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Theranos Executive to Depart Amid Regulatory Probes
- reviseddamage 10y agoI can't imagine the stress that Holmes goes through on a constant basis. There is the usual startup founder stress, but this feels like another level.
- epistasis 10y agoHolmes has already cashed out enough to be in a perfectly fine situation. I have little sympathy for her stress level, as it Holmes that has poorly handled the situation while profiting personally. I worry much more about the stress from regular, honest people that are now associated with Theranos. It would suck to spend many years there, assuming that other parts of the company were doing their job correctly, only to be abandoned so completely by upper management's handling of this situation.
- w1ntermute 10y agoWhatever Holmes has cashed out aside, she comes from a highly privileged background. There was never any danger to her of ending up destitute, regardless of whether Theranos worked out.
- kiba 10y agoReally? Would her family disown her? What jobs would she get?
- w1ntermute 10y agoGiven she was able to swindle investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, I don't think she'll have any difficulty convincing her family not to disown her. She probably doesn't need a job, given her family's wealth, but her father is well-connected government official. I'm sure he could get her a position at some agency or other, if she really wanted one. > Elizabeth’s father, Christian IV, grew up in California, raised by his mother, a former Powers model, whose second husband was a prominent San Francisco businessman. The family moved in powerful circles. Mr. Holmes took a Hearst daughter to a debutante cotillion in 1967. > Mr. Holmes had a distinguished career in public service, holding a number of senior government positions in Washington.[0] 0: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/business/theranos-founder-faces-a-test-of-technology-and-reputation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/business/theranos-founder-...
- lighttower 10y agoDo you know for certain that she's worth millions? Aren't her stock options tied to performance? And if she has tons of stock but it goes to zero...
- w1ntermute 10y agoHer stock options are tied to whatever the Theranos board decides, and she has full board control. So she can make her options tied to whatever she wants. No, I don't know her net worth for certain, but it isn't a stretch to say that she comes from wealth. It's a lot easier to get wealthy people to give you a ton of money if you're also wealthy.
- gohrt 10y agoJust about the only thing a majority shareholder cannot do is vote themselves a massive pay rise, violating their fiduciary duty to the minority shareholder's equity stakes.
- Alupis 10y agoYou feel compassion for someone who knowingly attempted to peddle a medical product just shy of snake oil, only to have it blow up in their face? Their product was absurdly broken, and the results were essentially a coin flip (I believe the FDA said results were accurate around 50% of the time). They wanted real doctors and patients to base important medical decisions off of this...
- markk 10y agoThere's never a good enough reason to withhold compassion. That's the whole point of it.
- jonknee 10y agoYes there is, she was selling bogus blood tests! Who cares about her feelings when innocent people made actual medical decision based on her junk science? And really what is there to be compassionate about? That she will be less rich?
- markk 10y agoWe know that money is not a great thing to measure to ascertain happiness, so I feel her bank account is irrelevant. And compassion is not a finite resource.
- ceocoder 10y agoIt is really hard to feel happy when you are poor (first hand experience), Money can buy happiness[1][2]. Conversely we do feel much joy when we see someone we envy fail, more so if we feel (rightly or not) that their success was ill deserved[3]. [1] https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WE-AA766B_HAPPY_16U_20141107152410.jpg https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WE-AA766B_HAPPY_1... - from page 12 of [2] [2] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/04/subjective-well-being-income/subjective-well-being-income.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/... [3] https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/tag/schadenfreude/ https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/tag/schadenfreude/
- pfarnsworth 10y agoIsn't this what one deserves if one tries to peddle something that doesn't work to investors, and then gets hundreds of millions of dollars for it?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- markk 10y agoThis is advocating revenge, and being pleased to see someone suffer. Imagine she had a breakdown due to stress and her life went off the rails - would you feel that was fair? How much would she have to suffer before you are satisfied?
- jonknee 10y agoShe benefited greatly from a cult of personality on the way up and is now finding out it goes both ways. I myself don't feel bad for someone who enriched herself while peddling snake oil and knowingly giving junk test results to real patients. It is despicable.
- markk 10y agoI hear you, and I also don't necessarily approve of her actions. However at a human level, this is simply a human in pain (assuming she is stressed). Bear in mind, she only benefited in cash, we don't know what her experience of her life is like.
- jonknee 10y agoI feel much worse for all the people she hurt (investors, employees, patients, partners, etc). I'm sure Kenneth Lay was in pain too, but I didn't feel bad for him either.
- pessimizer 10y agoWon't someone cry for Bernie Madoff?
- ben_jones 10y agoPerson from privileged background drops out of Stanford and raises hundreds of millions of dollars, in part due to family connections, to produce a fundamentally unsound blood testing product. Person then proceeds to sell a broken blood testing product to consumers as a way of digging themselves out of their obligations to shareholders. Person then lies to regulators, instructs employees to lie to regulators, and witnesses one of their chief scientists commit suicide after, according to his wife, the scientist claimed "nothing was working". I don't care about this person. I care about all the people hurt due to this person's actions. And I am greatly saddened by the high likelihood that this person will, despite the absolute carnage, profit tremendously from the situation.
- zootam 10y agoyea, fraudulent and illegal activities generally up the stress level of anyone she definitely deserves every bit of it.
- pc-kills-minds 10y agoI am just curious, would you have the same level of concern for Madoff?
- kawaiio 10y agoyeah, zero sympathy from me since this was someone who was from a privileged elite class who after going at it alone for nearly a decade decided to pull the ol' switcheroo (hype up a broken product, IPO and cash out) except playing with the livelihood of real human users. If this was like some HR product okay the HR people and the company who buy them get hosed but the human cost of people using Theranos and discovering that their trust was violated by lack of scientific rigor reminds me sort of the vaccine scandal happening in China, where expired and crap vaccines were bought and flipped all over China the end user being infants and very pissed off and sad parents. Holmes is right up there with Skhreli kid in my book if not worse.
- mathattack 10y agoSimilar to the stress Bernie Madoff must have felt?
- zeemonkee3 10y agoI feel quite a bit more sorry for the family of Dr. Gibbons.
- rconti 10y ago"Mr. Balwani, the Journal reported, told them in an email, “I am extremely irritated and frustrated by folks with no legal background taking legal positions and interpretations on these matters.” He wrote, “This must stop.” He then ordered the employees to only report to the accrediting organizations results from proficiency tests performed on conventional devices, and not the results of those tests obtained from the company’s proprietary Edison machines, according to former employees." Yikes.
- mathattack 10y agoIt's a shame that their problems stem first from lying to investors, rather than to regulators and consumers.
- forgetsusername 10y ago>It's a shame that their problems stem first from lying to investors From what I know about money men, I'm not so sure that some investors weren't aware, or at the very least turned a blind eye. I certainly don't think they're all innocent.
- mathattack 10y agoI don't know the financiers enough to comment on what they know. Sending the SEC after Theranos seems similar to sending the IRS after Al Capone.
- IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y agoHe's frustrated by people with no legal background making legal judgments. We're frustrated by people with no medical background making fake devices.
- jkdkfgkhlkhsdfg 10y agoThe problem is the hot shot VC/CS tech neophytes think they can solve all problems in all industries.
- Animats 10y agoSo Balwani has been thrown to the wolves.[1] Who's next? [1] http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2707&context=greatplainsquarterly http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=27...
- mathattack 10y agoThrown to the wolves? Sounds like he was deserving to be sacrificed.
- jo6gwb 10y agoThe article clearly states: "Mr. Balwani isn’t being blamed for the company’s regulatory problems."
- mathattack 10y agoOf course that's what the PR person says.
- tardo99 10y agoWill there be a perp walk?
- Ankaios 10y agoAnybody have any clever ideas about how to short Theranos?
- GabrielF00 10y ago"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
- barhum 10y agoShe said the following a while back: "I think that the minute that you have a backup plan, you've admitted that you're not going to succeed." I bet she wishes she had a backup plan now... http://www.inc.com/deborah-petersen/elizabeth-holmes-avoid-backup-plans.html http://www.inc.com/deborah-petersen/elizabeth-holmes-avoid-b...
- dekhn 10y agoTheir backup plan was already executed: they switched from their testing methodology to acting as a service provider for somebody else's testing methodology (http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maris-explains-why-gv-didnt-invest-in-theranos-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maris-explains-why-gv-di... """So, we just had someone from our life-science investment team go into Walgreens and take the test. And it wasn't that difficult for anyone to determine that things may not be what they seem here." That employee found that when he went to get a test done, Theranos wanted more than just a drop of blood in one of its "nanotainers." He denied a full venous blood draw, and ended up getting called back a week later because they wanted him to give more blood.""")
- rudolf0 10y agoWere they even able to get their Edison device into a functional state?
- dekhn 10y agoit was approved for a single test. http://fortune.com/2015/07/02/theranos-fda-approval/ http://fortune.com/2015/07/02/theranos-fda-approval/ dunno if they ever got the device in a functional state, outside of extremely controlled conditions in a lab.