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Comment by i_am_nomad | Hacker News Reader

My company recently interviewed a Theranos veteran - this person was a scientist working on a small part of the analytical pipeline. Apparently there were many, many smart people working at Theranos (including the candidate) who had no idea the company was a scam. This was in part due to intense secrecy and very rigid information silos within the company.

There’s probably a lesson to be learned there, of course - one too many “need to know basis” explanations and it’s time to start asking some hard questions.

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Did you end up hiring the person? Do you feel like working there significantly damaged their career prospects?

I have Friends and Family at Symantec right now, and they are all very worried what the potential FCC violations could to their resumes.

They are specifically in Finance, but also weren't aware of any of the current news items.

I know people that worked there and having Theranos on their resume caused them to not get an interview at at least one company.

Not the OP, but I have also interviewed and hired ex-Theranos engineers. I don't think it damaged their career prospects. So long as they can talk about the normal things you talk about at an interview they'll be fine.

I feel like most people recognize that given the huge number of employees, most working there are genuinely good, competent people who got caught up in a bad situation. No reason to hold that against them.

By that metric Apple could be a scam.

Except Apple delivers.

The difference is that it is trivial to determine whether they’re selling something that works, which would be the thing to hide in the event of fraud.

Or the fraud is purely financial, in which case it wouldn’t be obvious to an engineer anyway because that level of siloing is normal.

Just like wearing turtlenecks won’t make you Steve Jobs, maintaining a corporate culture of total secrecy will not make you Apple.

No. For starters we have plenty of evidence that Apple is not a scam. Secondly "one too many “need to know basis” explanations and it’s time to start asking some hard questions" is a pretty clear qualifier. The difference between protecting legitimate secrets and keeping things secret that aren't really secrets anywhere else and have no value as secrets accept to deceive is pretty clear.

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