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System Analysis, Design, and Implementation. I am sure I could ace that class if I went back to school now, but as a young 19 year old with 0 real world corporate experience, all the computer know how in the world could not help me wrap my brain around the system development lifecycle. The biggest irony is that I now work in the change management domain space.

The irony (or coincidence?) is that we are all more qualified to run Theranos than the people running it right now.

derFunkenstein wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Breezed through most of my CS courses (because that's what I was interested in and I had already taught myself a fair bit of it), but the rest of it was a slog.

That sounds very familiar. I'm thrilled that I don't have any more gen eds to take.

If only that were the case for me. When that wake up call arrived, I left for a real job. It didn't help that mid-90's "computer science" and computer networking were completely orthogonal.

I didn't even have the help of being really interested in the course material.

Well, I *was* until I got a internship debugging uncommented *and* contracted MUMPS code. (Yes, this is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS). Source looked more like random capital letters than anything else. Killed any interest I had in computer programming for almost twenty years.

Vhalidictes wrote:

Well, I *was* until I got a internship debugging uncommented *and* contracted MUMPS code. (Yes, this is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS). Source looked more like random capital letters than anything else. Killed any interest I had in computer programming for almost twenty years.

Could've been worse -- it could've been APL. Any programming language that requires a special font and keyboard is pretty far "out there".

ludi wrote:

The first class I ever failed was Differential Equations, and the second time I only got through with a 'D'-for-Done.

We're all different, I suppose. Differential Equations was the easiest course I had either in undergrad or in grad school. I didn't miss a point through the entire course on the homework, the tests or on the final. I really hit my stride with Partial Differential Equations, taking two years of them in grad school and loving it.

Vhalidictes wrote:

I got a internship debugging uncommented *and* contracted MUMPS code. (Yes, this is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS). Source looked more like random capital letters than anything else. Killed any interest I had in computer programming for almost twenty years.

I know one of the foremost experts in MUMPS in the country - he's my father-in-law's old college roommate, I've met him a few times now. He was an undergrad student in the lab that developed it in the late '60s, and it's been his career. He's ... interesting, and swears that MUMPS is a brilliant language that was unfairly maligned in the computer science community.

Anything that shares it's name with a nowadays rare and uncommon virus has got to be awesome, right?

If I had a dollar for every allegedly brilliant programming language that never caught on or eventually fell out of favor, I'd probably have enough money to build a new Ryzen-based PC.

If I had a dollar for every programming language I've personally used at least once but don't use any more, I'd probably have enough to buy myself a pretty nice dinner, or a few six-packs of craft beer. (TBH I'm counting assembly and scripting languages here...)

Languages I still code on a regular basis (both personal and work) are C/C++, Python, and bash script. I've used VHDL and PHP recently enough that I could pick them up again in a pinch (how's *that* for opposite ends of the spectrum?), and Java is close enough to C++ that I'm confident I'd be able to bang out some crappy Java code if you held a gun to my head...

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

Vhalidictes wrote:

I got a internship debugging uncommented *and* contracted MUMPS code. (Yes, this is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS). Source looked more like random capital letters than anything else. Killed any interest I had in computer programming for almost twenty years.

I know one of the foremost experts in MUMPS in the country - he's my father-in-law's old college roommate, I've met him a few times now. He was an undergrad student in the lab that developed it in the late '60s, and it's been his career. He's ... interesting, and swears that MUMPS is a brilliant language that was unfairly maligned in the computer science community.

The language might be fine? It's hard to tell as an intern with no source materials and everyone who knew the language too busy to help get started. And of course it was debugging uncommented code (from an employee no longer there!) to start with.

EDIT: Note that at the time my college courses were about Pascal, and my personal knowledge was BASIC and some FORTRAN (on a C64 no less), so it really was a bit of a shock.

Looks like they've managed to convince recent investors not to sue (by giving them additional equity). If I was one of those investors I'd still be pretty pissed off. They've essentially been given a bigger piece of something that seems fairly likely to end up being worthless by the time the dust settles.

A friend of mine interviewed with them for a scientist/research position (Phd in medical genetics) before this blew up. He was offered a position but didn't end up taking it due to a couple of glaring red flags. I recall one of them being that when he asked whether he could talk to other staff to ask how they liked their jobs, etc, he was given the response "You're the first person to ask us this!" And then when they finally cherry picked a couple of people he could talk to, he didn't get very compelling sense that they were passionate about what they did at the company. The other thing that really threw him off was, at the end of the interview process, Holmes herself came in, sat across from him and apparently stared deeply into his eyes like she was attempting some sort of Jedi mind trick before simply stating something like "we think you will make a good addition to our team" or some such.

Thankfully he turned it down.

I don't know how any investor could rest easy with any substantially capital sunk in this company. Maybe Holmes really does have semi-serviceable Jedi powers after all..

cynan wrote:

Holmes herself came in, sat across from him and apparently stared deeply into his eyes like she was attempting some sort of Jedi mind trick before simply stating something like "we think you will make a good addition to our team" or some such.

This hilariously reminds me of a rural police detective hopelessly out of his depth pursuing a serial killer in a really, really good Korean movie: Memories of Murder

The guy would stare into the eyes of potential suspects to ascertain their culpability, with absurd results. At the end of the movie, fast-forwarded a decade or so, he's doing the same thing to his teenage children to see if they are up to no good, though out of the police force at that point.

Too bad Theranos doesn't have any children.

It looks possible that Theranos can turn itself around and become a real company.

I really doubted they could fake it until they make it, but the longer this drags on the more it looks like they will end up as a going concern. Well, assuming that Holmes steps down at some point.

Vhalidictes wrote:

It looks possible that Theranos can turn itself around and become a real company.

Possible? Yes. Likely? I'd say not.

Vhalidictes wrote:

I really doubted they could fake it until they make it, but the longer this drags on the more it looks like they will end up as a going concern. Well, assuming that Holmes steps down at some point.

But Theranos essentially is Holmes! I'm also not convinced the company possesses enough functional tech to have a positive net worth at this point, outside of any cash on hand remaining from the investment they've raised.

Corporate governance epic fail: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05 ... -own-eyes/

Did anyone else enjoy the Theranos debacle as much as I did?

This was a satisfying riches to rags story. On a related note, sadly, Marissa Mayer's deal went through.

moog wrote:

Did anyone else enjoy the Theranos debacle as much as I did?

This was a satisfying riches to rags story. On a related note, sadly, Marissa Mayer's deal went through.

I was surprised there was no story here on Mayer. Talk about the classic golden parachute. Except Mayer's was diamonds and platinum. With unobtainium laces. She's never going to have to work again, although I suspect she's going to become a hero figure to some years from now when the memory of her debacle at Yahoo begins to soften somewhat.

The Swamp wrote:

I was surprised there was no story here on Mayer. Talk about the classic golden parachute. Except Mayer's was diamonds and platinum. With unobtainium laces. She's never going to have to work again, although I suspect she's going to become a hero figure to some years from now when the memory of her debacle at Yahoo begins to soften somewhat.

She's definitely getting a lot of money for not a lot of effort, although if you manage to sell yourself to a telecom giant for $4.5 billion, a hefty finder's fee is not unreasonable.

Their office building is available for sublease: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/ ... s-sublease

Well, isn't this awkward for her/them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43406050

"Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes charged with $700m fraud"

That's gonna leave a mark.

It appears she has already settled

Probably a wise choice. Takes the possibility of jail time out of the equation.

I wonder if she'll quietly exit stage left and take a mundane job somewhere, or if she'll keep trying to do something in the medical device field. Gonna be pretty hard to get additional VC for anything remotely similar after this dumpster fire.

Any settlement with the sec will bar her from operating a company for years and years

Any company, or just publicly traded ones? The Ars article specifically says "barred from serving as a director or officer of a public company for 10 years".

As I noted in my previous post, it probably makes it effectively impossible to raise capital for a privately held company too, so maybe the distinction is moot.

She'll write a book, hit the lecture circuit, and/or turn up as a talking head somewhere. Eventually she'll be selling a "redemption" story.

If she'd just managed to do all of this a few years earlier and this whole thing was already a few years in the rear view mirror, I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear she was in the front running for this administration's pick to head the FDA. (please treat that as a joke and not an invitation to take this thread into R&P, mmmk?).

UberGerbil wrote:

this administration's pick to head the FDA

Or the SEC.

Theranos was never public in the first place. On a phone and so I shouldn't have started this posting thread to begin with ut she isn't going to be to seek investors anymore no. Open popsicle stand with own money: yes

Also the settlement is civil and while normally that doesn't happen without a criminal determination in hand in this case they don't appear to have admitted wrongdoing which is unusual.

Thus she could very well still be criminally charges

I ran across this image on Imgur and thought of this thread.

Bonus from the comment thread for that image, for one of the soldering threads here.