22 ms·

Walgreens managers also grew increasingly frustrated in recent weeks with Theranos as they sought information about the extent of test reports it had corrected

by bane 10y ago

Walgreens managers also grew increasingly frustrated in recent weeks with Theranos as they sought information about the extent of test reports it had corrected or voided. This seems to be a common thread in the stories I've read about Theranos, an almost pathological inability to provide basic information upon request. I can only guess that Holmes' notion of open and transparent communication is defined very differently from what most people would consider it to mean. A big warning sign to me is also the bizarre collection of company reviews on Glassdoor [1]. It's really fascinating to me that anybody would even consider turfing their own company's reviews with this kind of ham fisted, single voice corporate speak nonsense. I wonder who inside the company is responsible for writing all of these? Holmes herself? Regardless, it's a really fascinating look into how Holmes has prioritized things. 1 - https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Theranos-Reviews-E248889.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false&filter.employmentStatus=REGULAR&filter.employmentStatus=PART_TIME&filter.employmentStatus=UNKNOWN https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Theranos-Reviews-E248889.h...

tb303 10y ago
Theranos' relationship with GlassDoor is rich. You should have seen the posts up there before Theranos went after them with lawyers.
dominotw 10y ago
This is hilarious https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-RVW6516521.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-R... Advice to Management You are doing a good job. Stay in better touch with the employees. I think most people do feel appreciated but there are also some that are disgruntled and unhappy for other reasons. I see these people spreading negative energy. You should seek them and try and fix the problem. Is it common practice among upstart companies to pad their reviews on glassdoor. I've been using those as references for my job search, I know better now.
- askafriend 10y ago
  They are absolutely padded and padding is even encouraged at some places. Even companies like FB do it.
- Yhippa 10y ago
  What do you mean by pad the reviews? Coerce employees into giving mostly favorable ones?
  - pekk 10y ago
    I won't name names, but one thing I've personally seen is HR initiatives encouraging employees to write reviews, not necessarily coercively. If well-known companies are doing that, it's not unlikely that some companies are directly instructing HR personnel to write favorable reviews.
    - eli 10y ago
      What's wrong with encouraging employees to post reviews? When you sign up as an employer, glasdoor gives you a sample email to send that asks for honest reviews.
      - miander 10y ago
        Because it creates an implicit expectation that your review should be positive.
        iamdave 10y ago
        Yeah, I'm kind of torn on this. I was asked at a previous company to write a review on GlassDoor (I never did). Let me rephrase that last sentence: GlassDoor was brought up literally at every monthly update meeting. But back on target, I'm torn: On the one hand I understand the need to actively recruit and attract talent to join your workforce and I definitely understand GlassDoor is something used by many people to benchmark their expectations on working environment, management and peers. I get that completely. Where I break off though is when you have to ask your employees to write a review (even if you're adding the qualifier "Be honest, we wont penalize you") instead of creating an internal feedback environment that can go into recruitment, retention and employee/manager review platforms. I would say there's already a power imbalance inherent to the workplace, especially if you're in one of those "at-will" states. So putting in front of your employees "Hey, can you go write a review of working here on this site?" understandably makes some people shift in their seats.
- randycupertino 10y ago
  My old job made us write positive reviews on company time. Basically anywhere that says, "keep doing what you are doing" as the advice to management and/or the reviews are ALL either 1 star or 5 star reviews, you know they are fake.
  - avn2109 10y ago
    When they make you write reviews, the trick is to write a very glowing one, including several perks that you wish you had but don't. e.g. "Great company, love the 20% own-projects time and work-from-home Fridays." This has all kinds of good effects: 1) It subtly anchors execs and HR to accept your perk as reasonable, especially because the people paying attention to Glassdoor are far removed from your manager and don't actually know if you have those perks or not. "Since our company already does it, it must be a good idea," thinks the exec. 2) Your coworkers see the reviews and assume the perks are true but unevenly distributed, thereby further ingraining the perks in the company zeitgeist. 3) If you are eventually found out, nobody will ask you to write reviews any more. and 4) Candidates, including good candidates, will come to interviews and say things like "I've heard you have 20% time, that's a great idea, tell me more about it." This fans the flames in favor of your perks. I used this technique as part of a wildly successful give-us-more-perks agitation campaign in my previous job.
    - new_hackers 10y ago
      You sir or madam are and evil genius! My hat off to you!
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  > I've been using those as references for my job search, I know better now. Eh, that just means you can't take the reviews at face value. Ignore the obviously disgruntled employees, treat fluff reviews as a small yellow flag, and look for the real dirt not so much in the angry reviews but in the disappointed ones.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    It's like dealing with Amazon reviews, which are also gamed. You look at the low ratings, and if they're coherent and make sense to you then take them seriously. If more then one make the same claims, then it's probably true.
- mathattack 10y ago
  Glassdoor reviews are still helpful - you just have to take the averages with a grain of salt, and filter any that seem to have been written by a PR flack.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    That filter should consider every review that looks like it was written by PR as a 1 star. Adjust accordingly. Theranos appears to have about a 1.1 star average with that adjustment.
    - mathattack 10y ago
      Yes indeed!
- tim333 10y ago
  I note on the reviews the "Helpful" click count gives some indication as to how relevant they are. I see > Everyday brings new challenges, and you are able to approach these challenges with autonomy and creativity. gets Helpful (1) and >"House of Cards comes crashing down" ...A front row seat and education how to adulterate documents and strategy! gets Helpful (76)
- ryguytilidie 10y ago
  Well that plus I've had two separate situations where I left a negative review and was threatened until I took it down. Not sure you're going to see many unbiased views there...
  - dhimes 10y ago
    How were you threatened?
    - ryguytilidie 10y ago
      One threatened to tell my current boss that I had been a bad, disruptive employee, even though he admitted that he knew that this was untrue. So he basically threatened to try and get me fired from my job because I reviewed my experience working at his company. Other one threatened to sue me because I had signed a non-disparagement agreement after a layoff.
      - dhimes 10y ago
        Wow, that is incredible shittyness.
  - alaskanloops 10y ago
    They were able to identify you?
    - ryguytilidie 10y ago
      Yep. Small team one time and a coworker of mine who knew I wrote it told the company on the other one.
- sgnelson 10y ago
  It'd be great if someone collated the data for the reviews and pointed out which companies tend to have the most "fake" reviews. It'd be a bit difficult to do so, but I can think of at least a few ways to try (date and frequency of reviews, "corporate speak," median length of reviews, distribution of "stars", distribution "helpfulness", writing style analysis, etc.)
pat_space 10y ago
"Pros A pay check that clears the bank. A front row seat and education how to adulterate documents and strategy! Working on my CV on company tine..."[1] [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-RVW9516088.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-R...
rubyfan 10y ago
It's been my experience that those who talk about transparency and openness are usually the ones most trying to lie, cheat and steal the most.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- exclusiv 10y ago
  My buddy also had a theory that those dating profiles that say they don't want drama are the ones that are the drama.
vincentbarr 10y ago
Another startling Glassdoor review that seems planted by the company: 'Cons Not a con, more of a note - It is a start up environment, which means that it is very fast and dynamic. It calls for a lot of hard work and creativity. Theranos is not for someone who is set in his or her ways, or for someone who is simply looking for a 9-5.'
- re_todd 10y ago
  Agreed. For a second I thought it was an ad for a job.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Astroturfing Glassfoor should be considered fraud. It's giving information to potential employees while omitting material information (that the company is the oposter) for purposes which financially benefit the company and its backers.
- pekk 10y ago
  Just like institutionalized discrimination, prohibiting this has no teeth when nobody can prove it's happening.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > prohibiting this has no teeth when nobody can prove it's happening If you take a job, find the experience to diametrically-opposed to how it was represented on GlassDoor and suspect your hirer of astro-turfing, a lawsuit with discovery would quickly uncover the action.
    - mseebach 10y ago
      Oh god how I wish people would start thinking just a single cycle ahead in terms of unintended consequences before knee-jerking into outlawing things. Seriously, what could possibly go wrong when companies can get sued over the inaccuracies of anonymous third-party review websites? Reminder: you don't need to lose a lawsuit for one to be enormously costly.
- mevile 10y ago
  I dunno, it seems pretty transparent it's bullshit. If I read stuff like this it's obviously signaling a toxic work culture full of company koolaid. I never drink the koolaid. I try to do a good job and work hard, but I never get into company culture stupidity. It's not in my nature.
- bduerst 10y ago
  True - it's deceitful and spreading misinformation. This is tangental, but I also think that posting open job positions online when there isn't one should be considered fraud as well. Same with recruiters who do the bait and switch. People invest time from their lives into those, only to result as a record in a database somewhere when there was never any intention to hire.
jmcgough 10y ago
Pretty typical. A lot of startups that are going down the tube (or were always awful) end up with horrible reviews on glassdoor. That makes it harder for their recruiters to do their job, so they pad it with extremely obvious fake reviews to compensate.
mevile 10y ago
All those Glassdoors reviews talking about long hours of work, working late, and for what? What did all those people work those long hours for? For complete failure. Theranos is in shambles, and these people signed up to work and work late at a company that was a fraud. Requiring employees to work late, or to strongly encourage that kind of behavior is a huge red flag for me when looking for work. People wasted hours of their life at this place, away from family and friends and personal time, all for Theranos, a name that's a joke now.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Easy to say with hindsight. What if it would have worked out and their tech had revolutionised medical testing? Failures are as important as successes, and nothing to be ashamed about from the employee perspective, just the covering up by management that's the problem.
  - bane 10y ago
    When I've seen things like this on Glassdoor, it's almost always a company that's closing in on a spectacular failure. It's like almost some kind of evidence of a specific kind of leadership driven failure mode. Theranos didn't fail because of lack of market demand, or even the failure of their tech, they failed because of how they were run and these kinds of reviews seem to be specific pointers to this kind of management style. Anecdotally, I once worked for a company that did this same thing and the feeling in the company much more closely matched the longer-form negative reviews than did the astroturfed reviews...all of which were written by one H.R. exec shortly before they were let go from the company.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    This is anecdotal, but in my experience, the complaints about "everyone working long hours" is usually a sign of either: a) Poor planning on the part of management, resulting from not enough resources or hires b) Poor market performance, leading to having to squeeze more out of the existing resources to get the results originally projected to the investors Certainly there are people who like to work long hours and there are jobs that will give them all the work they can want, but those typically aren't the people complaining about it.
ehudla 10y ago
> I wonder who inside the company is responsible for writing all of these? Holmes herself? Hey - someone can do some NLP work to estimate number of authors, right?
robotresearcher 10y ago
"Knowing that we have top talent in every vertical reinforces my pride and confidence in Theranos" Facepalm.

by bane 10y ago

tb303 10y ago

Theranos' relationship with GlassDoor is rich. You should have seen the posts up there before Theranos went after them with lawyers.

dominotw 10y ago

This is hilarious https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-RVW6516521.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-R... Advice to Management You are doing a good job. Stay in better touch with the employees. I think most people do feel appreciated but there are also some that are disgruntled and unhappy for other reasons. I see these people spreading negative energy. You should seek them and try and fix the problem. Is it common practice among upstart companies to pad their reviews on glassdoor. I've been using those as references for my job search, I know better now.

askafriend 10y ago
They are absolutely padded and padding is even encouraged at some places. Even companies like FB do it.
Yhippa 10y ago
What do you mean by pad the reviews? Coerce employees into giving mostly favorable ones?
- pekk 10y ago
  I won't name names, but one thing I've personally seen is HR initiatives encouraging employees to write reviews, not necessarily coercively. If well-known companies are doing that, it's not unlikely that some companies are directly instructing HR personnel to write favorable reviews.
  - eli 10y ago
    What's wrong with encouraging employees to post reviews? When you sign up as an employer, glasdoor gives you a sample email to send that asks for honest reviews.
    - miander 10y ago
      Because it creates an implicit expectation that your review should be positive.
      - iamdave 10y ago
        Yeah, I'm kind of torn on this. I was asked at a previous company to write a review on GlassDoor (I never did). Let me rephrase that last sentence: GlassDoor was brought up literally at every monthly update meeting. But back on target, I'm torn: On the one hand I understand the need to actively recruit and attract talent to join your workforce and I definitely understand GlassDoor is something used by many people to benchmark their expectations on working environment, management and peers. I get that completely. Where I break off though is when you have to ask your employees to write a review (even if you're adding the qualifier "Be honest, we wont penalize you") instead of creating an internal feedback environment that can go into recruitment, retention and employee/manager review platforms. I would say there's already a power imbalance inherent to the workplace, especially if you're in one of those "at-will" states. So putting in front of your employees "Hey, can you go write a review of working here on this site?" understandably makes some people shift in their seats.
randycupertino 10y ago
My old job made us write positive reviews on company time. Basically anywhere that says, "keep doing what you are doing" as the advice to management and/or the reviews are ALL either 1 star or 5 star reviews, you know they are fake.
- avn2109 10y ago
  When they make you write reviews, the trick is to write a very glowing one, including several perks that you wish you had but don't. e.g. "Great company, love the 20% own-projects time and work-from-home Fridays." This has all kinds of good effects: 1) It subtly anchors execs and HR to accept your perk as reasonable, especially because the people paying attention to Glassdoor are far removed from your manager and don't actually know if you have those perks or not. "Since our company already does it, it must be a good idea," thinks the exec. 2) Your coworkers see the reviews and assume the perks are true but unevenly distributed, thereby further ingraining the perks in the company zeitgeist. 3) If you are eventually found out, nobody will ask you to write reviews any more. and 4) Candidates, including good candidates, will come to interviews and say things like "I've heard you have 20% time, that's a great idea, tell me more about it." This fans the flames in favor of your perks. I used this technique as part of a wildly successful give-us-more-perks agitation campaign in my previous job.
  - new_hackers 10y ago
    You sir or madam are and evil genius! My hat off to you!
fennecfoxen 10y ago
> I've been using those as references for my job search, I know better now. Eh, that just means you can't take the reviews at face value. Ignore the obviously disgruntled employees, treat fluff reviews as a small yellow flag, and look for the real dirt not so much in the angry reviews but in the disappointed ones.
- bduerst 10y ago
  It's like dealing with Amazon reviews, which are also gamed. You look at the low ratings, and if they're coherent and make sense to you then take them seriously. If more then one make the same claims, then it's probably true.
mathattack 10y ago
Glassdoor reviews are still helpful - you just have to take the averages with a grain of salt, and filter any that seem to have been written by a PR flack.
- daveguy 10y ago
  That filter should consider every review that looks like it was written by PR as a 1 star. Adjust accordingly. Theranos appears to have about a 1.1 star average with that adjustment.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    Yes indeed!
tim333 10y ago
I note on the reviews the "Helpful" click count gives some indication as to how relevant they are. I see > Everyday brings new challenges, and you are able to approach these challenges with autonomy and creativity. gets Helpful (1) and >"House of Cards comes crashing down" ...A front row seat and education how to adulterate documents and strategy! gets Helpful (76)
ryguytilidie 10y ago
Well that plus I've had two separate situations where I left a negative review and was threatened until I took it down. Not sure you're going to see many unbiased views there...
- dhimes 10y ago
  How were you threatened?
  - ryguytilidie 10y ago
    One threatened to tell my current boss that I had been a bad, disruptive employee, even though he admitted that he knew that this was untrue. So he basically threatened to try and get me fired from my job because I reviewed my experience working at his company. Other one threatened to sue me because I had signed a non-disparagement agreement after a layoff.
    - dhimes 10y ago
      Wow, that is incredible shittyness.
- alaskanloops 10y ago
  They were able to identify you?
  - ryguytilidie 10y ago
    Yep. Small team one time and a coworker of mine who knew I wrote it told the company on the other one.
sgnelson 10y ago
It'd be great if someone collated the data for the reviews and pointed out which companies tend to have the most "fake" reviews. It'd be a bit difficult to do so, but I can think of at least a few ways to try (date and frequency of reviews, "corporate speak," median length of reviews, distribution of "stars", distribution "helpfulness", writing style analysis, etc.)

pat_space 10y ago

"Pros A pay check that clears the bank. A front row seat and education how to adulterate documents and strategy! Working on my CV on company tine..."[1] [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-RVW9516088.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-R...

rubyfan 10y ago

It's been my experience that those who talk about transparency and openness are usually the ones most trying to lie, cheat and steal the most.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
exclusiv 10y ago
My buddy also had a theory that those dating profiles that say they don't want drama are the ones that are the drama.

vincentbarr 10y ago

Another startling Glassdoor review that seems planted by the company: 'Cons Not a con, more of a note - It is a start up environment, which means that it is very fast and dynamic. It calls for a lot of hard work and creativity. Theranos is not for someone who is set in his or her ways, or for someone who is simply looking for a 9-5.'

re_todd 10y ago
Agreed. For a second I thought it was an ad for a job.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Astroturfing Glassfoor should be considered fraud. It's giving information to potential employees while omitting material information (that the company is the oposter) for purposes which financially benefit the company and its backers.

pekk 10y ago
Just like institutionalized discrimination, prohibiting this has no teeth when nobody can prove it's happening.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > prohibiting this has no teeth when nobody can prove it's happening If you take a job, find the experience to diametrically-opposed to how it was represented on GlassDoor and suspect your hirer of astro-turfing, a lawsuit with discovery would quickly uncover the action.
  - mseebach 10y ago
    Oh god how I wish people would start thinking just a single cycle ahead in terms of unintended consequences before knee-jerking into outlawing things. Seriously, what could possibly go wrong when companies can get sued over the inaccuracies of anonymous third-party review websites? Reminder: you don't need to lose a lawsuit for one to be enormously costly.
mevile 10y ago
I dunno, it seems pretty transparent it's bullshit. If I read stuff like this it's obviously signaling a toxic work culture full of company koolaid. I never drink the koolaid. I try to do a good job and work hard, but I never get into company culture stupidity. It's not in my nature.
bduerst 10y ago
True - it's deceitful and spreading misinformation. This is tangental, but I also think that posting open job positions online when there isn't one should be considered fraud as well. Same with recruiters who do the bait and switch. People invest time from their lives into those, only to result as a record in a database somewhere when there was never any intention to hire.

jmcgough 10y ago

Pretty typical. A lot of startups that are going down the tube (or were always awful) end up with horrible reviews on glassdoor. That makes it harder for their recruiters to do their job, so they pad it with extremely obvious fake reviews to compensate.

mevile 10y ago

All those Glassdoors reviews talking about long hours of work, working late, and for what? What did all those people work those long hours for? For complete failure. Theranos is in shambles, and these people signed up to work and work late at a company that was a fraud. Requiring employees to work late, or to strongly encourage that kind of behavior is a huge red flag for me when looking for work. People wasted hours of their life at this place, away from family and friends and personal time, all for Theranos, a name that's a joke now.

mattmanser 10y ago
Easy to say with hindsight. What if it would have worked out and their tech had revolutionised medical testing? Failures are as important as successes, and nothing to be ashamed about from the employee perspective, just the covering up by management that's the problem.
- bane 10y ago
  When I've seen things like this on Glassdoor, it's almost always a company that's closing in on a spectacular failure. It's like almost some kind of evidence of a specific kind of leadership driven failure mode. Theranos didn't fail because of lack of market demand, or even the failure of their tech, they failed because of how they were run and these kinds of reviews seem to be specific pointers to this kind of management style. Anecdotally, I once worked for a company that did this same thing and the feeling in the company much more closely matched the longer-form negative reviews than did the astroturfed reviews...all of which were written by one H.R. exec shortly before they were let go from the company.
- bduerst 10y ago
  This is anecdotal, but in my experience, the complaints about "everyone working long hours" is usually a sign of either: a) Poor planning on the part of management, resulting from not enough resources or hires b) Poor market performance, leading to having to squeeze more out of the existing resources to get the results originally projected to the investors Certainly there are people who like to work long hours and there are jobs that will give them all the work they can want, but those typically aren't the people complaining about it.

ehudla 10y ago

> I wonder who inside the company is responsible for writing all of these? Holmes herself? Hey - someone can do some NLP work to estimate number of authors, right?

robotresearcher 10y ago

"Knowing that we have top talent in every vertical reinforces my pride and confidence in Theranos" Facepalm.