6 ms·

I really think the underlying problem is that she was a pretty young woman and this prevented her from getting the kind of reality check she should have gotten

by Mz 10y ago

I really think the underlying problem is that she was a pretty young woman and this prevented her from getting the kind of reality check she should have gotten much earlier. I am a woman and I find that men either won't really engage me at all or they want to, I don't know, be nice? Be encouraging? I know it is always challenging to get good constructive feedback, but I think charming, pretty women more often than others either get no feedback or get gushed at. I have a tendency to get treated by people like I am their best friend or something and it often weirds me out and fairly often leads to uncomfortable and problematic situations. I have spent a lot of years trying to find a solution to this. I am kind of glad to see this company being reigned in, but I find it sad to watch what happens with Ms. Holmes, who probably believed and probably still believes the hype about herself. I think she still is failing to get the memo she needs to get and it is kind of tragic. She was essentially a child when she started this. Her elders and so-called advisors -- all brilliant men, it seems -- should have pulled her up short a long, long time ago. Instead, she is being dragged through this bloody mess. It's a hard thing to watch, in part because I am so glad to see this vaporware company called on its BS, but at the same time I am generally inclined to be compassionate and I just feel someone -- probably many someone's -- failed in their duty (edit: To Ms. Holmes, a young kid with a dream) long ago and for a long time. It should have never gone this far.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
- Mz 10y ago
  From what I have read, she spent like a decade "building" this company before making any effort to release a product. She dropped out of Stanford and has been hailed as a genius while failing to launch and when she did finally launch, this is the result. Meanwhile, she has apparently been backed for a very, very long time by such luminaries as Henry Kissinger and former US senator and presidential candidate Sam Nunn: https://www.theranos.com/leadership/counselors https://www.theranos.com/leadership/counselors So, some pretty girl had former serious VIPs on the world stage patting her on the head and saying "You go, girl!" while she had no product. And we wonder why it became such a huge mess. She was like 19 or 20 when she dreamed this up. I don't know how long she has had their backing, but that is heady stuff for almost anyone, of any age. If she had it in her early twenties, good luck reigning in her insane ego and getting her to see reality. Her reality is that she can get the backing of people like that. Many people are very "la la la, not listening -- don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up." If they can get social proof that they are awesome, it gets far, far worse. And being backed by people like that is very strong social proof. So, in my opinion, they had an obligation to also put the brakes on and demand real proof while patting her on the head and fueling the growth of her enormous ego. Is it any wonder she has such an enormous ego given those experiences?
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    Companies fail and egos get inflated all the time. I'm not sure what substantiates her being an attractive woman as the salient point, especially when the attractiveness advantage (and resulting gigantic egos) exists for both sexes.
    - Mz 10y ago
      Give me a list of companies headed by attractive young men that have been hailed as Decacorns (worth $10 billion) while producing zero products for an entire decade and being lauded in big name publications for years which are now also going down in flames that rival the burning of Rome. Given that only 17% (or less) of CEO's are women, you should have zero problem coming up with at least five such names off the top of your head if there is no gender bias involved in this situation. Oh, let's make it easier: List me 5 or more unicorns ($1 billion valuation) headed by a guy going down in horrendous flames and all over the media. The men don't have to be particularly good looking or charming either.
      - quickben 10y ago
        But in this case, it wasn't about tweeting if one's plant need watering. These were medical products, and people, usually the crowd that needs them, were making big life decisions based on the results. The gender of the founder isn't as relevant as the size of the sh* hitting the fan when things go wrong.
  - petra 10y ago
    You're probably right. But ideally, why should someone like Kissinger, who isn't a science guy would be strong social proof in this context, instead of the scientific community, or scientific advisors with expertise in diagnostics ?
    - Mz 10y ago
      Social proof and scientific proof work completely differently. If this had been driven by science, it wouldn't be the mess it is.
insickness 10y ago
I don't disagree that attractive women can sometimes be disproportionately encouraged simply because of their looks but is there a reason to believe this to be the case with Holmes other than the fact that she is attractive and successful?
- Mz 10y ago
  It is my opinion, informed by my personal experiences (edit: and by reading multiple articles about the company and its melt down). I haven't presented it as the conclusion of some study. I don't know where you can find a study of comparable situations. I don't know of any other so-called decacorns, much less ones going down in flames to this degree. So it is essentially impossible to have some kind of meaningful large scale study. That doesn't prevent me from having opinions. I have studied things like social psychology, so it is not an uninformed opinion. But your question sort of makes me think of when I talk to men on HN who fail to see any sexism here when there does not appear to be a single woman on the leaderboard. (That always makes me feel like "okay, if that isn't obvious on the face of it, not sure there is any point in wasting any breathe here.")
  - winteriscoming 10y ago
    >> But your question sort of makes me think of when I talk to men on HN who fail to see any sexism here when there does not appear to be a single woman on the leaderboard I am relatively new on this site, where is the leaderboard? How do you know whoever are on it currently doesn't include any woman? The threads that I have read so far since I have been here, except for some of the comments, I hardly check who posted the comment let alone know whether it's a man or a woman.
    - Mz 10y ago
      It is inherently hard to tell here. I appear to be the highest ranked woman here and I am thousands short of the leaderboard. I actively researched it and blogged about it. Check my profile for links. Click on Lists at the bottom of the page and then click on Leaders.
MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
I don't know - I can agree that the "pretty young woman" effect may have gotten the ball rolling down this path, but saying it's the "underlying problem" kind of minimizes the agency she had in creating this situation, which was already enormous many years ago, before it was too late. And some men, like the late Ian Gibbons, did try to engage her with legitimate feedback. I think the bigger underlying problem was her managerial style - demanding utter secrecy so as to maintain her own omniscience. I don't know why it works so well for Apple, but it seems like the silo-ing of Theranos prevented any kind of intra-organizational regulation, so business pushed ahead full steam even as the product failed to materialize.
- Mz 10y ago
  That is an excellent comment (I upvoted it), but I feel like saying it may have gotten the ball rolling but is not the underlying problem is -- semantics? Once the ball is rolling, it tends to keep rolling that way. Once you have the likes of Henry Kissinger making you feel like you are Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, why on earth would you listen to some lesser known punk telling you "You think you're all that, but you're not!"?
  - refulgentis 10y ago
    You sound unfamiliar with Ian Gibbons' role in the situation. He was Therano's chief scientist for 8 years. It's hard to envision how Holmes could have ignored his concerns simply because the rest of her echo chamber was positive, short of God herself fêting Holmes. For more info on Ian: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-ther...
    - Mz 10y ago
      It's hard to envision how Holmes could have ignored his concerns Yet, it appears that she successfully did exactly that: Ignored his concerns. And your article says so, from the very top: In a searing investigation into the once lauded biotech start-up Theranos, Nick Bilton discovers that its precocious founder defied medical experts—even her own chief scientist—about the veracity of its now discredited blood-testing technology.
return0 10y ago
> charming, pretty women more often than others either get no feedback or get gushed at Having watched her speak, she is neither. > Instead, she is being dragged through this bloody mess I am at a loss in this sentence. In a world where immigrant children drown at sea, we are supposed to think she s actually a victim? I don't think the reason she didn't get her reality check was her looks, but her family wealth and connections. She got plenty of feedback since WSJ started reporting about her. Her response was even more secrecy pretending there is no elephant in the room.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- gnipgnip 10y ago
  Causality is a tricky thing (see Pearlmutter et.al); often people jump on the most socially-salacious (Latin salire ~ "leaping") explanation, after the fact, probably because it is at that moment, the best available instrument for change.
- Mz 10y ago
  I am a chronically ill homeless woman who was molested and raped as a child. I find your comment rather offensive for a great many reasons. Children drowning at sea is not relevant to the topic and most people I talk to online do not genuinely care about my suffering. So this appeal strikes me as a rather nasty means to be dismissive of me. I was not suggesting anyone else was obligated to have compassion for her and I am quite confident your supposed compassion for real suffering will fail to in any way benefit me.
  - return0 10y ago
    Making arguments for and against things is one of the joys of discourse. There is nothing in my comment (even remotely) referring to you. Instead you are the one basically blaming me of being a bigot. I might be wrong, but you also seem to be seeking an apology. If you feel you need to "benefit yourself", please seek the help of your local welfare authorities.
SEJeff 10y ago
Great point of view into what sometimes causes this problem. As a male who works with plenty of female engineers, I've never considered that (but I also give them the same treatment in code reviews as any other engineer).
azernik 10y ago
It's much more likely that she was a well-connected, upper-crust WASP with lots of connections. When you have Kissinger, Bill Frist, and George P. Shulz as advisors, and a few VCs already on board (who it turned out were family friends), other investors and media tend to just assume everyone else has done the due diligence. From second-hand experience, women (young and pretty or otherwise) have absolutely no trouble getting their ideas shot down, or getting dismissed in general as unserious.
- Mz 10y ago
  From second-hand experience, young pretty women have absolutely no trouble getting their ideas shot down. Getting your ideas shot down is not at all the same as getting good constructive feedback that helps you orient properly. It is actually pretty easy to chalk that kind of thing up to jealousy and hatefulness (and, thus, ignore it). "Haters gonna hate" and all that. I did consider further editing my original comment to clarify that detail. I have gotten plenty of negativity in my life, even quite ugly stuff. That is extremely different from someone who actually wants me to succeed telling me why my project will not fly and that I need to address those things in order to have any hope of succeeding. My adult sons can be counted on to give me that kind of constructive feedback. So far, I have mostly failed to get it from other men and it is mostly men who have the kind of knowledge I am interested in accessing.
  - fern12 10y ago
    <it is mostly men who have the kind of knowledge I am interested in accessing. As a female, I actually find this kind of offensive. There are plenty of intelligent, capable women working in tech, if that is the field to which you are referring, as well as business, healthcare, etc.
    - Mz 10y ago
      You are entitled to your feelings. It is a factual statement. I am not going to retract it nor apologize for it.
dgreensp 10y ago
She's dragging herself through the mess at this point. It's not unusual for founders to raise large amounts (at least eight figures, say), ignore all criticism, and fail spectacularly years later in ways that make you wonder what the hell they were thinking. What's unusual in her case is her Trump-like ability to hold frame and act like nothing is wrong or ever was wrong, regardless of pesky "facts."
- back_beyond 10y ago
  As an aside -- another interesting manifestation of this Trump-like behavior, and this is the clearest case that I have seen, are the multiple times when Hillary literally seizes on camera and plays it off as if it never happened.
ben_jones 10y ago
As a male co-founder I once asked an advisor for connections with "cynical product people" in order to illicit negative feedback of my company's product. I felt like the positive feedback loop in SF was that bad (for everyone). I think a lot of different things are in play here. Part of it I think was just a culture that wanted a female Steve Jobs character, that opportunity was there and she took it. She also got a lot of credit coming out of Stanford, hell she even hosted one of those seminar courses at Stanford.
- Mz 10y ago
  So her gender is not a factor. It is not because she is a charismatic woman. It is just because she is a female Steve Jobs.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
If Theranos succeeded then everyone would be singing paeans to Ms. Holmes but now she has failed it must be the fault of advisors and because she was not 'pulled up short' earlier? How you can ignore her borderline criminal behavior? Also let's not the play the 'young kid' card. Zuck, Bill Gates all started their companies at a similar age.
- Mz 10y ago
  Yes they did. And they succeeded. Perhaps part of the reason is that they are male and they got more of the right kind of feedback because of it.

by Mz 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Mz 10y ago
From what I have read, she spent like a decade "building" this company before making any effort to release a product. She dropped out of Stanford and has been hailed as a genius while failing to launch and when she did finally launch, this is the result. Meanwhile, she has apparently been backed for a very, very long time by such luminaries as Henry Kissinger and former US senator and presidential candidate Sam Nunn: https://www.theranos.com/leadership/counselors https://www.theranos.com/leadership/counselors So, some pretty girl had former serious VIPs on the world stage patting her on the head and saying "You go, girl!" while she had no product. And we wonder why it became such a huge mess. She was like 19 or 20 when she dreamed this up. I don't know how long she has had their backing, but that is heady stuff for almost anyone, of any age. If she had it in her early twenties, good luck reigning in her insane ego and getting her to see reality. Her reality is that she can get the backing of people like that. Many people are very "la la la, not listening -- don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up." If they can get social proof that they are awesome, it gets far, far worse. And being backed by people like that is very strong social proof. So, in my opinion, they had an obligation to also put the brakes on and demand real proof while patting her on the head and fueling the growth of her enormous ego. Is it any wonder she has such an enormous ego given those experiences?
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Companies fail and egos get inflated all the time. I'm not sure what substantiates her being an attractive woman as the salient point, especially when the attractiveness advantage (and resulting gigantic egos) exists for both sexes.
  - Mz 10y ago
    Give me a list of companies headed by attractive young men that have been hailed as Decacorns (worth $10 billion) while producing zero products for an entire decade and being lauded in big name publications for years which are now also going down in flames that rival the burning of Rome. Given that only 17% (or less) of CEO's are women, you should have zero problem coming up with at least five such names off the top of your head if there is no gender bias involved in this situation. Oh, let's make it easier: List me 5 or more unicorns ($1 billion valuation) headed by a guy going down in horrendous flames and all over the media. The men don't have to be particularly good looking or charming either.
    - quickben 10y ago
      But in this case, it wasn't about tweeting if one's plant need watering. These were medical products, and people, usually the crowd that needs them, were making big life decisions based on the results. The gender of the founder isn't as relevant as the size of the sh* hitting the fan when things go wrong.
- petra 10y ago
  You're probably right. But ideally, why should someone like Kissinger, who isn't a science guy would be strong social proof in this context, instead of the scientific community, or scientific advisors with expertise in diagnostics ?
  - Mz 10y ago
    Social proof and scientific proof work completely differently. If this had been driven by science, it wouldn't be the mess it is.

insickness 10y ago

I don't disagree that attractive women can sometimes be disproportionately encouraged simply because of their looks but is there a reason to believe this to be the case with Holmes other than the fact that she is attractive and successful?

Mz 10y ago
It is my opinion, informed by my personal experiences (edit: and by reading multiple articles about the company and its melt down). I haven't presented it as the conclusion of some study. I don't know where you can find a study of comparable situations. I don't know of any other so-called decacorns, much less ones going down in flames to this degree. So it is essentially impossible to have some kind of meaningful large scale study. That doesn't prevent me from having opinions. I have studied things like social psychology, so it is not an uninformed opinion. But your question sort of makes me think of when I talk to men on HN who fail to see any sexism here when there does not appear to be a single woman on the leaderboard. (That always makes me feel like "okay, if that isn't obvious on the face of it, not sure there is any point in wasting any breathe here.")
- winteriscoming 10y ago
  >> But your question sort of makes me think of when I talk to men on HN who fail to see any sexism here when there does not appear to be a single woman on the leaderboard I am relatively new on this site, where is the leaderboard? How do you know whoever are on it currently doesn't include any woman? The threads that I have read so far since I have been here, except for some of the comments, I hardly check who posted the comment let alone know whether it's a man or a woman.
  - Mz 10y ago
    It is inherently hard to tell here. I appear to be the highest ranked woman here and I am thousands short of the leaderboard. I actively researched it and blogged about it. Check my profile for links. Click on Lists at the bottom of the page and then click on Leaders.

MaxfordAndSons 10y ago

I don't know - I can agree that the "pretty young woman" effect may have gotten the ball rolling down this path, but saying it's the "underlying problem" kind of minimizes the agency she had in creating this situation, which was already enormous many years ago, before it was too late. And some men, like the late Ian Gibbons, did try to engage her with legitimate feedback. I think the bigger underlying problem was her managerial style - demanding utter secrecy so as to maintain her own omniscience. I don't know why it works so well for Apple, but it seems like the silo-ing of Theranos prevented any kind of intra-organizational regulation, so business pushed ahead full steam even as the product failed to materialize.

Mz 10y ago
That is an excellent comment (I upvoted it), but I feel like saying it may have gotten the ball rolling but is not the underlying problem is -- semantics? Once the ball is rolling, it tends to keep rolling that way. Once you have the likes of Henry Kissinger making you feel like you are Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, why on earth would you listen to some lesser known punk telling you "You think you're all that, but you're not!"?
- refulgentis 10y ago
  You sound unfamiliar with Ian Gibbons' role in the situation. He was Therano's chief scientist for 8 years. It's hard to envision how Holmes could have ignored his concerns simply because the rest of her echo chamber was positive, short of God herself fêting Holmes. For more info on Ian: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-ther...
  - Mz 10y ago
    It's hard to envision how Holmes could have ignored his concerns Yet, it appears that she successfully did exactly that: Ignored his concerns. And your article says so, from the very top: In a searing investigation into the once lauded biotech start-up Theranos, Nick Bilton discovers that its precocious founder defied medical experts—even her own chief scientist—about the veracity of its now discredited blood-testing technology.

return0 10y ago

> charming, pretty women more often than others either get no feedback or get gushed at Having watched her speak, she is neither. > Instead, she is being dragged through this bloody mess I am at a loss in this sentence. In a world where immigrant children drown at sea, we are supposed to think she s actually a victim? I don't think the reason she didn't get her reality check was her looks, but her family wealth and connections. She got plenty of feedback since WSJ started reporting about her. Her response was even more secrecy pretending there is no elephant in the room.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gnipgnip 10y ago
Causality is a tricky thing (see Pearlmutter et.al); often people jump on the most socially-salacious (Latin salire ~ "leaping") explanation, after the fact, probably because it is at that moment, the best available instrument for change.
Mz 10y ago
I am a chronically ill homeless woman who was molested and raped as a child. I find your comment rather offensive for a great many reasons. Children drowning at sea is not relevant to the topic and most people I talk to online do not genuinely care about my suffering. So this appeal strikes me as a rather nasty means to be dismissive of me. I was not suggesting anyone else was obligated to have compassion for her and I am quite confident your supposed compassion for real suffering will fail to in any way benefit me.
- return0 10y ago
  Making arguments for and against things is one of the joys of discourse. There is nothing in my comment (even remotely) referring to you. Instead you are the one basically blaming me of being a bigot. I might be wrong, but you also seem to be seeking an apology. If you feel you need to "benefit yourself", please seek the help of your local welfare authorities.

SEJeff 10y ago

Great point of view into what sometimes causes this problem. As a male who works with plenty of female engineers, I've never considered that (but I also give them the same treatment in code reviews as any other engineer).

azernik 10y ago

It's much more likely that she was a well-connected, upper-crust WASP with lots of connections. When you have Kissinger, Bill Frist, and George P. Shulz as advisors, and a few VCs already on board (who it turned out were family friends), other investors and media tend to just assume everyone else has done the due diligence. From second-hand experience, women (young and pretty or otherwise) have absolutely no trouble getting their ideas shot down, or getting dismissed in general as unserious.

Mz 10y ago
From second-hand experience, young pretty women have absolutely no trouble getting their ideas shot down. Getting your ideas shot down is not at all the same as getting good constructive feedback that helps you orient properly. It is actually pretty easy to chalk that kind of thing up to jealousy and hatefulness (and, thus, ignore it). "Haters gonna hate" and all that. I did consider further editing my original comment to clarify that detail. I have gotten plenty of negativity in my life, even quite ugly stuff. That is extremely different from someone who actually wants me to succeed telling me why my project will not fly and that I need to address those things in order to have any hope of succeeding. My adult sons can be counted on to give me that kind of constructive feedback. So far, I have mostly failed to get it from other men and it is mostly men who have the kind of knowledge I am interested in accessing.
- fern12 10y ago
  <it is mostly men who have the kind of knowledge I am interested in accessing. As a female, I actually find this kind of offensive. There are plenty of intelligent, capable women working in tech, if that is the field to which you are referring, as well as business, healthcare, etc.
  - Mz 10y ago
    You are entitled to your feelings. It is a factual statement. I am not going to retract it nor apologize for it.

dgreensp 10y ago

She's dragging herself through the mess at this point. It's not unusual for founders to raise large amounts (at least eight figures, say), ignore all criticism, and fail spectacularly years later in ways that make you wonder what the hell they were thinking. What's unusual in her case is her Trump-like ability to hold frame and act like nothing is wrong or ever was wrong, regardless of pesky "facts."

back_beyond 10y ago
As an aside -- another interesting manifestation of this Trump-like behavior, and this is the clearest case that I have seen, are the multiple times when Hillary literally seizes on camera and plays it off as if it never happened.

ben_jones 10y ago

As a male co-founder I once asked an advisor for connections with "cynical product people" in order to illicit negative feedback of my company's product. I felt like the positive feedback loop in SF was that bad (for everyone). I think a lot of different things are in play here. Part of it I think was just a culture that wanted a female Steve Jobs character, that opportunity was there and she took it. She also got a lot of credit coming out of Stanford, hell she even hosted one of those seminar courses at Stanford.

Mz 10y ago
So her gender is not a factor. It is not because she is a charismatic woman. It is just because she is a female Steve Jobs.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

If Theranos succeeded then everyone would be singing paeans to Ms. Holmes but now she has failed it must be the fault of advisors and because she was not 'pulled up short' earlier? How you can ignore her borderline criminal behavior? Also let's not the play the 'young kid' card. Zuck, Bill Gates all started their companies at a similar age.

Mz 10y ago
Yes they did. And they succeeded. Perhaps part of the reason is that they are male and they got more of the right kind of feedback because of it.