Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m not that interested in Theranos specifically, but what is interesting about this book is all the patterns of corruption that I’ve seen before in numerous places: bullying people through numerous expensive bogus law suits, wanting employees to be loyal instead of highly qualified (which often includes nepotism), toxic work environments, numerous firings: especially when people are fired for questioning appropriate work practices, lying or loose ethical standards by management, employees that are so stressed that they start keeping written records of their interactions with management.

The employee suicide was a horror, and they should have focused on that part more. Also the involvement of General Mattis is super weird. Otherwise, the book could have benefitted from a lot of editing though because it keeps talking about how the product wasn't working and they kept pretending it did. Okay, I get it.

Surprisingly the end of the book was the most exciting. It was a meta section about how difficult it was to get the story of Theranos corruption published. Another reminder of how important free journalism is.

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