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Having read a lot about the whole Theranos matter I feel like Sunny really made some bad life decisions: Imagine being in his shoes: It's the early 2000s. Yo
by narrator 4y ago
Having read a lot about the whole Theranos matter I feel like Sunny really made some bad life decisions:
Imagine being in his shoes: It's the early 2000s. You're in China learning Mandarain, you're in your late 30s, you made $40 million selling your shares of your company in July 2000 shortly before it failed in the dot.com bust and you meet this 18 year old who you eventually have a romantic relationship with[3]. They did admit a romantic relationship in court documents, so this isn't making stuff up. Life's big decisions confront you, and what do you end up doing? Let's see how it worked out. All this is on the Wikipedia page for Sunny[1]:
Fails:
- Divorce wife.
- Loan $13 million, no interest to Theranos. [2]
- Become COO of biotech company even though you have no formal background in biotech.
- Waste many years of your life in fraudulent company.
- Be convicted of fraud, disgraced, and possibly spend years in prison.
- She throws you under the bus and testifies that her bad behavior at Theranos was largely the result of your abuse sexual and otherwise. Jury doesn't believe it, but her accusation is still out there.
- Have no kids, never remarry. Holmes gets married and has a kid as she was awaiting her criminal trial.
Wins:
+ Have romantic relationship with beautiful lady in her 20s.
Anyway, there's some big life decisions here that, IMHO, Sunny made very poorly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Balwani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Balwani
[2]https://stylecaster.com/sunny-balwani-net-worth/ https://stylecaster.com/sunny-balwani-net-worth/
[3]"Holmes and Balwani met for the first time in 2002. The pair initially met in Beijing, China, while on a language immersion program with Stanford University. Holmes was an 18-year-old high school senior at the time, whereas Balwani was a married, 37-year-old university student completing his MBA at the University of California, Berkeley. All in all, the pair had a 19 year age difference" https://stylecaster.com/elizabeth-holmes-sunny-balwani/ https://stylecaster.com/elizabeth-holmes-sunny-balwani/
- conradfr 4y agoThat's what meeting a sociopath does, yet in the end he still chose do do all this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spaetzleesser 4y agoHis number one bad decision was to be a greedy liar and all around asshole (judging from the book “Bad blood” ). I don’t think he deserves any sympathy. He and Holmes didn’t just make one bad decision but lied and abused people for years. True psychopaths without any humanity.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Jedd 4y ago> Fails > - Have no kids Adjusting that attitude, or at least never saying that bit out loud, may win you more friends. Other than that, with hindsight, yes, it can all be painted as a series of bad decisions - however I'm sure at the time every decision that got him to where he is now made perfect sense, and was at least a good decision given the information available to him then. I read Bad Blood, and have tracked stories about the key players, but we don't really know what each player's exit strategy actually was. Hers seems to have been to eventually produce the tech she claimed her company already had. He may have bought into that dream, or planned to cut and run at some point (or both at different times).
- Jedd 4y agoResponding to the responses: a summary, for the historical record. Some people noted the key thing here - Sunny's decisions earned him more wealth (if ephemerally) and fame (ditto) than most of us will ever obtain. The balance of good to poor decisions leans heavily to the poor end of the spectrum to my eyes, but it's unlikely he would have agreed during most of the period. Several people seemed more upset that my response to someone describing a man whose actions may have lead to the deaths of others, certainly amplifying poor health outcomes for many [0] that relied in good faith on the fraudulent & false results coming out of the company, his lack of children was a failure worth noting. Especially in contrast to his ex-partner who, between arrest and trial, had hurried to spawn -- more cynical observers may conclude that fits a well-described sociopathic profile. In any case, comparing highly questionable characters like these two reminds me of the old adage about arguing over the tallest dwarf. Without irony I was told that: o having a spine and saying what you believe is preferable - but given I said what I believe ... o I should adjust my attitude - because telling people to adjust their attitude is wrong. Several people observed that they themselves weren't personally offended -- good for you chaps! -- but sadly extrapolated that to conclude that anyone who disagreed on the no-kids == failure assessment was therefore wrong, via some breathtaking inductive logic. Unsurprisingly, someone who thinks PHP is 'the best' struggled to cogently describe their position, but did allude to being too smart to be offended by any claims of being a failure (I guess php guys develop a thick skin) and then proceeded to react to increasingly bad-faith interpretrations of my initial en passant suggestion. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/elizabeth-holmes-trial-finds-theranos-ex-ceo-guilty-4-counts-ncna1286899 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/elizabeth-holmes-trial...
- chronic729394 4y ago> Fails: > Have no kids, never remarry You know how the saying goes: The rich get richer, while the poor have kids.
- 11101010001100 4y agofunny, i got /textit{much} richer by having kids...
- eadmund 4y agoI believe that there is a U-shaped fertility curve: poor folks and rich have more kids, while the middle classes do not.
- thomasahle 4y agoElon Musk is an example of this, I guess, with his 10 kids. I would like to see that curve though, if it really exists. It could come down to "having kids is expensive" (definitely in the US), so either (1) you start out rich enough that it doesn't matter, (2) you only have a few kids a middle class wealth, or (3) you have many kids and accept having less money.
- chihuahua 4y agoI hate to reply with a Tweet, especially one from Matt Yglesias, but it contains the curve you're seeking: https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1538234746416812033 https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1538234746416812033
- tenpies 4y agoSeems intuitive correct. The tragic correlation is probably that on both ends of the U, parenting is probably not great on average due to the sheer time demand of being poor/very wealthy. It's an interesting lens through which to look at society. After all, how many of the current issues could be considered a result of a parenting crisis?
- markdown 4y agoBased on the standard formula for what western society considers appropriate (divide by 2 and add 7), he should not have dated anyone under 26.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- titzer 4y ago$40 million and I'd never need to work for another dollar ever again. Greed serves a brutal karma.
- JackFr 4y agoI’ve heard that many times and never seen it. Among people I know who’ve had payouts in that range the response is typically, “Well that wasn’t so hard. Maybe I’ll try to do it again.”
- titzer 4y agoHow many people have you personally seen make $40 million--not on paper, but in actual dollars? Just curious.
- glouwbug 4y agoBe wary of the Gods on Hackernews https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25047838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25047838
- chihuahua 4y agoI know one guy who started working at Amazon in 1998, got gradually promoted to VP over the years, and never spent much of his money. His net worth must be easily $40 million, perhaps much more - given what their stock price has done over the years. I'll never understand why he's still working there. The work environment (both physical and mental) at Amazon makes Microsoft look like a luxury resort in comparison.
- WalterBright 4y agoMaking money is fun for lots of people. Working as a high up mucky-muck can also be lots of fun. Puttering around in the garden, on the other hand, is a living hell.
- WalterBright 4y agoNobody has Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
- redleggedfrog 4y agoI mean - beautiful lady in her twenties? Might have all been worth it in his value system. Not for me, though - she's got those overly attached girlfriend crazy eyes.
- brandur 4y ago> [2] https://stylecaster.com/sunny-balwani-net-worth/ https://stylecaster.com/sunny-balwani-net-worth/ The surprising thing to me on there was that despite the bad loans to Theranos (money that is worth $0 now), they still estimate his net worth to be $85 million as of 2022, so way up from even the $40 million he started with in the early 2000s. I guess that despite the Theranos shenanigans, most of it was parked safely.
- unraveller 4y agoyou have failed to grok life if you think it can be grok'd
- finfinfin 4y agoThat’s an unusual way to summarize Sunny’s life in the context of this ruling. Judging his personal choices as wins/fails while he is being sentenced for a massive financial and medical fraud. Who cares if he divorced and never remarried? Did CEO of Enron fail in life because he divorced his first wife?
- didntknowya 4y agowell she was an expert manipulator (as seen by her company board structure) so it's not as clear cut but yea I don't think he was 100% naïve in this
- midhhhthrow 4y agoGenerally speaking, no kids is a huge win. Most people aren’t able to escape that eventuality The biological impulse to reproduce is too strong for most to resist