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Wait - hold up. You just wrote this company is defrauding investors and the government, and you are an insider who knows about it. The fact it made you feel i

Wait - hold up. You just wrote this company is defrauding investors and the government, and you are an insider who knows about it. The fact it made you feel ill isn’t enough. Do society a favor and name the company. Maybe pen a paper anonymously. Is there a concern that when this information does come out, it will come back to you as one of the pre IPO leaders?

reureu 5y ago
Remember how people inside Theranos knew things weren't going well, and if they tried to say anything they got bullied into submission by the companies lawyers? There's a very real cost that comes with saying something, and that cost is weighed against the "so what" factor-- there's a lot of fraud less egregious than (say) Theranos, which gets dismissed because it's difficult to prove or unclear what the damages are. I didn't do anything wrong - I did my calculations and analysis correctly, stated the assumptions and limitations of my data, etc. Executives in my division ignored the data I produced and just made shit up for their own benefit. By disclosing what I know, I open myself up to legal threats, bad references (including back channel references), damage to mental health, and potential repetitional damage, all for something where it's unclear it'd rise to a level that the SEC or FTC would actual investigate. I'm still not decided on what to do. I've been a whistleblower at other companies, which has made me a lot of money from rewards... but it wasn't without a ton of stress in the process. So, yeah, that's all -- in theory it's an easy decision, in practice there are other considerations that make the decision more murky.