Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1024core | Hacker News Reader

A part of me feels sad for Theranos. I wanted them and Elizabeth to succeed; more the latter, actually. If she had succeeded (I still hold out hope), she would have been a terrific role model for young women everywhere.

View on HN

She did make some progress for equality though - to show that not just men can be completely incompetent founders running an overhyped company that never had any connection with reality whatsoever.

Unfortunately, there's a segment of society that will extrapolate the high-profile failure of one woman to reaffirm their misguided belief that her gender was part of the reason for her failure.

But her gender would've been part of a success story, safe to say. [This is why all gender doesn't belong in these conversations, "good" or "bad"]

Yeah, it's like the XKCD:

Enron -> wow, Ken Lay sucks.

Theranos -> wow, women founders suck.

https://xkcd.com/385/

That's probably the most unfortunate thing about the entire situation. Well that, and the people working for Theranos who will face the backlash.

Is gender really the most unfortunate thing about the entire situation?

The mischaracterization of women sucks, don't get me wrong.

But there are so many other things wrong going on here that this comment really confused me.

What about the people whom Theranos failed to deliver accurate test results to? They are the losers here.

Agreed, her and Marissa Mayer make for some very visible, very unfortunate anti role models recently. Certainly doesn't help for paving the way for more women to join the top ranks.

>very unfortunate anti role models recently

I think there's a huge difference between the two. Sure, Ms. Meyer floundered running a big (struggling) company, especially when so much was made about "Female CEO!" But really, her "failure" is pretty average when it comes to corporate executive misadventure; nothing she did makes her unworthy of being a role-model.

Ms. Holmes, on the other hand, may have overseen a massive fraud.

Yeah, Marissa Meyer was hired to save a dinosaur from the tarpit, and has done a mediocre job at it. She isn't even that bad - she's no Carly Fiorina - and I've never seen her ethics challenged.

I'd go as far as to say that if Meyer at least manages to unwind Yahoo gracefully, she may move on to greater success in the future in a similar position.

"Yeah, Marissa Meyer was hired to save a dinosaur from the tarpit, and has done a mediocre job at it. She isn't even that bad - she's no Carly Fiorina - and I've never seen her ethics challenged."

That's how I look at it. I'm still a fan of Meyer due to the great work she did at Google. That's where she showed her talents. Yahoo was a terrible situation... aimed at the ground calling for "Ludicrous Speed!"... and she failed on an attempt to turn it into a winner. Maybe wasn't greedy enough for shareholders or something. They'll make less money than they wanted to. (shrugs)

Honestly, of the various failures, that's the kind that bothers me the least. People tried to do something good for all parties but screwed up. Least they tried and didn't just suck wealth out of the company while setting it up to fail. Like recent IBM CEO did and similarly left mess in hands of a woman who will take fall if she can't 180 it. Actually, I haven't even looked at that story in a while so I don't know if she's even still there haha.

Anyway, I'll judge Meyer on her next play as Yahoo is an outlier.

We tend to judge many simply because they happen to find themselves on an uneven playing field. In Meyer's case, it was both the tailwind of the Google juggernaut, and the headwind of Yahoo. But what of the thousands who are on the level playing field that we never hear of?

That's a great point. It warrants a reply. Well, they're mostly screwed due to fate. You know that part. Far as Meyer, what I considered interesting about her success was that Google only tried to hire geniuses and such. So, the average person in management might be asked about some run of the mill problem or strategy. Whereas, she had to be the gatekeeper and/or internal sponsor of all kinds of crap Googlers came up with that was anywhere from out of touch to clever to on another level.

Just got her a boost in my mind. From another perspective, it might have been easy for her if she was a non-geek with the ability to drill through people's BS. They'd have a disadvantage against her that people at C-level or non-geek management might not have. That's another angle I thought about.

A role model for young women with parents coming from old money, with both Beltway and VC connections?

It'll be great to have another role model in tech for young women, but incidents like this do more harm than good…

Exactly. You want a great tech role model for young women (and anyone else for that matter)? Look at Limor Fried (LadyAda of AdaFruit).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limor_Fried

She is a great tech role model that built a thriving maker business from scratch. She didn't have the connections to drop out of school so she finished her BS and MS at MIT.

There are plenty of phenomenal female role models out there. I had three women on my committee in grad school. One co-directing a major research center. One a successful entrepreneur and one a new upcoming research associate.

Anyone looking for strong female role models just needs to open their eyes.

This is a good point. Today's current tech role models, both male and female, are sending the unfortunate message: "Be born rich, have daddy pay for you to go to Stanford or Harvard, party a lot and make friends with rich future investors there, and you too can become a successful tech founder!"

And don't forget to drop out after a year of college! You've made all the connections, so what else is there to learn?

There are some exceptions to this pattern though, like Jan Koum and Andy Grove. We desperately need more of them in today's tech environment.

Maybe it's just me seeing the past through rose-colored glasses, but it seems that the "Work hard and know technology" founders were more common in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, in contrast to today's "Party hard and know rich people" founders.

I think the "work hard and know technology founders" have always been around. But honestly, isn't this somewhat of a self-selection bias and something that remarks on the monotony of modern university?

If you're a highly driven and entrepreneurial individual, are you going to stick around for 4+ years of enforced pace higher education?

You might be more inclined to stick around and finish if you didn't have familial support to fall back on if your entrepreneurial plans failed and you didn't have the credentials to secure traditional employment. Dropping out lets you get started on entrepreneurial plans sooner, but could leave you in a risky spot later if they aren't a success.

In the late 90s there were a lot of hucksters trying to get in on the new Internet trend, there were lots of bad companies then too.

So was Bill Gates. That didn't stop people from idolizing him.

Except, Bill Gates actually brought a revolutionary product to market. In contrast, Holmes has spent years claiming she was going to do that and reveling in being a media darling while doing a lot of really questionable things.

in what way would she have been a role model? some evidence that being a young woman from an ultra-privileged background where high level patronage by deep state power brokers is your path to success? yeah, sure, she really "beat the odds" on that one.

in fact I think that the current pending implosion of Theranos is making a good role model of her in a way she probably never intended or desired. she is a role model of what not to do: rely on insider connections to carry a fundamentally flawed (and possibly fraudulent) business plan.

a cautionary tale if ever there was one.

She'll likely personally emerge mostly unscathed, still ultra-privileged, still a celebrity, and all ready to go deploy her insider connections on another endeavor, so not sure how much of a cautionary tale this would be.

I think that attitudes like this are part of what allowed Holmes to con so many people for so long. As well-intentioned as it is, your hope for the young women of tech to be inspired has nothing to do with the veracity of Theranos' claims. A lot of the breathless fluff pieces on Theranos focused on Holme's gender instead of the technology.

I think it's to blame more on her privileged, connected background than her gender. Her gender was just something to focus on due to her lack of any other accomplishments; there's no shortage of golden white boys being elevated in the tech/mainstream media on a cloud of nothing.

But she lacks both ethics and expertise. Aren't those the things that make a role model - or is it just a turtleneck, a presentable face, and a decent speaking voice?

Wouldn't a better role model be any ethical person on the planet?

>If she had succeeded (I still hold out hope), she would have been a terrific role model for young women everywhere.

What a bizarre comment.

Yeah, if only she had succeeded rather than running a company which may have fraudulently deceived investors and is now under criminal investigation. So, she's pretty much the opposite of a "terrific role model", no? If this wasn't a SV darling, I'm quite sure this community would be calling for her head.

I think she would be an absolutely terrible role model. She is a college dropout who built her company on marketing and unicorn farts without taking the time, or apparently even caring whether the science is right or wrong. We don't need role models like that. That's not something to aspire to. We already have lots of great role models in medicine and the biological sciences, including women with an entrepreneurial bent like Anne Wojcicki.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com