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23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

cnbc.com

341–350 of 458 posts

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#341
> The company raised ample venture capital -- $786 million, according to Crunchbase

If I might go on a tangent, isn't that an insane amount of money for the VCs to hand out? Apple with a $1 trillion market capitalization (the most valuable company on Earth until Saudi Aramco beat the record a month ago) began with $1M in inflation-adjusted venture funding in 1977.

Is there any way that $786M makes sense or is there just too much VC money sloshing around?

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#342
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I definitely would not submit my kids to the same fate. You already have since your DNA is out there in a database.

That's not exactly how DNA works. Their kids should be mostly fine (99.99% similar is still night and day)

That's not how 23andme works, they don't sequence your whole genome, just selected high variance segments.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#343
post #79

> Wojcicki has theories Think the obvious one is that the results are shared and whether someone is a criminal or not (or will be one in the future), people are not particularly comfortable with sharing to parties they didn't initially trust it to for the purposes they trusted it for. Anecdotally, I bought a 23andme kit (just the genealogy one) but never submitted it because the labeling was to send it to the lab in…

No, that's the obvious "reason that you think should matter but doesn't".

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#344

Everyone paying attention the pattern of layoffs? Ebay, Mozilla, DigitalOcean, 23andMe, Intel... Pay down your credit card debt and make sure you have at least 6 months of expenses in the bank, if you're young and haven't been through this before.

None of these are likely the result of systemic factors. If anything, there being layoffs at some firms without it impacting general employment levels is a sign of a healthy and balanced economy.

If it impacted general employment, that would be a pretty big sign that the recession had already begun a while ago, wouldn't it?

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, like I said, could just be that my perspective was tainted a bit by not doing as well as I'd have liked. But I think sometimes these things just happen too. I think I interviewed in 2018, so that'd be 7 years after you did. I'm sure a lot changes in that much time.

A bunch of engineering directors were brought in from external sources a few years back, and that really changed the atmosphere. Before then, we seemed to try to hire smart engineers and give them independence to solve problems. Those new directors lowered the hiring bars to grow their teams, and the culture got way more rigid and corporate.

That's too bad. Sounds fairly normal for companies around here, though.

Also, I guess I offended some ex or current employees since I've gotten the downvote brigade. :\

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#346

> The company raised ample venture capital -- $786 million, according to Crunchbase If I might go on a tangent, isn't that an insane amount of money for the VCs to hand out? Apple with a $1 trillion market capitalization (the most valuable company on Earth until Saudi Aramco beat the record a month ago) began with $1M in inflation-adjusted venture funding in 1977. Is there any way that $786M makes sense or is there j…

Could it be that there are a lot more VCs, especially in tech field now a days than in 1977?

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#347
post #4

> Wojcicki has theories, but she doesn’t have clear proof for why consumers are shying away from getting tests Because the ones that want them have gotten them and there's no reason to ever buy the product again once you've done it once. I mean, smartphones are great, but the market for them would have hit a wall pretty quickly if no one ever had a reason to replace them after buying their first.

I mean, there's the fact that companies like this also provide your data to DNA databases that governments and other companies have access too. That seems like a good reason to shy away from getting their tests done.

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the decline. Normal people don't care.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#348
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, it absolutely has - and with more distant connections than direct parentage. See the recent Golden State Killer case for instance, as well as a myriad of others.

That shows it's enough to establish probable cause, but once they'd identified him, they got a direct DNA match, which means he won't be a test of the ancestral scenario outlined in the GP.

Yeah but it is enough for them to find them, and then retrieve a cup the "suspect" used and threw out in public.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#349

That’s what happens when bad press about your company comes out, and you’re too clueless to recognize it. Why do I really care about other people with similar genetics to me? This seems to be a greater risk for me, if I put myself into that database. And if someone else has a similar genetic as mine, and they commit a crime, then I’m automatically roped in as well. Do I really want the police knocking down my door, a…

And if someone kills every memeber of your family, and they leave DNA behind, but police are not allowed to use DNA databases which WOULD find the person that commited the crime and they don't have a match otherwise (since we're already making assumptions that something will definitely happen)? I mean this goes both ways. One thing I don't understand about this whole hate for DNA databases and matching relative's DNA…

> And if they do really do that, then it's a problem with a police that needs to be addressed - not the DNA databases.

I think the reasoning should go the other way: given that we know there are problems with the police that need to be addressed, we shouldn't have DNA databases until they are.

> Why does something that can help police catch criminals is such a bad thing?

Because that's not the only thing a DNA database can be used for, and "criminal" is a word whose meaning changes all the time.

People all over the world are being incarcerated right now for being born in the "wrong" race. DNA databases would make this much worse.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#350

That’s what happens when bad press about your company comes out, and you’re too clueless to recognize it. Why do I really care about other people with similar genetics to me? This seems to be a greater risk for me, if I put myself into that database. And if someone else has a similar genetic as mine, and they commit a crime, then I’m automatically roped in as well. Do I really want the police knocking down my door, a…

And if someone kills every memeber of your family, and they leave DNA behind, but police are not allowed to use DNA databases which WOULD find the person that commited the crime and they don't have a match otherwise (since we're already making assumptions that something will definitely happen)? I mean this goes both ways. One thing I don't understand about this whole hate for DNA databases and matching relative's DNA…

> Because there are false positives?

Yes

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