You’ve probably seen his name on Indian tech Twitter (now X): Soham Parekh, a young engineer who called himself “everyone’s favourite founding engineer.”
Cool title, right? But that’s not why people started talking about him.
140 hours a week? really?
Soham claimed he was working 140 hours every week, across 3 or 4 startups at the same time.
That means almost 20 hours a day, every day, no break, no weekends, just work, work, and more work.
The internet went crazy.
The meme madness begins
As soon as people saw this number, memes and jokes started flying:
- Someone made an AI-edited photo of Soham standing next to Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy.
- Others called Soham “Murthy’s dream employee”… or maybe his “worst nightmare.”
- Some even joked about a podcast episode with both of them. (It hasn’t happened. Yet.)
But why bring Murthy into this? Here’s the reason:
Narayana Murthy and the 70-Hour Week Idea
Some time ago, Narayana Murthy said on a podcast that young Indians should work at least 70 hours a week to help India grow faster.
He gave examples of hard workers like PM Modi, who reportedly works over 100 hours a week.
This started a big online debate. Some agreed. Many didn’t.
Later, Murthy said it was just his personal belief, not a rule.
Then came Soham, who wasn’t doing just 70… but double that.
What really happened?
Soham went viral after a US startup founder shared a post saying:
Soham was working for multiple startups at once, his resume had fake links, he sent attention-grabbing emails like “TL;DR” to stand out, acted like he was in the US, but he wasn’t.
Basically, the founder gave him a chance but said things didn’t work out, the post wasn’t meant to make him famous, but that’s exactly what happened.
Soham’s side of the story
Soham didn’t lie about it. He admitted it all, and said:
He wasn’t proud of what he did, he only took so many jobs because of money problems, he worked 140 hours a week out of need, not choice, felt lonely and ignored, but loved coding more than anything, also said he wrote all the code himself.
What did people say?
The internet had mixed feelings.
- Many laughed and called him Murthy’s dream coder.
- Some said he should be the next Infosys CEO.
- Others said, “At least someone listened to Murthy.”
But some people also asked:
“Is this hard work, or just smart cheating?”
What’s soham doing now?
Instead of hiding, Soham used his fame to grow.
He’s building a personal brand using hustle, humour, and honesty.
