The Overemployment Double Standard: Why C-Suite Gets a Pass and Engineers Get Crucified
Welcome back to High Algo Pull. I’m Zain Rodriguez, and this week we’re diving into a topic that has Tech Twitter and the YC community in an absolute frenzy: the so-called “scandal” around Soham Parekh working at multiple YC startups simultaneously.
But we’re not just going to analyze another tech controversy. We’re going to decode the algorithm behind a glaring double standard in our industry—one that reveals more about power dynamics than it does about ethics or productivity.
The Overemployment Double Standard
Here’s the situation: Soham Parekh, a talented engineer, was recently “exposed” for working at multiple YC startups simultaneously. The reaction has been swift and predictable—condemnation, moral outrage, and calls for stricter employment verification.
But let me present you with a different scenario:
Marc Andreessen sits on the board of multiple companies simultaneously. Sam Altman ran YC while building OpenAI. Jack Dorsey was CEO of both Twitter and Square. Elon Musk runs Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter/X, Neuralink, and The Boring Company all at once.
And then there’s the entire concept of “fractional leadership” where someone like Brennan Ashworth can be “fractional COO” at 12 different companies simultaneously.
Notice the pattern? When executives and investors juggle multiple high-stakes roles, they’re “visionaries” with “exceptional capacity.” When an engineer does essentially the same thing? They’re committing “time theft” and “fraud.”
The Social Physics of Power
What we’re witnessing isn’t about ethics or productivity—it’s about who gets to define the rules of the game. It’s a manifestation of what I call Asymmetric Ethics Attribution—the phenomenon where identical behaviors are judged differently based on the actor’s position in the social hierarchy.
This asymmetry exists because of three social mechanics that govern power dynamics in the tech ecosystem:
1. Narrative Control
Executives and investors control the dominant narratives around work, productivity, and commitment. They own the platforms (literally and figuratively) where these narratives are distributed and reinforced.
When Elon Musk runs five companies, he gets to frame the narrative as “exceptional capacity” rather than “divided attention.” He controls how his behavior is interpreted because he controls the narrative distribution channels.
An individual contributor like Soham doesn’t have this narrative power. His behavior gets interpreted through frameworks established by those above him in the hierarchy.
2. Value Attribution Asymmetry
The tech industry systematically overvalues strategic decision-making and undervalues execution. We attribute company outcomes disproportionately to leadership decisions rather than implementation quality.
This creates a perception that executive attention is more “scalable” than technical attention—that a CEO can effectively lead multiple companies because their value comes from “big decisions” rather than sustained focus.
Meanwhile, we assume engineers need deep, uninterrupted focus on a single codebase—despite abundant evidence that many technical roles involve pattern matching across domains that could transfer effectively across multiple positions.
3. Leverage Gatekeeping
The most revealing aspect of this double standard is how it maintains control over leverage.
When executives work across multiple companies, they accumulate compound leverage—each role amplifies their influence, network, and compensation in a virtuous cycle.
When an individual contributor attempts to create similar leverage for themselves, the system treats it as an exploit that must be patched—a “loophole” that threatens the established order rather than an innovation in how technical talent is deployed.
The Technical Reality vs. Social Perception
From a purely technical perspective, there’s nothing inherently impossible about an engineer working effectively across multiple codebases. Many open source contributors do exactly this—maintaining numerous projects simultaneously while often holding down full-time jobs.
The question isn’t whether it’s technically possible to deliver value to multiple organizations simultaneously. The question is who gets to capture the value created by that increased efficiency.
When a VC sits on 15 boards, they capture the value of their pattern recognition and network effects directly. When a “fractional COO” works with a dozen startups, they capture the value of their operational insights directly.
But when an engineer figures out how to leverage their technical expertise across multiple environments, they’re told they’re violating an unwritten rule about how technical talent should be deployed.
Distribution-First Career Strategy
This asymmetry points to what I’ve been advocating for years: Distribution-First Career Strategy—approaching your career with the same principles we use for product distribution.
The traditional engineering career path optimizes for depth in a single organization. Distribution-First Career Strategy optimizes for leverage across multiple domains.
Soham’s approach—controversial as it may be—represents a form of this strategy. He’s maximizing his distribution channels (multiple companies) rather than depth in a single channel.
Is there an execution risk? Absolutely. But that’s a performance question, not an ethical one. If Soham can deliver value to multiple organizations simultaneously, the system should reward that efficiency, not penalize it.
The Path Forward
The outrage over Soham’s arrangement isn’t about protecting companies from underperforming engineers. If that were the case, we’d see equal outrage about executives spreading themselves too thin.
This is about maintaining a system where labor arbitrage flows primarily in one direction—upward.
So what’s the path forward? I see three possibilities:
- Honest Standardization: We apply the same standards to everyone. If we’re concerned about divided attention, that concern should extend to executives and investors as well as individual contributors.
- Performance-Based Evaluation: We judge people based on outcomes rather than time allocation. If someone can deliver exceptional value to multiple organizations simultaneously, their employment arrangement should be a matter of contractual negotiation, not moral condemnation.
- Transparent Leverage Models: We acknowledge that different leverage models exist for different roles and make these models explicit rather than pretending they don’t exist.
What won’t work is continuing to pretend that this is about ethics rather than power—that we’re protecting some abstract principle rather than a specific distribution of leverage.
The Compound Advantage
The most sophisticated players in the tech ecosystem understand that compound advantage comes from leveraging insights across multiple domains. That’s why VCs sit on dozens of boards, why executives advise multiple companies, why founders often work on multiple projects simultaneously.
They recognize that cross-pollination creates value that isolated focus cannot.
What makes the reaction to Soham’s case so revealing isn’t the specific details of his arrangement—it’s the stark contrast between how we treat identical behaviors depending on who’s performing them.
This isn’t just a double standard—it’s an algorithm that systematically allocates leverage upward while restricting it from flowing downward.
Understanding this algorithm doesn’t just help us make sense of controversies like this one—it helps us design more effective strategies for creating and capturing value in an ecosystem where the rules are rarely what they appear to be.
Next week, we’ll dive into “The Performance Theater Problem”—why most engineering metrics are social signaling disguised as technical measurement, and how this creates systematic blind spots in how we evaluate technical decisions.
Until then, remember: the rules of the game aren’t neutral. They’re algorithms designed to produce specific outcomes. Understanding those algorithms gives you compound leverage in designing your own path.
