In 2017, I interviewed with Elizabeth Holmes to be Head of Finance at Theranos | Hacker News Reader

In 2017, I interviewed with Elizabeth Holmes to be Head of Finance at Theranos

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58 pointsjdkee22 comments

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1433595857304055814.html

Thanks for providing this!

Thanks. It is incredibly frustrating that clicking the post to view the whole thread on Twitter prompts a login. Such an annoying but increasingly common dark pattern.

She didn't even call the wife of her head-of-lab that committed suicide. Why would she give this personal call at the end of the story to someone who she just met - did she think he really had the powers to help her or something?

I didn't understand the first meeting either.

Sounds like they were keen enough to lean on two respected connections to snag this guy. And he himself wonders why they'd want someone so green to be CFO.

Is this some elaborate psychopathic humblebrag? Did he have some other connection that would be useful? The other two things they mention are big money and high level hires so it would seem it's not desperation, which is how it would have read if they didn't mention those things.

So was he being set up to take the blame? How would that even work at that late stage.

Your conclusion was the same thing I was thinking. Hiring a fall guy.

Probably desperate to find employee to fill an empty position. Calling around, to see who is going to buy compliment and join sinking ship in exchange.

I worked for someone who sounds remarkably similar to Holmes, in details big and small. No frauds were committed AFAIK.

My old boss would sometimes get bizarre ideas into his head and be hell-bent on executing them. Sometimes he would, for no good reason, love a junior interview candidate, call meetings, try to bend the company structure around them ("what if we made him head of X, then move Joe Blogs to run a new team of Y..."). He'd normally find no enthusiasm for them with anyone else in the firm, and drop them eventually, but not without droning on about them for weeks. Or complaining how his lieutenants have no imagination and business flair.

Other vanity projects included:

- Buying 2 (main and redundant) GPS clocks to make sure the office is on correct time. Can't trust this internet time nonsense.

- Hiring clearly useless academics to do projects with no connection to anything we did, just to name-drop. Once he hired a guy who used to map food chains in wetland ecosystems to do some unspecified work, in the field of finance.

- Writing numerous, lengthy, and clearly bonkers fake (positive) reviews for his favourite cafe (I think he had some stake in it too potentially). The kind that sound like members of a sect reviewing their guru.

Other examples have thankfully now been garbage-collected in my head.

So, after this therapeutic rant, it doesn't surprise me at all that Holmes suddenly went after some business school grad. Maybe one of the professors mentioned in passing that it's an excellent guy, or that he wrote a great essay or sth, and she would have made it somehow a point of honor to get him on board. Could be a fake story of course, but wouldn't surprise me if now.

I had a similar experience: the boss want to have a diversity environment then they decide to hire a Chinese engineer. The CV was not really in line with what we was looking for, but the boss don't listen us. When he come from the interview, he was barely not able to speak in Italian or English. Then he decide to hire a woman and the one that he hire was terrible (she come at the technical interview half naked and she clearly told us that she would like to work in sales instead that in a technical position). He also hire a senior sales manager fired from a big company, just to drop the name around. He was completely useless and spend 8 hours/day watching hunting video on YouTube.

We was evaluating a new technology to replace the old one that had some problems and he told me: "You don't need to use brain to take this decision, you just need to listen your soul".

He also sometimes come out with crazy ideas and CTO need to spend days to convince him about craziness.

This is the best story I've read in a while.

No idea what fraction of her words are truth, but it's sad that such charisma is only used to build a fraudulent product in the end, instead of making the world a better place.

One wonders what they could have accomplished with more tempered reports of what they had accomplished (that is, not fraudulent) and the likely less vertical funding trajectory that would have resulted.

I'm not sure if we're left having just washed a lot of time and money, or if it's worse and investors have been scared away still. Whatever the case, one thing it is is sad.

Absolutely great story and great insights at the end.

She really is a sociopath but what is fascinating is how she uses her own vulnerabilities to exploit others. This is beyond masterful.

Also: beware of compliments.

"The most important thing in life is honesty. If you can fake it, you've got it made."

Tweet...tweet...tweet... The hoops people jump through to avoid a proper blogging platform.

Better than no tweet at all though i.e. spontaneity is easily lost

Also much better than shitty platforms like Medium.

you don't need to make this comparison, as if twitter wasn't shitty enough

You can read Twitter without an account.

After a few tweets, Twitter typically pushes you to sign up or log in.

Wasn't there a post from a bit over a week ago about how Twitter is going to start requiring accounts for reading more than a few tweets?

Excellent point

Twitter threads are awesome. I love that you can tell which portions of the thread are the most interesting by the level of engagement in likes or comments.

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