software engineer. But his process was far from perfect: he would accept a job, and the employer usually caught on within the first few weeks that he wasn’t really working.
According to CNBC, tech startup founder Marcus Lowe “said Parekh aced his in-person interview back in February and even outperformed most candidates. But as his first day of work approached, more and more issues kept arising.
Whether it was that he was sick or that he had family visiting, Lowe said, Parekh would come up with excuse after excuse for why he couldn’t show up to work. He said that at first they seemed believable, until he began to look into Parekh’s GitHub account.”
It raises questions, unfortunately, about employee ethics when working remotely.
Remote workers are already hyperaware of the scrutiny placed on us, and the importance of especially clear communication with managers and direct reports in order to build trust.
When people like Soham take advantage of that trust, especially in a way that produced absolutely no value for any company he worked for, it’s a setback for all of us and the general shift to accommodate remote work.
COMPANY SPOTLIGHT
Ciena Corporation provides high-speed networking equipment and software that helps telecom carriers and cloud providers efficiently manage and transport large volumes of data across global networks.
63 open roles, primarily in Engineering and Customer Support
Ciena has 8,000+ employees and offices across the globe; remote roles will specify which country the employee needs to be located in.
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NEED TO KNOW
Remote work headlines:
It’s time to rethink return-to-office policies, as many of them are likely more about control than collaboration (The Business Journals)
She left office culture for “freelance solitude” — now she works remotely and earns triple what she made before (Business Insider)
Zillow’s CEO doubles down on remote work, saying they now have employees in all 50 states (Fortune)
Experts discuss employees’ options as return-to-office mandates grow (CTV News)
How to stand out when applying to remote jobs (🎥 The Street)
Living the life of a digital nomad seems appealing, but turns sour for some (The Guardian)
BARGAIN BIN
Early Prime Day
PCWorld rounded up some great home office furniture deals ahead of Amazon’s Prime Day. Several great chairs and desks are included; if you’ve been eyeing any home office upgrades, this is worth a look, featuring brands like FlexiSpot, Fezibo, and Staples.
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