
Theranos reportedly laying off 41% of its workforce - xyzzy4
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/06/theranos-reportedly-laying-off-41-of-its-workforce.html
======
netik
I guess my main question here, is if they have been banned by the FDA from
doing any testing at all for two years, what exactly is remaining of the
business, and why haven't they been completely shuttered?

Bloomberg seems to indicate there isn't much left for any employee to do.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-08/theranos-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-08/theranos-
s-ceo-holmes-banned-from-operating-a-lab-for-two-years)

~~~
maxxxxx
I worked on a project where in the same building a startup was going under. It
was totally clear that there was no hope but they kept burning through their
VC money instead of closing.

~~~
rubiquity
I think that is fair. When a startup is successful a VC gets paid on 100% of
their investment. When a startup is unsuccessful, why should VCs be allowed to
cut bait and recoup the remaining investment? VCs get to have their cake and
eat it too enough as it is already.

~~~
EpicEng
Because they funded the thing and took on far more risk than anyone else? I'd
want my money back to; I'm not in the business of paying out white collar
welfare.

~~~
Frondo
Nope, they took on less risk than anyone else involved. Money is fungible, and
they've likely got a lot of it.

The people there, day after day, they gave their _time_. That's something we
all only have a limited amount of, and that's something you'll never get back.

~~~
proee
They did not "give away" their time; they were compensated at a fair market
value for their time. I believe this is what we call "employment."

~~~
pdpi
At a fair market value -- except if it was an early stage startup it was
discounted from market value, with subpar benefits, but with a "tonne" of (now
worthless) equity.

It is in many ways personally more rewarding, but taking a job in a startup
versus a well-established business is taking a risk, accepting subpar
conditions today for a shot at a big prize later on.

~~~
proee
The company has been around for 10 years, with hundreds of millions in funding
through multiple rounds, so I would not consider this a "startup".

The employees were/are highly paid and not assuming any real risk.

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TheAdamist
The only surprising thing about this news is that its only 41%, i figured it
would be closer to 100%

~~~
SEJeff
Still this sucks for all of the people she lured to work for her earlier on
before it was realized to be (the edison blood tester) fraudulent / incorrect
due to the low sample size.

I can only imagine being one of the researchers or engineers there really
believing you would be able to change the world and getting crushing news like
this. It would really suck.

~~~
bsder
> Still this sucks for all of the people she lured to work for her earlier on
> before it was realized to be (the edison blood tester) fraudulent /
> incorrect due to the low sample size.

Hardware is hard. Let's go shopping. :)

However, that doesn't have to be the end.

You can narrow the usage to something like "Use for routine visits to collect
data quickly but not for diagnostic reasons". Being able to do a very fast
test without drawing much blood for every time you visit the doctor would be
useful information over time. There's also a "Hey, that number is a bit high.
Let's pull a real amount of blood and see what's going on." I suspect that if
you correlate the information over multiple tests it gets much more accurate
very quickly.

In addition, I suspect that the engineers would have eventually worked out how
to correlate things correctly and figured out how much blood was required for
what level of certainty.

Finally, most people in the biotech sector understand that it's a "pump and
dump" scam. You invest, wait for the company to get some good news, and sell
to the next layer. Biotech often takes long timescales and different investors
toss money in at different points.

However, what doomed the company was Elizabeth Holmes _lying_. I could make
other comments, but, really, Theranos would still be fine if she had told the
truth. People know that biotech always runs into problems. Always.

Your CEO is one of the people who _must not lie_ (your CFO is the other). Your
sales people can lie. Your marketing people can lie. Oddly, even your CTO can
get away with some things, but normally the CTO is a shining beacon of truth
compared to most people in a company. If your CEO always tells the truth, the
CEO can say: "We've hit some snags, but the engineers think they can work
around them" and people will believe because they want to believe.

But once your CEO is known as a liar, you are doomed.

However, I expect that Elizabeth Holmes will be back far too soon and will
wreak havoc on an even larger scale. She is just Carly Fiorina writ 35 years
later. She will fail upward because she is a not-unattractive blonde female
with lots of rich family connections.

~~~
SEJeff
She's rich and will stay independently wealthy for the forseeable future due
to this, however her name is heavily tarnished. Even if she does pull off the
edison tech, she'll have a hard sell finding investors to the level she did
for Theranos again.

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patmcguire
This leaves 220 people employees left at Theranos? Why? The company is over.
The emperor has no black turtleneck. Move on.

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MBCook
I can't wait until this whole saga is made into a movie.

I also can't believe anyone is willing to give them the time of day with a new
product.

~~~
umeshunni
Well, it is being made into a movie:
[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/jennifer-lawrence-
wil...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/jennifer-lawrence-will-star-as-
elizabeth-holmes-in-a-movie-about-theranos)

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steveax
And, related: Trump’s pick for defense secretary has resigned from Theranos’s
board [1]

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/06/trump...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/06/trumps-
pick-for-defense-secretary-stepped-down-from-theranos-
board/?utm_term=.5016be822cf8)

~~~
aceperry
Amazingly, I understand that the board had a lot of big and very well known
names.

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aceperry
They'll probably have to change the name of the company if they want to get
out from under the stink of sleaze.

~~~
minikites
The good ol' Blackwater/XE Services/Academi gambit.

~~~
FireBeyond
How's Accenture doing these days? (Not quite the same I know, but I did just
discover today that Arthur Andersen relaunched last year, huh!).

In a fit of irony, multiple partners left the smoking ruins of AA to found a
firm called, of all things, Accuracy.

~~~
twic
How far back does the practice of renaming something after an infamous debacle
go? If it's smoking ruins you want, then i can recommend Windscale, which was
renamed to Sellafield not long after this little bit of excitement in 1957:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire)

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eachro
Why is anyone even still sticking around voluntarily? There is no chance of a
lucrative exit and the company will probably die off on its own within 1-2
years.

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StClaire
Why do people still work there?

