Former employees say Holmes demanded complete devotion to the company from the start.
At daily all-hands meetings, Holmes often launched into lengthy speeches about how they were"saving lives," according to three former employees. Staffers"were literally living their lives at the workplace, and she appreciated and she encouraged that kind of behavior," a former senior scientist at Theranos said.
But as the hype around Theranos grew, so did Holmes' obsession with secrecy, according to former employees. At one point, Shah's team was recruiting for a security-guard position and one of the job requirements was"evasive driving maneuvers," he added. One operation engineer told Insider that on his first day of work, Holmes rushed him to the products facility to show off her brand-new multimillion-dollar machine that stored the tiny blood cartridges she called"nanotainers."
"She bombarded me saying: 'No, this is not right. Everybody else is using it, and if they can use it, so can you.' Then she just ended the meeting right there," the scientist, who started at Theranos in 2011, said."There was a running joke on the HR team that, 4 o'clock Friday, whoever was in front of their office was conducting an exit interview," said Shah, the former recruiter.After Theranos' downfall, Holmes started a quieter life.
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