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Before it was announced that uBiome was committing insurance fraud a few years back, my friend and I compared our test results and found that our very detailed,
by jacobsimon 6y ago
Before it was announced that uBiome was committing insurance fraud a few years back, my friend and I compared our test results and found that our very detailed, 10-page personalized biome reports were completely identical except for our names. So I believe they were also just completely fabricating their test results from the beginning, and some of the employees at the company must have known this.
- ficklepickle 6y agoIt's a poop-scapade! Did you both have newspaper and wolf hair in your excrement?
- Barrin92 6y ago>some of the employees at the company must have known this. what always fascinates me isn't the people who are in on in but the people who are kind of on the edge. From the Theranos case I remember employees not being allowed to enter rooms, secret chat rooms, people being followed by security etc... like, how can you work for a company like this and have a sort of Twilight Zone or Kafka novel experience for years and just be okay with it?
- Judgmentality 6y ago> like, how can you work for a company like this and have a sort of Twilight Zone or Kafka novel experience for years and just be okay with it? Realistically, the best and brightest left early and it's the people afraid of losing their jobs that feel compelled to shut up and toe the line.
- kbenson 6y agoIt would be easier to identify these places if it was the best and the brightest that left. Those with confidence and/or the financial stability to not worry about it can leave. There are plenty of very good and very bright people that don't fall into those categories for one reason or another (young, external factors making it risky to leave, etc).
- Judgmentality 6y agoIf you work in tech and you're very bright, it's trivial to see the signs of a bad workplace and be unable to find work elsewhere. I do not believe anyone would choose to stay if they were very talented, because it should have been obvious there were problems and it should have been easy to leave. Everybody I know in tech that's any good has no problem finding a new job on short notice, including people with less than one year of experience.
- minitoar 6y agoA generation of tech employees that have never worked through a recession.
- Judgmentality 6y agoThat doesn't change the fact that in the current job market they can trivially find a new job. That may not be true in the future but there's no reason not to take advantage of it now.
- some1olderthanu 6y agoYou sound like you have no more than a handful of years of professional (i.e., taxed paid FT) work experience (if any). As you get older, jobs aren’t as interchangeable. Consider at least: - compensation - scope - niche fields - culture - work life balance, family policies - location - golden handcuffs - network I can (and have) found new high paying (at least they were for me at the time) jobs within 1-2 weeks of deciding to look to jump and signing an offer. But as I’ve grown older, that doesn’t fly anymore. If I’m taking a new role, I require certain compensation levels, and that comes with certain output/WLB expectations, which means I need to find it interesting, and my family needs to be ok with the value proposition. All of those things narrow the search space down quite a bit. Then as you’re more and more senior, and if you can command a large compensation package, it’s usually no longer a 1-2 week ordeal (after initial phone interviews, I had 10 interview sessions over 3 weeks for my current role). You’re also no longer being interviewed by random engineers and PMs, but higher ups with busier schedules that means it’s no longer a concise 4-5 hour thing. You might eventually hit a stage in your career where as a candidate, you get to pick a panel for you to interview for a second on-site. These things take time to coordinate and schedule.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hawk_ 6y agoI think it's like boiling the frog. If they ended up in a situation like that abruptly, most would bail. But the little day to day changes can lead to boiling the proverbial frog. We all do that to some extent. Members of the FAANG group of companies indulge in quite egregious practices from an outsider's (wider society) perspective but insiders feel it's normal.
- taurath 6y agoThey also are sitting around listening to leaderships carefully crafted justification day in and day out. I’ve had otherwise smart engineers who work in advertising tell me that people enjoy looking them, and any criticism of “user engagement at any cost” is met with bewilderment.
- canadianfella 6y agoLooking them?
- DC-3 6y agoI honestly believe these sorts of blindspots of morality and critical thinking are due to under-exposure to the humanities. A lot of guys in tech could do with reading something - anything - that isn't 538 or a tech blog.
- exolymph 6y agoI don't think this would go quite how you expect. Consider that Peter Thiel is a popularizer of Rene Girard.
- kortilla 6y agoHumanities don’t teach critical thinking anymore than a standard engineering degree. Standard engineering degrees include courses on ethics, basic logic, etc. If you don’t pick up the ability to think critically from that, you’re certainly not going to get it researching humanities.
- an_opabinia 6y agoThey hired a lot of people who were vulnerable in ways that are difficult to control, like being H1Bs.
- tpmx 6y agoSource?
- busymom0 6y agohttps://www.computerworld.com/article/3195957/us-law-allows-low-h-1b-wages-just-look-at-apple.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3195957/us-law-allows-... https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-11-26.pdf#page56 https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-11-26.pdf#page56 https://reclaimthenet.org/silicon-valley-hib-visas-institutional-slavery/ https://reclaimthenet.org/silicon-valley-hib-visas-instituti...
- tpmx 6y agoNone of those links are specific to this company, so they're not really relevant.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jghn 6y agoThe book Bad Blood gets into this a bit. It's a fantastic read on the whole Theranos story, for those who have not read it yet.
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y agoI recommend “The Dropout” podcast. Very well done, lots of great interviews. https://abcaudio.com/podcasts/the-dropout/ https://abcaudio.com/podcasts/the-dropout/
- the_snooze 6y agoOne of my favorite non-fiction books. It reads like a thriller. I blasted through it in two sittings.
- wonnage 6y agoI worked at a place that had a top secret "spam team" shrouded in secrecy. Secret meetings, separate code repo, iirc even a dedicated meeting room, etc. The official reason was that they didn't want their spam detection algorithms to be leaked. Coincidentally there was a lot of outside speculation about whether being in the free vs. paying tier of customer would affect this spam detection. One can only wonder!
- p1necone 6y agoThis is actually sort of reasonable. The details of automatic moderation tools need to remain secret otherwise they can be gamed really easily. Even manual moderation strategies generally work better if they're not explained (see - HN itself).
- nradov 6y agoWell that's what social media companies like to claim but we have no actual proof of that. Trust us, they say.
- jacobsimon 6y agoSounds like Yelp ;)
- kmeisthax 6y agoGoogle?
- jimkleiber 6y agoSecrecy doesn't always imply impropriety but it can, and that's the challenge with such secrecy, is that one doesn't know. I.e, I imagine a lot of Apple corporate culture has similar restrictions, yet as far as we know, they're not committing fraud like that.
- graeme 6y agoThe thing about Apple is it is pretty clear the company is not a giant fraud, as they have a long track record of shipping functioning products. The company started by shipping a product. Theranos, by contrast, did not have anything functioning. Ubiome seeks not to have either though I admit it is less clear a case without expertise.
- rowanG077 6y agoYou don't start working with a company if you suspect fraud. The point is secrets and a need to know basis like this is not uncommon in legit businesses. It's not a sign of a company being fraudelant.
- spaetzleesser 6y agoAs far as Theranos goes I would lay a lot of blame on big shot investors and the press. they had access or should have asked for way more access than the little employee. Even if you work there and have a bad feeling you are probably doubting yourself quickly when you read that you are actually working for the hottest company in SV.
- vkou 6y agoIn a large company, this sort of thing is perfectly normal. There are plenty of buildings in Google where random Googlers working on Ads can't enter. Unless your work interfaces with what happens in those silos, you generally don't have any idea about what's going on in the Android Hardware Testing building, or the garage out of which Project Loon ran before it was shut down. It's a lot stranger in a small start-up.
- hellbannedguy 6y agoWhen it comes to money most people in every profession look the other way. I just can’t figure if 90%, or 99%? Every profession, and every job, people look the other way on truth, and moral issues. I usually have more respect for the criminal who admits he steals, and cheats, for a living.
- tpmx 6y agoStock options. Personal gain is a hell of a drug. Remember that these people are self-selected to go for money - that's why people go to SV.
- standardUser 6y agoI hope that most start up employees view equity as a low-stakes gamble and not a money-making scheme, because the odds of getting rich, or getting anything at all, are very slim. I know that's how I've viewed my equity at the startups I've worked for. Besides, there are way more tangible and guaranteed benefits to working for small companies and companies in interesting spaces.
- mavelikara 6y ago> employees not being allowed to enter rooms, secret chat rooms, This is providing employees only as much information as needed to do their job. Apple, for instance, seems to do this. So it might not ring any alarm bells with the employee.
- fnbr 6y agoYup. I work at a non-Apple FAANG and there are many rooms/buildings I don’t have access to (and many chats I don’t have access to- it’s all need to know).
- aphextron 6y agoI spent my whole week writing code to circumvent browser level privacy guards, to gather more data to sell more targeted ads. Most of us make similar ethical transgressions regularly. Ultimately we're all just slaves to the machine as long as it pays for our lifestyles.
- ForHackernews 6y agoI don't mean this as a personal attack on you, but for everyone who is similarly compromising your morals in return for a cushy lifestyle: please stop. You're not a "slave". You're extremely well paid with in-demand skills, and you could do something else with them. If you keep doing this, you're no better than the tobacco merchants.
- iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y agoI think I agree with your sentiment, but should the GP be worse off for being honest/pessimistic/seeing things clearly? I'm sure there are lots of people doing what the GP describes that don't feel they are doing anything immoral. Are they in the clear? If you're actually participating in fraud it's one thing, but doing something legal but morally dubious like working around browser privacy comes down much more to individual perspective. This potentially is another argument for laws / regulation.
- freewilly1040 6y agoWhat’s seen clearly? The comment asserts a lack of morals and takes comfort in an imagined crowd with him. The GP does imply he thinks what he does is immoral. It’s on him.
- d110af5ccf 6y agoWhy should you intentionally disadvantage yourself when someone else will just step in to fill your place? This view doesn't seem any different than expecting a corporation to voluntarily forego a profitable segment of the market. Regulation is required in such cases. It's unrealistic to expect otherwise. > no better than the tobacco merchants Prior to a certain time, tobacco producers honestly had no idea how harmful their product was. Once they found out, they actively tried to hide that fact from everyone. I don't much like adtech, but unlike tobacco it doesn't cause direct physical harm to the individual. They're also pretty up front about the fact that they try to track you.
- golemiprague 6y agoYou need the money, people pretends like changing jobs is easy, it is not the case for most people. Also, if the leaders cheat why the employees at the bottom should care for it? are they paid enough to care? they are not going to earn so much from the success of the company and not loose so much from the failure. They are just employees
- fisherjeff 6y agoI think it’s all about the narrative. If you believe deeply enough in the long-term outcome, there’s a lot that a person can overlook along the way.
- fortran77 6y agoAlso people really want to believe the story of a "female Steve Jobs."
- ybiomepoopthrow 6y agoWas early there, can tell you at the time the founders were well connected and extremely vengeful
- ybiomepoopthrow 6y agoAlso, they were very explicit that everything was legal, and was similar to, and better than what other testing companies were doing.
- jrochkind1 6y ago“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- spoonjim 6y agoI mean I can imagine Apple doing the same stuff. The CEOs of Theranoses get there because they have an incredible ability to convince those people that they are working at a future Apple.
- vmception 6y agoWelp thats it just rejoin the infinite job hunt because of a weird thing at work “Hun, I think its time to be realistic and provide for us” But people on the internet said every unideal thing at work means I should get a new job
- kumarvvr 6y agoOne effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. While employees may have doubt, they can justify their actions by thinking they are doing "their" part correctly. Which, I can relate to. If I am not doing pseudoscience and am working on tech / systems that are good in my domain, why would I bother about the whole picture? Morally, yes. But if you have loans to pay and a family to take care of, and are getting your salary on time, everything else is the management's fault. I can get a job in a similar field somewhere else. And, IMHO, it is the management's fault out and out. The reason they get to take the big cheques is because they bear the responsibility. It's not the responsibility of the average lower level worker to worry about it.
- hayst4ck 6y agoKinda makes you wonder what unspeakable things Apple is doing with their culture of team isolation.
- mikepurvis 6y agoPossibly nefarious stuff, but indications seem like it's mostly just a lot of internal competition, people unwittingly building doomed prototypes and such, like the famed "Acorn OS" that was a candidate to be iPhone OS but based on the iPod firmware rather than OS X.
- kumarvvr 6y agoTo be fair, Apple does not have the need to run after external investors. To some extent, companies like Theranos succumb to the greed and vanity of its founders. Sure, the idea is revolutionary, but when the time comes where you realize you have a lemon, it ought to be shut down, or pivoted.
- phs318u 6y ago> One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. Which is what Madoff did, I believe.
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- ugh123 6y agoWhats wrong with secret chat rooms? You mean like.. private Slack channels?
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- unixhero 6y agoMoney modifies human behaviour.
- at-fates-hands 6y agoI was in a startup in the early aughts and had this experience. We had a telecom company that was supposedly building the "next interwebs for business". Ambitious, hard to sell to people since it was insanely complicated. I was there at the beginning, then you start to see it. The closed founder meetings, no more team meetings. The hushed conversations at lunch. The rumor mill started to circle - VC money running out. The CEO blew all the money on coke and hookers. Nobody wants to answer basic questions like why the rollout of the new product is taking weeks and weeks to get going. People KNOW what's going on, but nobody wants to jump off the ship, only to find out the company figures it out and all your co-workers are now millionaires and you're back at some other startup busting your ass for some unknown future. People hang on, believing its going to happen, then you show up one day and the office is dark, the cop outside says you're not working today or tomorrow or ever really and you should go home. You hold out hope the company can pull out the nosedive, and when it doesn't, you have to go through the five stages of bereavement until you accept that it was really doomed from the start and you should have seen it but didn't want to believe this company was really just a complete façade to fleece money from some big VC firm.
- AniseAbyss 6y agoPaycheck. Ultimately how many people were prosecuted at Enron or Lehman Brothers? And honestly why wouldn't you be okay with it you're not killing anyone.
- pigeonhole123 6y agoIn the case of Theranos they almost certainly killed someone by knowingly providing false medical test results.
- arkh 6y agoNormalization of deviance. Little by little bad habits are formed and not stamped out because nothing bad happen. Until a space shuttle explodes. Then years of wrong process are found. That's why you have to empower new hires to question your methods: someone from outside will see what is not normal, if you dismiss them you may be missing opportunities to right things before you crash.
- spaetzleesser 6y agoWhen I was contractor I had a contract for a few moths with a company that discouraged people from talking to each other and everything was very secret. It felt a little weird but then I thought maybe a lot of companies do it so I played along. For example you hear about people at Apple never seeing the whole device they are working on. I guess from the inside it's not always so clear to the little guy what's normal company weirdness and what's fraudulent. Although higher up execs should know.
- krageon 6y ago> Twilight Zone or Kafka novel experience for years Most corporate work is like this. Secrets everywhere, managers acting like they have stuff to hide, actual crimes happening off-camera (and sometimes on-camera). If you spend a year or so working in such an environment it just doesn't really raise your eyebrows unless something really extreme happens. Anything below acute grievous bodily harm is background noise.
- azinman2 6y agoCould it be that you did have comparable results? The thing about ubiome was that the results were so high up the evolutionary tree (or at least when I did it in 2014 or so). So it would be like comparing a fish to a tree. That said, it told me my composition was like that of an East African, which I am not. That wouldn’t surprise me as I have gut issues. My big hope for the next 30 years is we meaningfully crack the nut on microbiomes and can bring the next major evolution in medicine to a reality. We need these kinds of companies as a step 1.
- duxup 6y agoThat or the results were accurate, but like Theranos their results were just from ... running the tests through their competitor's machines ;)
- sjg007 6y agoIt is just sequencing 16s RNA. You can run several hundred on an Illumina sequencer, you just need enough samples.
- cbozeman 6y agoHaha, wow... my insurance company actually paid for their test for me years ago. I'm tempted to share mine here too, just to see if we both had the exact same results as well.
- Guest42 6y agoPerhaps you can share the first 10 nth characters to confirm a match?
- caleb-allen 6y agoOr share a hash of everything but your personally identifiable info
- cbozeman 6y agoI'll see if I can dig up the results...
- macjohnmcc 6y agoPeople can justify all kinds of things if they are making money. I knew one of the programmers who was caught up in the Madoff Ponzi scheme. He went along with it for a long time and enriched himself. He had to have known what was going on.
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- ybiomepoopthrow 6y agoI doubt it was a fabrication. It was likely a software error You could have been linked to the same underlying database file, that could be the ‘default’ output from the bioinformatics pipeline when the quality was low, or some other mixup. They did in fact process your poop.
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- huntedsnark 6y agoThis is exactly the kind of tactic/hack that PG/Y Combinator actively encourages for that stage of startup is it not?
- andrei_says_ 6y agoFraud?
- smt88 6y agoYes. "Fake it til you make it" and "Do things that don't scale" are common advice in Silicon Valley and often cross into the realm of fraud. It's common in the industry in general to sell software you haven't built yet. Even IBM did it with Watson Health.
- Gustomaximus 6y agoAre you referring to gauging interest by setting up fake service pages? If so I suspect most people can see there is a gulf of difference between offering a service on a website and saying its currently unavailable when people hit 'buy' vs "securities fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud and money laundering."
- ipaddr 6y agoAs someone who has had multiple tests over an extended period of time the results were extremely detailed and changed over time. They list every bacteria and the % in each. Are you saying that you had the exact same list of bacteria and % of each? Test are not identical. I have a collection of hundreds of different results group by a few medical conditions I was researching. The data is extremely detailed and changes to diet reflect changes to samples.
- klmadfejno 6y ago> The data is extremely detailed and changes to diet reflect changes to samples. Can you verify that they changed in ways that corresponded with your diet? It's possible if they were exceptionally lazy that they just generated a new report for each date haha.
- ipaddr 6y agoAnd there were semi popular sports personas who did daily testing and charted foods to changes. My favourite blogger was a women who's sport involved falling into the dirt and eating it often as a result. Her bacteria profile was mostly a bacteria type found in dirt. The field is open for a better managed company to take on these challeges.
- seppin 6y agoStartup wisdom needs to reform it's "fake it to you make it" so that public health isn't compromised.
- MichaelMoser123 6y agoFunny, they must have had a good laugh at the expense of their customers while the show was going. I think a real analysis needs tho have fresh feces, if the customers had to send the stuff to their lab then that would not have been the case. (wikipedia says it was the results of a test kit, still not the same thing)
- jimmaswell 6y agoHow could they expect to get away with this?
- shitstinks 6y agoEmployees were always trying to do things the right way. JZ just wanted things done and didnt care how it was executed. If it wasn’t how they wanted it done, they’d find someone they could pay to do it.