6 ms·

I feel bad for those 340 employees. I can't imagine what it would feel like to have years of your work be exposed as (basically) a farce. I can barely stand wor

by kldaace 10y ago

I feel bad for those 340 employees. I can't imagine what it would feel like to have years of your work be exposed as (basically) a farce. I can barely stand working a week without getting results much less x years of my professional life.

aswanson 10y ago
Yeah. Having the big "T" on the resume might be one of the few red flags signalling fraud and corruption worse than a few years at SAC capital after a internship at Enron and Lehman Bros. Maybe the employees themselves will sue the company for fraud and damage to their careers. Crazy situation.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  They'll probably change their name (why hello Accenture), and the people associated can now put the untainted name on their resume.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Heh, had no idea about that one! I had recently been thinking about how terrible it would be to have a resume with a Wells Fargo job ending in the last couple months.
    - FilterSweep 10y ago
      That's a good point, but I would hope employers would be able to distinguish situations clearly created solely on: a) the upper management level (Wells Fargo, Theranos) from: b) the employee level, whereby the employees themselves use private data for advantage and personal gain - DraftKings comes to mind here[0][1] [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel-draftkings-fantasy-employees-bet-rivals.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel-draftkings-... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/draftkings-daily-fantasy-sports-fanduel-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/draftkings-daily-fantasy-spor...
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        I disagree. 5,300 low level employees actively chose to create fictional bank accounts in order to meet their goals. Even if some middle management tier recommended that they do it, I think it says something about the moral fiber of every one of those employees to be complicit in that.
- nikcub 10y ago
  Working at SAC Capital is only a black mark on your name to those outside of finance. Within the world of hedge funds SAC alumni are doing extremely well: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-23/sac-alumni-make-cohen-proud-as-plotkin-s-fund-shines-in-ranking http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-23/sac-alumni...
  - dingbat 10y ago
    in other words, its only a black mark from people who dont matter anyway
  - srtjstjsj 10y ago
    Those outside of finance don't know what SAC is.
  - ryporter 10y ago
    That's very interesting, and it makes some sense now that you mention it. After all, SAC made it clear to investors that that would cover all of the legal expenses and fines, so they were just left with returns from the fund itself, and insider trading works.
- ryporter 10y ago
  SAC Capital is a much bigger stain for former employees than the others, in my opinion. SAC allegedly had a deeply ingrained culture of finding and exploiting insider knowledge that permeated multiple levels. Basically, Cohen had employees do his dirty work, while he maintained plausible deniability. At Theranos, by contrast, Holmes intentionally kept employees in the dark. If I were interviewing an ex-employee, especially one at a lab outside of California, I would certainly press the candidate on the issue, but I would be willing to believe that they were honestly trying to build and deploy a novel technology that never ended up working. It is not the case that the entire endeavor was a scam. They thought that they could develop this technology, and then the leadership covered it up as they were failing to do so. Also, do you have any sources that document employment at Lehman Brothers as being a stain on the majority of their employees? Thousands of the employees immediately moved to Barclays and Nomura when they bought parts of Lehman Brothers. That doesn't sound like a horrible stain to me.
  - hueving 10y ago
    Are you serious? You would press employees on the behavior of their CEO?
    - wpietri 10y ago
      I don't know about ryporter, but I sure would. I'm looking for people who are both smart and of good character. Working for what is apparently a giant fraud suggests that they may lack one or both of those attributes. I'd definitely have them talk about their experience there and what they learned, and I'd be looking both for their emotional reactions and the actions they took. As an example of somebody who handled working at dubious place well, consider this blog: http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/ http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/
      - hueving 10y ago
        So you would press anyone who has worked for Google and Facebook as well right?
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  We happily hired people from Lehman after the financial crisis. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and it is tragic that the good people frequently overestimate their role in one-off events.
omginternets 10y ago
I wonder, would one have legal recourse in such a case? Is it conceivable, in principle, to seek remedy for damages arising from your stunted career? Any litigation experts care to weigh in? What would need to be established beyond the obvious (e.g. that damages were committed)? Has anything of this sort occurred in the past?
- shimon 10y ago
  It's not likely that any of these employees can reasonably claim a tort or breach of contract here. The company messed up, but luckily it's not illegal to disappoint your employees. Not that I think Theranos should not face some consequences, I just think drawing the line would be highly fraught.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    Well my reasoning was that Theranos' criminal fraud might taint a given employee's CV. It seems like prima facie it might be possible to argue that this translates into monetary damages.
    - HarryHirsch 10y ago
      If you hung around for too long at the place that might signal the capacity to put up with institutional corruption. It's a character trait viewed positively in some places.
      - frozenport 10y ago
        Back to academia with you!
    - hueving 10y ago
      It's your choice to continue working at the company during hints of fraud. Anyone concerned about it tainting their future should have left 6 months ago.
    - 10y ago
hyperbovine 10y ago
I do too, but having met several people who worked there briefly and left, I wonder how many of those 340 have even been there for years. Seems like they have a lot of writing-on-the-wall related churn.
sqldba 10y ago
I work in IT so I'm used to weeks without results. But yeah this is going to be a huge black mark on people's resumes and how the hell do you hide 3 years with a company that was basically all about committing fraud? "I didn't know and I was doing good work," probably isn't going to fly.
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  I think it depends upon the role. Working as a researcher in one of the labs committing the fraud? I can't imagine you getting a job with a reputable company for years. Working as a developer on their website? It's entirely conceivable you had no idea what was really going on. Hopefully people will be level-headed about this sort of stuff.
JohnTHaller 10y ago
Feel bad for some of them, not the ones who delusionally chanted "F--- you, Carreyrou!" at the all hands meeting after the big scam started coming to light: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-ther...
hannob 10y ago
Was there any point in time where a reasonably skeptical person wouldn't have thought that Theranos is a scam company? As far as I know they never provided any scientific data that their product works. What do you expect working for such a company?

by kldaace 10y ago

aswanson 10y ago

Yeah. Having the big "T" on the resume might be one of the few red flags signalling fraud and corruption worse than a few years at SAC capital after a internship at Enron and Lehman Bros. Maybe the employees themselves will sue the company for fraud and damage to their careers. Crazy situation.

jdavis703 10y ago
They'll probably change their name (why hello Accenture), and the people associated can now put the untainted name on their resume.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Heh, had no idea about that one! I had recently been thinking about how terrible it would be to have a resume with a Wells Fargo job ending in the last couple months.
  - FilterSweep 10y ago
    That's a good point, but I would hope employers would be able to distinguish situations clearly created solely on: a) the upper management level (Wells Fargo, Theranos) from: b) the employee level, whereby the employees themselves use private data for advantage and personal gain - DraftKings comes to mind here[0][1] [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel-draftkings-fantasy-employees-bet-rivals.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel-draftkings-... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/draftkings-daily-fantasy-sports-fanduel-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/draftkings-daily-fantasy-spor...
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      I disagree. 5,300 low level employees actively chose to create fictional bank accounts in order to meet their goals. Even if some middle management tier recommended that they do it, I think it says something about the moral fiber of every one of those employees to be complicit in that.
nikcub 10y ago
Working at SAC Capital is only a black mark on your name to those outside of finance. Within the world of hedge funds SAC alumni are doing extremely well: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-23/sac-alumni-make-cohen-proud-as-plotkin-s-fund-shines-in-ranking http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-23/sac-alumni...
- dingbat 10y ago
  in other words, its only a black mark from people who dont matter anyway
- srtjstjsj 10y ago
  Those outside of finance don't know what SAC is.
- ryporter 10y ago
  That's very interesting, and it makes some sense now that you mention it. After all, SAC made it clear to investors that that would cover all of the legal expenses and fines, so they were just left with returns from the fund itself, and insider trading works.
ryporter 10y ago
SAC Capital is a much bigger stain for former employees than the others, in my opinion. SAC allegedly had a deeply ingrained culture of finding and exploiting insider knowledge that permeated multiple levels. Basically, Cohen had employees do his dirty work, while he maintained plausible deniability. At Theranos, by contrast, Holmes intentionally kept employees in the dark. If I were interviewing an ex-employee, especially one at a lab outside of California, I would certainly press the candidate on the issue, but I would be willing to believe that they were honestly trying to build and deploy a novel technology that never ended up working. It is not the case that the entire endeavor was a scam. They thought that they could develop this technology, and then the leadership covered it up as they were failing to do so. Also, do you have any sources that document employment at Lehman Brothers as being a stain on the majority of their employees? Thousands of the employees immediately moved to Barclays and Nomura when they bought parts of Lehman Brothers. That doesn't sound like a horrible stain to me.
- hueving 10y ago
  Are you serious? You would press employees on the behavior of their CEO?
  - wpietri 10y ago
    I don't know about ryporter, but I sure would. I'm looking for people who are both smart and of good character. Working for what is apparently a giant fraud suggests that they may lack one or both of those attributes. I'd definitely have them talk about their experience there and what they learned, and I'd be looking both for their emotional reactions and the actions they took. As an example of somebody who handled working at dubious place well, consider this blog: http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/ http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/
    - hueving 10y ago
      So you would press anyone who has worked for Google and Facebook as well right?
kchoudhu 10y ago
We happily hired people from Lehman after the financial crisis. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and it is tragic that the good people frequently overestimate their role in one-off events.

omginternets 10y ago

I wonder, would one have legal recourse in such a case? Is it conceivable, in principle, to seek remedy for damages arising from your stunted career? Any litigation experts care to weigh in? What would need to be established beyond the obvious (e.g. that damages were committed)? Has anything of this sort occurred in the past?

shimon 10y ago
It's not likely that any of these employees can reasonably claim a tort or breach of contract here. The company messed up, but luckily it's not illegal to disappoint your employees. Not that I think Theranos should not face some consequences, I just think drawing the line would be highly fraught.
- omginternets 10y ago
  Well my reasoning was that Theranos' criminal fraud might taint a given employee's CV. It seems like prima facie it might be possible to argue that this translates into monetary damages.
  - HarryHirsch 10y ago
    If you hung around for too long at the place that might signal the capacity to put up with institutional corruption. It's a character trait viewed positively in some places.
    - frozenport 10y ago
      Back to academia with you!
  - hueving 10y ago
    It's your choice to continue working at the company during hints of fraud. Anyone concerned about it tainting their future should have left 6 months ago.
  - 10y ago

hyperbovine 10y ago

I do too, but having met several people who worked there briefly and left, I wonder how many of those 340 have even been there for years. Seems like they have a lot of writing-on-the-wall related churn.

sqldba 10y ago

I work in IT so I'm used to weeks without results. But yeah this is going to be a huge black mark on people's resumes and how the hell do you hide 3 years with a company that was basically all about committing fraud? "I didn't know and I was doing good work," probably isn't going to fly.

duncan_bayne 10y ago
I think it depends upon the role. Working as a researcher in one of the labs committing the fraud? I can't imagine you getting a job with a reputable company for years. Working as a developer on their website? It's entirely conceivable you had no idea what was really going on. Hopefully people will be level-headed about this sort of stuff.

JohnTHaller 10y ago

Feel bad for some of them, not the ones who delusionally chanted "F--- you, Carreyrou!" at the all hands meeting after the big scam started coming to light: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-ther...

hannob 10y ago

Was there any point in time where a reasonably skeptical person wouldn't have thought that Theranos is a scam company? As far as I know they never provided any scientific data that their product works. What do you expect working for such a company?