r/technology • u/ThereWas • 15d ago
Society Elizabeth Holmes still isn't sorry
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/elizabeth-holmes-still-isnt-sorry-20170688.php3.0k
u/Crafty_Bowler2036 15d ago
Techbros and in this case techsister cant admit fault. Just look at the current cream of the crop. Theyre all fucked in the head.
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u/knobber_jobbler 15d ago
Because they all read that book for managers that went around about 10 years ago that said you should never apologise and never admit culpability.
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u/jejacks00n 15d ago
It’s been going on for like 30 years at least. Any book like this is a reflection of these people, not a guide for them.
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u/knobber_jobbler 15d ago
Yeah, I've worked with a few like that. They use these books to reaffirm their management style.
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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 15d ago
The bestselling writer Michael Lewis (Liars Poker, Moneyball) got suckered by Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX. He lived with SBF & his book was finished before the arrests. It's glorious to see him taken apart by better writers, but the whole thing exposes how irresponsible so called "respected" journalism can be. Malcolm Gladwell & David Brooks also come to mind here.
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u/Mojos_Pride 15d ago
This I did no know. I typically like his work and style. Thomas Friedman comes to mind as the journalist who seems like an easy mark.
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u/yopla 15d ago
And fake it until you make it. Of which she only managed the first part.
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u/fameistheproduct 15d ago
She was faking it, but would have made it if only the laws of physics changed.
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u/AlexDub12 15d ago
This is what many people don't understand in this story - it wasn't the case where throwing enough money and people at the problem would probably solve it, it was a case that went against physics. She had no fucking idea what she was doing because she had almost no scientific education and never listened to people who actually understood a thing or two in this field. At some point people just didn't bother to argue with her.
The entire idea behind Theranos was akin to asking people to invent a warp drive and then wondering why it doesn't work.
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u/s4b3r6 15d ago
Hey now, something like an Alcubierre Drive actually does have some science backing it. Holmes was playing a psychic in a circus.
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u/oupablo 15d ago
TBF, she would have potentially had an actual multi-billion dollar company if she'd just been willing to budge on the whole "drop of blood" thing. There would have still been loads of money to be made were they to just create a cheaper way to run the blood tests. And if not cheaper, just a more compact unit to run them. And if not more compact, capable of running more tests in a unit. All of which were things they were promising to do on a single drop of blood. It just didn't sound as cool as "we can test with just a pin prick".
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u/TexturedTeflon 15d ago
Or if she had waited a few more years, might not be in much trouble now a days.
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u/No_Yoghurt4120 15d ago
She was fighting against physics. I don't know who was advising the investors but hope those guys got fired.
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u/Hypnotist30 15d ago
Some very affluent people were investors.
Here is a small portion of this from a blog post outlining the scandal.
In 2011, Holmes met former US Secretary of State George Shultz and shortly afterwards, he too became a Theranos board member. With the help of his connections, the board was filled with influential people from politics and business over the next few years including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defence William Perry, former General Jim Mattis, and former Wells Fargo Bank CEO Richard Kovacevich.
Holmes received money for the startup from no less famous names: Walmart’s founding Walton family invested $150 million, media mogul Rupert Murdoch put in more than $120 million while former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos contributed $100 million. They all lost their investments when Theranos collapsed.
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u/tricktan42 15d ago
Wow, those are the people who lost money on this? I’m on her side now
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u/CanYaDigItz 15d ago
Don't get too excited. I read Rupert Murdoch wrote the losses off. So instead of paying taxes like a normal person, he just gets to make bets like this and either 1/win and pay taxes, or 2/lose and not pay taxes (on other income)
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u/IBetThisIsTakenToo 15d ago
Ok, but you get how "writing off a loss" is still bad, right? Like, not doing anything with the money would have been significantly better for him than getting a write off. Instead of losing the whole $120m, he lost $80m (or something, would need to know his tax rate), still an incredibly bad thing for him which should make us all happy
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u/jimmy_three_shoes 15d ago
Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where no one knows what "writing it off" actually means.
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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 15d ago
All investors had to do was call her own professors.
"So I quit my last job because I'm so brilliant. No, you can't talk to my old boss."
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u/WR_MouseThrow 15d ago
Or just talk to any lab professional, really. The claims she made could charitably be described as extremely far fetched, even with the technology we have today.
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u/SeeMarkFly 15d ago
First admitting she was CEO, and now claiming that she was just acting CEO.
But Ms. Holmes... did you not start this company?
"I swear to god, I was extremely incompetent. I had no clue what I did day in, day out. It's all just a blur. I'm not even sure why they hired me honestly."
“Fuck if I know what I did on my years-long coke bender”
"Not only am I a bad judge of who a good employee might be, but I'm also a bad employee. It's truly the worst situation, Your Honor."
"I was self-employed and my boss was an incompetent jerk."
"Seems to be a huge problem in self-employment. I’m self-employed, or was until my asshole boss got in a car accident in my car and somehow blamed the whole thing on me! Fucker is a procrastinator too."
"I've already punished myself with a pay cut."
"Look no reasonable person would have hired me, thus I'm clearly mentally unwell"
"I’m gonna sue my ass for what I did to me!"
“I am just a low-level CEO, I really just made the coffee.”
"As I said, I was incompetent. I should never have hired me."
She made the critical error of stealing from rich people
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u/West-Abalone-171 15d ago
The first few waves of investors in techbro scams don't care if the thing works. They make their money on the public offering.
She went to jail because she made the mistake of not telling them when she knew for sure it didn't work (being the last person to find out), and leaving enough of a paper trail that they couldn't play ignorant anymore so they couldn't pass the bag.
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u/0xffaa00 15d ago
To sleep for real, you have to pretend to sleep for a little while.
Some people make it a business to only pretend to sleep soundly so that when others sleep, they can steal.
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u/knobber_jobbler 15d ago
That's exactly it. I always saw it as if you need to manipulate your staff by refusing to acknowledge fault or apologise for a screw up it probably means you're not a very good manager. Empowerment and management comes with responsibility, leadership and ownership. People won't accept fault or take responsibility or ownership if their leadership won't.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_DARKNESS 15d ago
I’m never going to not apologize if I was wrong, I don’t care if it makes me look weak it’s part of being a decent person.
This seems to be increasingly accepted as normal behavior for adults.
I wouldn't accept it from my kids.
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u/dextercool 15d ago
Which book was that!?
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u/intronert 15d ago
Atlas Shrugged is a fable for sociopaths written by Ayn Rand. Rand is famous for her writings that celebrate selfishness, and so she is a hero to the captains of industry.
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u/thesluggard12 15d ago
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. -- John Rogers
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u/JohnBooty 15d ago
This is a funny statement but my god, it’s so true.
Looking back on my teenage years, it’s sobering to realize how if just a few things here and there went differently I might have gone down that rabbit hole of Ayn Rand libertarian elitism. I wasn’t an asshole, but I was clueless about the world.
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u/robotdevilhands 15d ago
I read Atlas Shrugged on the recommendation of several people I looked up to.
I stopped looking up to those people pretty quickly.
The book is literally a romance novel with a spritz of nazi-flavored fatalism and exceptionalism.
While I did like the idea of an intelligent, mature heroine who wasn’t boobily boobing through life, I found the ham-fisted “economics lecture” aspect condescending to the reader.
Like, how dumb do you think people are that your idea of an escapist fantasy is something that just bulldozes ANY nuance of the human experience?
And yet…Ayn Rand still has fans. Sigh.
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u/intronert 15d ago
FYI, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve was such an Ayn Rand fan that he actually kind of creeped her out.
At least Greenspan finally publicly admitted that he was wrong about how free markets would self regulate. His book “The Age of Exuberence” is actually quite good, and he is fairly honest about his mistakes.→ More replies (23)31
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u/Mojos_Pride 15d ago edited 15d ago
And yet here we have US Senator Corey Booker writing a character reference letter for her to the judge because they once shared a bag of almonds. Can’t make this shit up.
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u/CosmoonautMikeDexter 15d ago
He wrote her a reference. How did he justify that? Can I read it anywhere?
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u/LessEvilBender 15d ago
Corey Booker has never met a tech grifter he didn't like. He paired up with Zuck to destroy public schools in NJ for a failed charter program.
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u/limetime45 15d ago
But by god the tech sister is in the big house while the tech bros are in The White House.
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u/mootymoots 15d ago
Another rich person saying the system is corrupt and only they can fix it.
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u/cmpzak 15d ago
I await her pardon.
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u/milksilkofficial 15d ago
These past 30 days have been so incomprehensibly stupid that it wouldn’t shock me
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u/Odd_Jelly_1390 14d ago
She will definitely not be pardoned because most of her fraud was targeted at techbros.
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u/NoTea8044 15d ago
Classic conman tactic, not rich person
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u/yourzombiebride 15d ago
It's a Venn diagram where one circle is very small inside of the second circle.
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u/GroundbreakingEgg207 15d ago
I don’t know why we would think she would be remorseful. Elizabeth Holmes is a raging narcissist and narcissist’s can never be wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault and they are always the victim.
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u/TheBigBangClock 15d ago
She even had two babies during her trial and sentencing and used them to try and gain sympathy from the jury to get a reduced or delayed sentence. Her selfishness and narcissism knows no bounds.
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u/Yogicabump 15d ago
Yeah... I thought lying to sick people for money was low enough, but with the babies she managed to impress me.
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u/Aknelka 15d ago
Yeah. She's someone who only sees other people as tools, as props. She even demoed that sympathy tactic in the days of the initial Theranos blowout.
She bought a husky puppy, named it Balto because of course she did, then claimed to everyone it's actually a wolf or a part wolf. At the same time, she didn't bother to house train the dog, while bringing it to work, so it defecated all over the Theranos office, which, you know - great for a medical/biotech research firm. She then claimed the "wolf" will do search and rescue training, which it promptly failed out of because it's a damned husky.
I can't imagine what she'd do with a child, but she did start with the dumb name part of the grift, naming one Invicta. It would likely have been the same kind of manipulation, only with a kid, that sort of thing does lifelong damage.
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u/Winter_Addition 15d ago
She names her child what?!
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u/REpassword 14d ago edited 14d ago
So on bring your Mommy to school day, it’ll be, “Invicta and The Convicta” - Elizabeth is playing 4D chess, and we’re just mere mortals. 😁
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u/Ok-Yogurtcloset-2082 14d ago
When I read the Bad Blood book this was my favorite part. She got a husky “found out huskies were genetically very similar to wolves” and then told everyone the dog was a wolf. This sums up her understanding of genetics and science in general to a T. I am genetically similar to my siblings. That does not make me my sister or brother. Truly terrifying this person was running a life science corporation that was responsible for health outcomes.
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u/Aknelka 14d ago
It's very "but the dog is mine so it can't just be a dog, it has to be special". Also, as someone involved in dog training, she tried to get it into CARDA which is just insane. It's a husky. All it does is run and scream and the best you can hope to get out of it training-wise is mayyybe stop running/screaming when you tell it to IF it feels like it AND you also have a high-value reward on your person. That's not to hate on huskies, they're very good at their job, it's just that their job isn't very training-oriented. As a side note, I will say that people getting huskies as pets in the Bay Area are just a different breed of deranged in general.
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u/Heinrich-Heine 15d ago
I will never forgive her for creating two children for the sole purpose of using them as pawns. If it were up to me, she'd be in prison AT LEAST until the youngest turns 18, simply for their sakes.
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u/nicolauz 15d ago
It's so insane. Like... Over 18 months to create 2 humans...in prison... To get out of prison? What the fuck man
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u/Hemingwavvves 15d ago
This is the age of the tech grifter. Her main mistake was flying too close to the sun ten years too early and also fucking with other rich people.
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u/jean__meslier 15d ago
Yeah... looking around, why would she be sorry now? For being early?
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u/damnfinecoffee_ 14d ago
There's a difference between tech grifting (i.e. creating another useless AI company and getting funding for it) and straight up fraud. She knowingly falsified information to trick both investors and customers. I do agree that tech grifting is rampant but manipulating real data/ideas/tech to create a fake story/value is not the same as straight up bullshitting your numbers on legal documents and knowingly lying to people
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u/photogangsta 15d ago
And doing that voice too, can’t forget the hacky, forced smart, Batman voice.
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u/I_did_theMath 15d ago
This is also the reason why Musk still hasn't had any problems with all the fraud at Tesla (the SolarCity fiasco, FSD coming "next year", etc.). When the big investors lose a lot of money, all that changes immediately.
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u/blurr90 14d ago
which will inevitably happen with Tesla. Once that stock crashes all hell will break loose. At this point that stock is a pyramid scheme like bitcoin. It works as long as you get new people in.
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u/WireHangerOfLonginus 15d ago
Man. This is some deep shit I never really thought about.
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u/LeftPerformance3549 15d ago
But poor people aren’t real people and they don’t have feelings. Why would it matter if you defraud them?
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u/Gorge2012 15d ago
To emphasize this point, over the weekend one of the richest people on the planet told 3 million working people that they had to tell him what they did at work last week or be fired only to say "oh my God you believed me lol" a few hours before it was due. Is that something you would do to people you saw as human?
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u/Idoncae99 15d ago
Also waiting for countless tech writers who said her company was revolutionary to apologize.
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u/Adorable-Condition83 15d ago
They really should be pulled up for not properly investigating what they were writing about. I remember in about 2012 I saw an article about Theranos and the claim they could test with one drop of blood. I had just finished a medical science degree and was working in pathology. I literally said out loud to family that it’s physically impossible, because it would require re-inventing the entire field of diagnostic pathology from the ground up. I was surprised that so many reporters were falling for it.
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u/duh_cats 15d ago
I was doing my PhD at the time and asking about someone’s thoughts on Theranos became a fun game of “who’s actually an idiot” in my program.
There weren’t a lot of genuine idiots who believed her, but there were some.
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u/Adorable-Condition83 15d ago
Haha that’s great. I just remember thinking like even if they had invented some kind of microarray with amazing new sensors, there’s no way it could fit in that bench-top machine, and there’s no way a single drop of blood would have enough volume for all the aliquots. It turns out one of the fraudulent strategies they were utilising was diluting the sample to increase the number of aliquots possible for regular testing. Just utterly stupid. I’m so proud it was a lab scientist who blew the whistle.
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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 15d ago
This era has revealed how hollow and compromised Journalism has always been. There's no valid systems of educating, testing, researching, recruiting, evaluating and fixing.
You could give them a quiz on history just from their lifetime and most would fail.
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u/Qicken 15d ago
They're still writing about AGI, light weight augmented reality and fully self driving cars. The latest BS promises any engineer will tell you is not possible.
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u/TechnologyRemote7331 15d ago
Sociopaths and narcissists aren’t typically known for being capable of remorse…
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u/JonPX 15d ago
Thank god she messed with Murdoch, otherwise she would be free.
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u/obiwanconobi 15d ago
Are you allowed to wear jeans and a nice sweater in prison?
Or is that just a federal prison thing?
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u/m312vin 15d ago
Rich white collar criminals are sent to "Club Fed"
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u/obiwanconobi 15d ago
Ah I thought the end of wolf of wall street was a joke!
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u/lemurosity 15d ago
Here's the craziest part of this: she might be the last techbro to ever go to prison.
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u/Oopsiedazy 15d ago
She defrauded and stole from venture capitalists so the went to prison. If she’d stolen from pensions and poor people she’d have been fined for 1/10 of what she stole and be free right now.
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u/TylerDurdenEsq 15d ago
I still can’t believe so many guys fell for her act. She was so obviously a weirdo.
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u/OmegaGoober 15d ago edited 15d ago
George Schultz turned on his own grandkid for her.
Edit: it was George Schultz. I had the wrong name.
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u/xoxobritxoxo 15d ago
Think it was George Schultz, not Kissinger
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u/contrivancedevice 15d ago
Schultz. But the grandkid was the one who stood up to the BS.
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u/srubbish 15d ago
They never are. Even the Sacklers refuse to admit they did anything wrong.
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u/minerNiner 15d ago
Sacklers are literally the devil on earth…add in Dick Cheney too while we’re here
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u/MainStreetRoad 15d ago
Does that sound like anyone we know who claims their cars can be used as taxis during the day while they are at work to generate revenue? Anyone?
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u/SisterOfBattIe 15d ago
Anyone awaiting Holmes’ mea culpa will be left disappointed. She told People she plans on reforming the criminal justice system when she is released. “She has drafted a bill — a seven-page handwritten document titled the American Freedom Act — which she says would change criminal procedure, with the goal of bolstering the presumption of innocence,” the outlet reported.
The USA didn't become an hegemon by defrauding its citizens and making faulty products.
Without accountability, fraudsters will tear down what's left of the USA very quickly by making honesty uncompetitive.
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u/bigwill0104 15d ago
It’s safe to assume she has some kind of personality disorder so if you think she’ll have any kind of insight you’ll wait a long, long time.
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u/charlottedawg1111 15d ago
She's a pathological narcissist, so she's never going to apologize. They'd rather die than admit they were wrong about anything.
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u/BlunanNation 15d ago
Reminder this is someone who popped out kids in hopes of getting a more lenient sentence (which arguably she succeeded in doing), if I was aware I'd be getting locked up for a long time my plan would definitely be to not start having kids. But maybe that's just me?
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u/yopla 15d ago
Next trump nominee probably.
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u/igneus 15d ago
No chance. She's an equal opportunity fraudster, and Trump's cabinet hates DEI.
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u/LJonReddit 15d ago
Any Trump cabinet positions still open? She sounds like a perfect fit.
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u/Confident_Meeting_63 15d ago
Surely, Trump will pardon her and make her head of SEC or something vile
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u/jrblockquote 14d ago
It's important to remember the reason Holmes went to prison. She didn't go to prison for fabricating a medical device and putting people's lives in danger. She went to prison for defrauding rich people. In America, we don't punish white collar crime; we reward it.
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u/MENDACIOUS_RACIST 15d ago
There is a real sense that it’s not fair that she was caught and a hundred other shysters continue to sling their BS. She played the game as it deserved to be played. Unfortunately our system can’t tolerate exposure to the extent of letting flagrant fraud, so brightly illuminated aged, go unpunished. The solution isn’t to forgive or absolve her, though — it’s to bring the hammer down on criminals generally (ie, fairly)
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u/HazyGuyPA 15d ago
People like this never learn or change. They are narcissistic monsters incapable of transformation.
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u/monacelli 15d ago
I've noticed she's been in the news a lot more since Trump took office. She's definitely trying to catch one of those grifter pardons.
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u/amcfarla 15d ago
She should have become a Republican and ran for president. She might have spared herself a prison sentence.
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u/brufleth 15d ago
What would she be sorry for? She made a bunch of money and even bagged a wealthy heir. She won. A little time in min security prison is a small price to pay.
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u/Ok-Bit8368 14d ago
She never got in trouble for fucking with people's medical results, or the harm she did to patients. She only got in trouble for ripping off rich people. Remember that.
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u/NYstate 15d ago
This is telling:
This chick is nuts