• Remote Source
  • Posts
  • đŸ™…đŸ»â€â™‚ïž Soham's saga

đŸ™…đŸ»â€â™‚ïž 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.

Author

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.

PRESENTED BY WORKWEEK’S I HATE IT HERE

HR is lonely. But it doesn’t have to be.

The best HR advice comes from those in the trenches. That’s what this is: real-world HR insights delivered in a newsletter from Hebba Youssef, a Chief People Officer who’s been there. Practical, real strategies with a dash of humor. Because HR shouldn’t be thankless—and you shouldn’t be alone in it.

Sponsored content

REMOTE SOURCE JOB BOARD

20,000+ jobs. Updated daily. Free access!

  • We host one of the best and largest remote job boards in the world.

  • Other remote job boards make you pay to access all jobs 👎 — but we don’t!

  • Anybody can browse, but you can also create a free account to save jobs you want to apply to.

  • Links to some popular job searches:

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 (đŸŽ„ 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.

đŸ€ HELPFUL LINKS

đŸ’Œ The Remote Source Job Board has 20,000+ open remote and hybrid jobs, all from hand-picked, established companies, and is updated daily. It’s completely free to access all jobs, unlike most major remote job boards.

✅ The Remote Source Job Guide is a 30-page document that includes 60 job boards for remote job seekers, and contains links to dozens of resources for current and prospective remote workers. It’s completely free for lifetime access.

📞 If you create a free account on our job board, you can select “allow companies to contact me for jobs” — this gives us the ability to contact you if we work with a company that’s hiring and you look like a great match.

đŸ‘©đŸ»â€đŸ’» If you’d like to get more updates from us throughout the week, you can find us on Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads.

đŸ“„ Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe here to get this newsletter directly from us in the future.

Reply

or to participate.