'The Dropout' Part 3: Former Theranos employees claim toxic work culture

[Music] [Music] so where are we right now we're at Cooper cafe in Palo Alto this is where we met Elizabeth Cooper cafe okay what can I get you guys a bustling eatery in downtown Palo Alto it's a small black coffee lizard this was the hot spot where the heavy hitters of tech were known to make business happen and Elizabeth Holmes wanted in on this elite club eagle-eyed viewers of the social network might even spot Mark Zuckerberg scare achter with his koopa cafe cup in this scene I'm not a bad dog somewhere over there there's a 40 million dollar check that was your check right by 2006 Elizabeth's obsession with Steve Jobs was in full swing she had already recruited his former right-hand man Evita vania an iPhone product designer ahna aureola and now she was continuing to poach aggressively from Apple and Silicon Valley's ranks and that requisite green juice never out of grasp I had just gone in there with this expectation that I was meeting brilliance the next Steve Jobs next Zuckerberg something like that she's incredibly passionate for passion was play pretty intense and pretty compelling very expressive with her hands she has a lot of conviction in her vision you know we're changing the world we have the technology to do it they all eagerly jumped on board it was the opportunity to join the rocket ship right I think in retrospect I can look back and look at that intensity in a different light but at the time yeah it was it was great [Music] almost as soon as they started they say life at Thera knows was just a little bit off how would you describe the culture of Thera knows justin not a lot of camaraderie a lot of paranoia the office environment was designed to not really interact with anybody else she believed on multiple levels of secrecy and compartmentalization employees say Elizabeth's style was off-putting for Justin what began as excessive micromanaging turned into actually noticing that this person is willing to lie to me about extremely trivial unimportant things silly things like saying she'd left the office for the day and she was actually just in an office right down the hall from me you could see her sending things so I walked over to her and had a bit of an argument with her and she stormed after me and said don't ever walk off on me again if you've watched the office there was a lot of like looking at the camera and disbelief and that was all day we were all just looking into like what is going on you got a sense that not everyone in the company at that time really knew what was happening from a holistic picture and I was partly I think through a somewhat intentional effort Adam says the departments were purposely kept separate designed so no one could catch on that the technology didn't actually work works backing people to prick their fingers which is kind of hard and scary and then draw blood and put it in a device and as it turned out like if you screwed up the introduction of the blood into this cartridge it was like game over so wouldn't work it would be inaccurate yeah you would get a wildly wrong result how quickly is it before you start to notice problems nine months into it I was starting to get a little bit frustrated that we would see demos and they just wouldn't work but some of that you expect again from a startup that has a product that's not done right but the problem was it never got any better I think what she didn't expect was that I would ask a lot of questions and that I would ask tough questions she did not want to hear other people's opinions Elizabeth reacted swiftly and harshly eliminating those who raised doubts there were posts from employees they equated it to a South American dictatorship or a drug cartel they assembled some of the best people that they possibly could get and they just vanished I was one of the few people that stood up to her I have told her no in numerous occasions in August 2007 Ana found out about a research study that was testing theros technology on terminal cancer patients there were patients who were third and fourth stage oncology cancer patients that had given up their blood as a test this device light was seeping in it was corrupting the blood assays and so the the data was faulty the test results wouldn't be used to impact the actual treatments given to patients but employees hated doing research on such vulnerable people I brought this to Elizabeth and she gave me an ultimatum suppress it and continue on as business as usual and I was like that's unacceptable and I decided to resign I just literally had nothing I wanted to do with that company anymore Anna wasn't alone Justin sent Elizabeth to management books with titles not safe for broadcast I can't say any of this on ABC news unfortunately and a pretty epic letter of resignation hi I'm resigning lying is a disgusting habit and it flows through the conversations here like it's our own currency the cultural disease here is what we should be curing I really truly believe you know it already and for some reason I can't you're out you allow it to continue justin Maxwell avi perhaps her biggest recruit was at his breaking point - and expressed his concerns to another board member I said I'm gonna give you a choice I think that there is a chance this company can make this product work and I would love to stick around with you and we probably need to revisit Elizabeth's role and everything else or if you want I'll resign your choice he said Elizabeth would like you to resign from the board cutting to the chase he literally said you ask too many questions were you surprised that he said I'd like for you to resign she had already poisoned the well the Apple era at their nose had burned bright and crashed hard I would never expect that anyone would behave the way that she behaved as a CEO I believe I work for Steve Jobs I saw some crazy things but Elizabeth took it to a level that I've never seen before well on the inside there may have been turmoil on the outside people were fawning all over Elizabeth and her idea are we crazy now that all these people are in making a big deal out of it maybe we're crazy she was becoming a full-fledged star please welcome the only person I know who makes me feel like a lazy bastard Elizabeth Holmes hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more video show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 1,911,786

Keywords: former, theranos, employees, claim, toxic, work, culture, part 3, ceo, elizabeth holmes, hear, criticism, too, many, questions, camaraderie, paranoia, justin maxwell, design, director, abc news, 2020, theranos documentary, blood test, finger, drop of blood, elizabeth holmes voice, theranos scandal, investigation, whistleblower, HBO, 2020 theranos, nightline, 2020 episodes, ABC, true story, health care, walgreens, rebecca jarvis, the dropout, podcast

Id: bpBELR366c4

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2019