“If They Had LeetCode, I Would’ve Bombed Them,” says Soham Parekh

Soham Parekh aced interviews at top AI startups without solving a single LeetCode problem. And yet, every company hired him. By all accounts, Soham Parekh is a capable engineer. Over the past two years, he held overlapping roles at some of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched AI startups including Antimetal, Pally AI, and Sync Labs. Each company believed they had hired a focused, high-velocity contributor. Each eventually discovered they weren’t the only ones. Parekh wasn’t underperforming. He was delivering. “There were two occasions where the contractor bailed,” he recalled in a recent podcast interview, referencing his time at Antimatter. “I wrote every single inch of the code.” He also didn’t hide how he got through the door. “Most of these companies didn’