scribbled thoughts and messy writing
March 25, 2019
Categories:
books
(Spoilers ahead.)
(light cw for suicide)
I highly recommend Bad Blood, the Theranos exposé book. It not only has stories of corruption and intrigue, but also has accounts of regular employees faced with difficult choices and deciding to stand up for what’s right in the face of abuse and threats from the company.
Since Theranos has been in the news lately, I won’t delve into specific incidents of their fraud and lies and terrible company culture, but instead I’ll generally describe the impression the book left on me.
There were many day to day employees at Theranos who genuinely seemed to be trying their best to do honest work. I’m conflicted about how to handle being in this situation – what do you do if you join a company genuinely believing in the company mission only to find out that the company is unethical and built on a foundation of lies? It seemed like many of these employees eventually quit or were fired for disagreeing too vocally or too many times (in one extreme case a long-time employee had a downward spiral that led to him committing suicide). I get that Theranos is an outlier in terms of dysfunction, and that this leads to the more vague and less actionable philosophical question of how to live a moral or ethical life, but as a tech worker I think about these things often. What kind of products/companies could I tolerate working for, contributing to, furthering their reach and potential harm?
I was especially moved by the two junior lab techs who played a key role as whistleblowers; early in your career it’s easy (and often defensible) to keep your head down in fear of retribution. But I think it’s important and admirable to act in ways that are consistent with your internal beliefs (to a reasonable extent of protecting yourself) even if there are consequences, because your actions become who you are.
Somewhat related reading: Resisting indefensible choices by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs