Minding Your Own Business: The Microsoft-Soham Dichotomy
10 min read
You stirred awake on what felt like any other work morning. No planned meetings apparently, so you savoured the warmth and comfort of your bed a lot longer than if there were scheduled meetings banging on your door to arrest your time. You did the ritualistic scrolling. The stock market has fully recovered from the “Liberation Day tariffs” bloodbath. However, something felt off. Tech Twitter is buzzing, and not the good kind. Tweets are flying in non-stop, everyone's got something to say, like obviously, but both the frenzy and the frequency are through the roof. {come here for a second, it is Twitter not X, they are tweets and not posts. Let's get back at it}. Here it is Microsoft is about to lay off 9,100 employees or perhaps they already have and we are just now feeling the pain from the blow.
Wait a minute —few weeks ago didn't Yahoo finance report Microsoft hit an all time high? And they have beaten that all time high again this week (30 June — 4 July 2025). Ahh! CAPITALISM. In this round of layoffs even legends fell, like Matt Firor, Studio Head of ZeniMax Online Studios (a major game development studio under Xbox), who'd run the operation for 18 years before getting the axe.
Fast forward to the day after, @Suhail, a prominent voice in Tech Twitter dropped this.
This caused a tweet stampede almost immediately, —opinions flooding in for, against, and everything in between. And of course, Soham's other employers commenting, firing guns blazing, or simply and humbly sharing their experience.
Here’s the 411.
Soham Parekh is an Indian software engineer who moved to the US of A, few years ago, with no twitter presence before his fame {dunno if this info was necessary 🤔}. He was saddled with debt according to his recent interview, so he applied for and secretly worked for multiple companies (at least 5) at this same time. The companies were mostly startups who needed a cracked engineer to perform miracles and quickly push products and features to gain market share and/or secure VC money. See, Soham is cracked. With a cracked resume and he always crushed those technical interviews, all his employers—former employers can attest to this. He was a perfect match for most tech companies, until Suhail’s tweet. But his work ‘performances’ varied dramatically. He swung between over-delivering and complete ghost mode. Without fail, he was always ready to deliver sob stories that would soften even a robotic CEO.
His 'crime' was moonlighting for multiple companies simultaneously. Isn't this also capitalism?
Mind your own business
This subject is huge and wanders freely in my head. It's been evolving and growing since it first gripped me in 2021. The main business (goal) of a business is to maximise profit for shareholders. And whatever they say or do is in direct or indirect service of this purpose.
The job of HR is to recruit, hire, train, and manage employees in ways that further the business’s goal. To protect the employer's interest not the employee. All whilst wearing that loud practiced smile. Microsoft HR executed those 9,100 terminations {I wouldn't be surprised if some HR staff were also axed} with that trademark smile. In whose interest was that again? Uh huh! That's why you should be minding your own business.
You should have your own business, either literally or metaphorically. And take jobs or activities that directly or indirectly serves your interest (own business goals). This interest might be financial stability, emotional stability, spiritual well-being, sleep, peace of mind, time—most valuable—(more me-time, family-time, time for your own business or side project etc.), mental well-being, transferable skills, hobbies etc. Look beyond the job title, the free pizzas, team activities, and ask yourself “how does this serve my own goal”. You should—you must—have your own business and mind it like your life depends on it.
You are the CEO of your own life. Act like it.
Having a dream job is a dream, but only if the company you work for don't fire you when they're doing incredibly great and then next day your manager post something like this on LinkedIn “just use AI to get another job and manage your emotions”. Wake up, it's not a dream.
One could argue Matt Turnbull—an executive producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing (A Microsoft owned company), meant well and the post sounds informative and even caring for that matter. Or it could as well be pure corporate speak, but since it's from an executive, it carries more weight than the HR script. {I swear, —I love HR, they are lovely people with the best set of listening ears}.
The art of minding your own business
If you are self-employed, have an hobby that gives you joy or money or both, freelancer, consultant, independent contractor, creative professional, people like Soham, etc., count yourself lucky. You already have the cheat code. You are already minding your own business. For those of us still grinding away inside the corporate vehicle, here’s how we quietly mind our own business. Brick by brick. It all starts at the door—hiring stage.
The hiring stage
The job adverts list job requirements, description, compensation package (if they like) company culture etc., are written for their 'perfect candidate’. And most adverts are soaked and bleached with lies. Company culture isn't how they showcased it during the interview, changed job description or additional work without additional compensation. Or is it the job requirement that will highlight deep learning or machine learning skills like
- Neural network architecture design
- PhD in data science, deep learning or machine learning or 10 years experience in these field
- Mathematics: Strong grasp of linear algebra, calculus, probability, and statistics
- Model Training & Tuning
- Proficiency in TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, Scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM
- Deployment: Putting trained models into production with tools like ONNX, TensorRT
- Model Evaluation
…but after two years of employment in the same company, the most advanced tool you've used is Microsoft Excel. If all these and many more happen then why should you be 100% honest with companies, especially these ones. During hiring stage, put yourself first, unless its your first job then do whatever you can to get your experience. Do your homework about the company before you show up for interview. Be prepared. Know what you want, and how the company or its platform or the experience will better serve your own business.
Here's a simple formula with which companies calculate your compensation
Compensation = time(perceived value * hard skills * soft skills * years of experience + education)
This is good for them. But know your worth — have your own way of figuring out what your time is really worth. You can adopt this formula and build more transferable skills, and drum up your perceived value by understanding how to negotiate {I'll recommend Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz}, understanding yourself and people {I'll recommend The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie} and understand the time factor. From the late 2010s to early 2022, software engineers were the golden goose in most tech companies and most Fortune 500 companies but today one can say it's AI, machine learning and deep learning engineers. Time.
If a company isn’t providing what you need — be it time, peace of mind, experience, or a fair compensation — to grow your own business, start plotting your escape. If you're still in the hiring stage and have realized this, then peace out.
The hobbyist
Don't live for work, unless it's your own business. Have a passion outside of your job. An hobby. Give it your time, nurture it, it will nourish you and recharge you when it counts. Be polygamous, if you can — have multiple hobbies. Hobbies aren’t just pastimes — they’re investments in your wellbeing. They keep your creativity flowing and stress at bay, so you can bring your best self to relationships, work, and life. Your hobby is your business, mind it.
And of course, some people are lucky enough to have their work as their hobby — a true blend of passion and profession. Like winged ants in an anthill.
Set rigid boundaries
Time is valuable, so you should train your employer to respect your time and energy. You define your availability, your scope of work, and your limits, especially—especially the more senior you get. If you respond to every urgent request immediately, your employer learns that urgency is always your problem to solve. You have to, sorry, must respect your time, and train your employer to respect it by setting clear rigid boundaries. Example, you're unreachable from 6 PM, that's it. But during your 'available hours’ you deliver your best work. Be cautious: the moment you raise the bar, that’s the standard they’ll hold you to.
Setting boundaries, forces your employer to plan better and respect your time instead of relying on your constant availability.
Exit strategy
Only a few employers are truly loyal to their employees. Most are grudgingly loyal because state employment laws leave them no choice. Naturally, they don't owe you loyalty unless it benefits their goals. Likewise, you should only be loyal to them if the 'relationship’ benefits your own business.
Loyalty or not, you want to maintain a runway (emergency fund) of 6-12 months of expenses. Network beyond your current company. Document your achievements continuously. Continuously learn new hard and soft skill, especially transferable ones. Periodically, interview elsewhere to know your current market value. Funny how companies plead poverty, yet they’ll gladly pay a new hire double while refusing to boost loyal employees by even 50%. Loyalty’s weird like that.
Know your ‘net worth’
Undervalued = time (value given > value received)
Balanced = time (value given ≃ value received)
Leveraged = time (value given < value received)
Your value to an employer extends far beyond just your technical or hard skills. It also includes your energy, ideas, presence, emotional and mental resilience, adaptability, creativity, problem-solving instincts, leadership potential, and those invisible, often uncelebrated contributions that make real impact that shape the team's or companies’ success. But you know because you know. The value received is more than the monetary compensation. It includes experience, conducive work environment and tools, exposure, networks, personal growth, opportunities to sharpen your skills, time, and other perks that benefits your business.
After 6 months or a year, you should be able to tell whether your net worth {not you—you are not your net worth} is either undervalued, balanced or leveraged. Using the formulas above. If it's undervalued, you’re hovering dangerously close to exploitation. Put some experience and skills under your belt and Usain Bolt. The gravitational pull by Stockholm syndrome, status quo bias, sunk cost fallacy and Concorde fallacy can be enormous but minding your business entails making the hardest decisions and taking actions that truly benefits your business.
If your net worth is balanced or leverage, congratulations. However, still look for opportunities to grow in ways that benefits your business. This might be something as ‘simple’ as carving out or negotiating more time for yourself, family, hobbies, side projects etc., {your business is your business, I shouldn't be telling you what to do…but, but}. Microsoft's market capitalization is 3.71 Trillion USD as of 5 July 2025, but they wouldn't mind 4 Trillion USD {just saying}.
Sleep and Sanity
The importance of work-life balance for your entire well-being cannot be overemphasized {BS, I can still overemphasize it}.
During any employment phase, you should prioritize sleep, sleep , sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep , sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, relationships, and personal interests. Sleep here encompasses rest, peace of mind, mental wellness, emotional room to breathe, and the space to actually live beyond the grind. These improve your well-being and also your creativity and productivity. Grinding longer might reward you short-term, but being rested and mentally sound pays for life.
Your job is part of your life, not your entire life. When your job overlaps with your hobby, it creates this…{hummmm}…peculiar tension. Joy and obligation living under the same roof — balance becomes survival.
It's just business
The corporate world isn't evil neither are corporations. Even when they act so devilish, it isn't evil or when they'd invent and freely distribute the cure for cancer, it isn't righteousness. It's just business. They have no moral obligation, only a business obligation. Microsoft fired 9,100 people this year, and about 8,000 in 2024. It's just business. Soham Parekh, minding his own business, moonlighted for multiple companies simultaneously. It's just business.
You too should start minding your own business and act in ways that only or mostly benefit your own business {my gosh, I love capitalism}.