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Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

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Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#111

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #19
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #4

It still baffles me that Walgreens got into this partnership in the first place. A complete failure of due diligence.

Well yes and no. Remember that they have a really well connected board of directors and a lot of people put their reputation out there based on information they believed to be true. The managers at Walgreens don't know how to design, validate, and certify laboratory tests and procedures so they are kind of at the mercy of the folks who tell them they do. And while it would have been within their rights to send an out…

>The managers at Walgreens don't know how to design, validate, and certify laboratory tests and procedures

This is why the current company system is a bad idea. It puts incompetent idiots in charge.

This is almost literally the definition of an epic failure. If you're running a health company and someone shows up on your doorstep with some unusual claims about their product, are you going to pay someone to do some independent checking, or are you just going to rely on social proof and the fact that the marketing person seems okay?

Making management decisions on the basis of status and social proof - and that includes the VC scene - is the opposite of collective intelligence.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#112

Post by bane »

mattmanser wrote: post #105
mevile wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those Glassdoors reviews talking about long hours of work, working late, and for what? What did all those people work those long hours for? For complete failure. Theranos is in shambles, and these people signed up to work and work late at a company that was a fraud. Requiring employees to work late, or to strongly encourage that kind of behavior is a huge red flag for me when looking for work. People wasted hours…

Easy to say with hindsight. What if it would have worked out and their tech had revolutionised medical testing? Failures are as important as successes, and nothing to be ashamed about from the employee perspective, just the covering up by management that's the problem.

When I've seen things like this on Glassdoor, it's almost always a company that's closing in on a spectacular failure. It's like almost some kind of evidence of a specific kind of leadership driven failure mode. Theranos didn't fail because of lack of market demand, or even the failure of their tech, they failed because of how they were run and these kinds of reviews seem to be specific pointers to this kind of management style.

Anecdotally, I once worked for a company that did this same thing and the feeling in the company much more closely matched the longer-form negative reviews than did the astroturfed reviews...all of which were written by one H.R. exec shortly before they were let go from the company.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#113

Post by bduerst »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #104
dominotw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilarious https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Theranos-R... Advice to Management You are doing a good job. Stay in better touch with the employees. I think most people do feel appreciated but there are also some that are disgruntled and unhappy for other reasons. I see these people spreading negative energy. You should seek them and try and fix the problem. Is it common practice among upstart co…

> I've been using those as references for my job search, I know better now. Eh, that just means you can't take the reviews at face value. Ignore the obviously disgruntled employees, treat fluff reviews as a small yellow flag, and look for the real dirt not so much in the angry reviews but in the disappointed ones.

It's like dealing with Amazon reviews, which are also gamed.

You look at the low ratings, and if they're coherent and make sense to you then take them seriously. If more then one make the same claims, then it's probably true.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#114

Post by bduerst »

iamdave wrote: post #84
miander wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it creates an implicit expectation that your review should be positive .

Yeah, I'm kind of torn on this. I was asked at a previous company to write a review on GlassDoor (I never did). Let me rephrase that last sentence: GlassDoor was brought up literally at every monthly update meeting. But back on target, I'm torn: On the one hand I understand the need to actively recruit and attract talent to join your workforce and I definitely understand GlassDoor is something used by many people to…

Go with your gut on this one. Obviously being part of a tribe means trying to attract the best talent to ensure it's success, but it sounds like you don't necessarily want to join a tribe that's "encouraging" signals to a market when there wouldn't normally be any.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#115

Post by bduerst »

mattmanser wrote: post #105
mevile wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those Glassdoors reviews talking about long hours of work, working late, and for what? What did all those people work those long hours for? For complete failure. Theranos is in shambles, and these people signed up to work and work late at a company that was a fraud. Requiring employees to work late, or to strongly encourage that kind of behavior is a huge red flag for me when looking for work. People wasted hours…

Easy to say with hindsight. What if it would have worked out and their tech had revolutionised medical testing? Failures are as important as successes, and nothing to be ashamed about from the employee perspective, just the covering up by management that's the problem.

This is anecdotal, but in my experience, the complaints about "everyone working long hours" is usually a sign of either:

a) Poor planning on the part of management, resulting from not enough resources or hires

b) Poor market performance, leading to having to squeeze more out of the existing resources to get the results originally projected to the investors

Certainly there are people who like to work long hours and there are jobs that will give them all the work they can want, but those typically aren't the people complaining about it.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#116

Post by bduerst »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #37
bane wrote: post #16

Walgreens managers also grew increasingly frustrated in recent weeks with Theranos as they sought information about the extent of test reports it had corrected or voided. This seems to be a common thread in the stories I've read about Theranos, an almost pathological inability to provide basic information upon request. I can only guess that Holmes' notion of open and transparent communication is defined very differen…

Astroturfing Glassfoor should be considered fraud. It's giving information to potential employees while omitting material information (that the company is the oposter) for purposes which financially benefit the company and its backers.

True - it's deceitful and spreading misinformation.

This is tangental, but I also think that posting open job positions online when there isn't one should be considered fraud as well. Same with recruiters who do the bait and switch. People invest time from their lives into those, only to result as a record in a database somewhere when there was never any intention to hire.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#117

Post by deepGem »

miander wrote: post #83
eli wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with encouraging employees to post reviews? When you sign up as an employer, glasdoor gives you a sample email to send that asks for honest reviews.

Because it creates an implicit expectation that your review should be positive .

The same would apply to App Store reviews also then. Essentially the review system is broken.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#118

Post by jonathankoren »

ploxiln wrote: post #71
ChuckMcM wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes and no. Remember that they have a really well connected board of directors and a lot of people put their reputation out there based on information they believed to be true. The managers at Walgreens don't know how to design, validate, and certify laboratory tests and procedures so they are kind of at the mercy of the folks who tell them they do. And while it would have been within their rights to send an out…

Then Walgreens should fail and come to be replaced by a pharmacy chain which one way or another depends on input from a competent pharmacist (whether they are equivalent of "CTO", or board of pharmacist advisors, or whatever works). But according to a very relevant ArsTechnica article[0], they thought to do due diligence, failed to do so, and then in a fit of unicorn mania did the deals anyway: Theranos failed to han…

Having a chaperone for guests just makes sense. At the very least, you can keep them from accidentally breaking something. If you're not escorting guests, you're doing it wrong.

Re: Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos

#120

Post by pdabbadabba »

mathattack wrote: post #110
jalonso510 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's writing the checks really depends on what's in the contract between Walgreens and Theranos. I haven't seen it, but it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for Theranos to have agreed to indemnify Walgreens against claims over the accuracy of the tests. If so, Theranos would be on the hook even if Walgreens is getting sued as well, and the real question is how big the claims are and whether they will be enough to to…

In this case I believe that the contract was very tilted towards Theranos. The execs in charge were forced out previously. [0] I don't know any specifics on indemnification though, but if Theranos goes under, they can't indemnify much. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/business/a-once-avid-ally-...

> if Theranos goes under, they can't indemnify much.

Insurance!

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