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Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 35 posts

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#11
A pretty good example for why this founder as perment dictator corporate structure is really short sided. Nobody can fire Holmes since she controls the company herself.

Is Theranos cash flow positive? Or do they still rely on investments? Who would invest now.

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#12
post #5

I am not surprised. Theranos exists as a cult of personality around Holmes and without her, it would be obvious that they provide no value over their larger, more efficient competitors.

I was not aware of the cult of personality aspect. Is she a remarkable leader? visionary?

A cult of personality doesn't require either[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holmes is the product @ Theranos. It's evidently clear their blood testing machine doesn't actually work. If you look at the positive (old) media coverage of Theranos, the lion-share of it revolved around her dropping out of Stanford, female founder, and hell I for some reason know she played an instrument as a kid... The cult of personality was used to raise funds, not the Edison.

Well thank goodness we have a token female founder who dropped out of Stanford and is apparently not qualified to run a Taco Bell. Am I the only one who thinks this is far more harmful to the cause of getting more women in tech/entrepreneurial roles than helpful? This whole thing is a bad joke.

What's harmful is looking at someone in this kind of position primarily as a woman.

Compare the treatment of Holmes to that of Parker Conrad, the ousted Zenefits CEO. Conrad is a white guy who went to prestigious New York schools and then Harvard.

Is anyone saying that Conrad doing a bad job as a founder CEO will be harmful to white Harvard graduates everywhere? Of course not. You only "reflect badly" on your peer group if it's a minority.

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#14

A pretty good example for why this founder as perment dictator corporate structure is really short sided. Nobody can fire Holmes since she controls the company herself. Is Theranos cash flow positive? Or do they still rely on investments? Who would invest now.

If she owns* it, why shouldn't she able to stay? If she didn't control the company I would imagine any competent board would boot her, but she does, so she has the right to stay and bring the company down in flames if that's what she chooses to do.

* in the sense that she controls 50% + 1 of the votes

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#15
post #7

> Still, last week’s news raises the question of what will happen to the company’s other clinical laboratory in Scottsdale, Arizona, at which 90 percent of the company’s tests are processed. So far, that lab has passed regulatory muster, and the company said it will remain open for now. I find it interesting that their Arizona lab passed...would this imply they do indeed have a legitimate product?

I read at numerous points that they were using the older machines they were supposed to be "disrupting" the industry away from to perform tests, perhaps the Arizona lab is where they have those kept? Either that or the Arizona regulations are just a little looser.

> Either that or the Arizona regulations are just a little looser.

Arizona is still in the United States, so it has the same federal regulations ;-)

Who knows, though, maybe they were just busy with the smaller lab and haven't got to Arizona yet.

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well thank goodness we have a token female founder who dropped out of Stanford and is apparently not qualified to run a Taco Bell. Am I the only one who thinks this is far more harmful to the cause of getting more women in tech/entrepreneurial roles than helpful? This whole thing is a bad joke.

What's harmful is looking at someone in this kind of position primarily as a woman. Compare the treatment of Holmes to that of Parker Conrad, the ousted Zenefits CEO. Conrad is a white guy who went to prestigious New York schools and then Harvard. Is anyone saying that Conrad doing a bad job as a founder CEO will be harmful to white Harvard graduates everywhere? Of course not. You only "reflect badly" on your peer gr…

> Is anyone saying that Conrad doing a bad job as a founder CEO will be harmful to white Harvard graduates everywhere?

No, because people have plenty of competing examples of white male Harvard graduate CEOs of startups. So one outstanding failure (or unusual, for the category, success, for that matter) barely moves the needle on the expectations of the category.

> You only "reflect badly" on your peer group if it's a minority.

Well, yes, the smaller the group is in the targeted field, the more significant each example is in terms of the visible outcomes of that group in the field, and, also, the more a group is excluded from a field because of a bias that the group is not suited for the field, the more a failure from the group reinforces that bias.

(I'm not saying that its not wrong, or that its not often the result of people failing to look beyond the superficial to understand the individual factors, because all that's true.)

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well thank goodness we have a token female founder who dropped out of Stanford and is apparently not qualified to run a Taco Bell. Am I the only one who thinks this is far more harmful to the cause of getting more women in tech/entrepreneurial roles than helpful? This whole thing is a bad joke.

What's harmful is looking at someone in this kind of position primarily as a woman. Compare the treatment of Holmes to that of Parker Conrad, the ousted Zenefits CEO. Conrad is a white guy who went to prestigious New York schools and then Harvard. Is anyone saying that Conrad doing a bad job as a founder CEO will be harmful to white Harvard graduates everywhere? Of course not. You only "reflect badly" on your peer gr…

Holmes has been sold to us as a woman. On the other hand, there is no need to sell a Harvard degree to anyone, everyone knows that there are benefits in being a Harvard Man.

Re: Holmes to remain at Theranos despite federal ban and gross negligence

#20

Silly commoners, laws are for poor people! Amazing, simply amazing. She's led a company that has either committed such gross negligence as to not be trustworthy to operate a lemonade stand let alone a medical company OR been openly defrauding both consumers and the Government but remains near as makes no difference completely unaffected and will walk away not only a millionaire, but apparently still employed. I hope…

> She's led a company that has either committed such gross negligence as to not be trustworthy to operate a lemonade stand let alone a medical company OR been openly defrauding both consumers and the Government but remains near as makes no difference completely unaffected and will walk away not only a millionaire, but apparently still employed.

There's a lot more investigations still going on where she might face personal consequences (including criminal ones), and she's still employed because she is both the employee and the employer (being the majority shareholder of the firm by which she is employed), so to be fired, she'd have to fire herself.

Of course, she's only employed as long as Theranos can stay in business, and its hard to see how they do that going forward.

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