The day has arrived for Elizabeth Holmes to report to a Texas prison
apnews.com
apnews.com
Justice Department charged both with a litany of white-collar crimes in a case aimed at putting a stop to the Silicon Valley practice of overselling the capabilities of a still-developing technology — a technique that became known as “fake it ’til you make it.”
I she's was actually being punished on behalf of people disliking "fake it till you make it" then that wouldn't be fair.
I don't see a problem with showing mocked up screenshots of an app you haven't built yet, which is what I think of as fake it till you make it. That's not the same as telling people you possess a technology that doesn't exist, or giving people health information based on your nonexistent technology. It's an important distinction.
The issue in SV is that your definition of "fake it 'till you make it" is actually way too honest and reasonable.[1] I'd actually argue that your stance isn't quite faking it as you're being quite upfront with reality (at least in this hypothetical you wrote about).
Actual Silicon Valley fake it 'till you make it culture is selling the mockups as the real deal. It's using wireframes or illustrated screenshots and stating that this is the actual behavior, or exactly like what the experience is going to be. I've been in the ML space for about a decade, so I'll add on the many anecdotes I've personally witnessed: it's also saying that "this little button here will do X,Y,Z using 'Deep Learing'".
There's never any actual prototype that even does what the shrills are selling! No proof of concept. No actual work done to even reasonably demonstrate that the concept is possible. *This* is the SV fake it 'till you make it culture. And it's destroying the entire tech industry. It's sucking away useful investment dollars and putting it into the hands of fakes like Elizabeth Holmes and other criminal frauds.
Hopefully, her high-profile criminal case will lead to a systematic change in the industry. I for one would love to see more regulation and licensing around software engineering. Too much hype and money is wasted on incompetent people who aren't actually building anything these days!
[1] Apologies if this feels directed towards "you." I'm only attempting to address my interpretation your written perspective here. And only in so far as it doesn't quite align with what I see (which ofc. is just _my_ perspective of reality). I don't want this coming off as any sort of personal attack, which often happens online :-/
That isn't at all what I think of when I hear the term "fake it 'till you make it". To me, the phrase means "pretend like you have a functional and complete product until the day arrives that you actually do."
"Fake it 'till you make it", along with "move fast and break things", are (to me) indicative of the decline of our industry. Both of those used to mean very narrow (and correct) understandings. But they've been generalized to the point of malignancy.
I don't have a problem with showing those mocks.
I have a problem with selling those mocks, for something that winds up being impossible to build in reality because you're being way over-optimistic about your capability.
No. She was convicted of several counts of financial fraud on investors. The definition of that crime does not encompass "endangering lives".
In fact, a lot of people expressed disappointment that she was not tried for endangering patients.
You can read the judge's sentencing statement here [1], which goes into their reasoning. Here [2] is the main wire fraud law she was convicted of violating.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/11/23/1138988456/read-what-a-judge-...
It isn't a matter of "not having met deadlines". It was just fraud mixed with enough money to hide the fraud, so maybe a ponzi?
What mattered is that she told people things that she knew weren't true in order to extract investment money from them.
The industry already knew it wasn't going to work.
Got it.