meeting that he could refer back to the following week to keep
emotions out of it.
Several times, Elizabeth came downstairs to the engineers’
workshop and hovered over Greg while he worked. He politely
acknowledged her, then resumed working in silence. It was some sort
of strange power play and he was determined not to get rattled by it.
One afternoon, Elizabeth called him into her office and told him she
sensed cynicism emanating from him. After a long silence in which he
debated telling her she was right, Greg decided to keep his growing
disenchantment to himself and told a fib: he was upset because Sunny
had rejected several job applicants that he thought were well qualified
and hoped the company would hire.
Elizabeth must have believed him because she relaxed noticeably.
“You need to tell us about these things,” she said.
—
ON A WEEKDAY EVENING in December 2011, Theranos chartered
several buses to transport its employees, which now numbered more
than one hundred, to the Thomas Fogarty Winery in Woodside. It was
Elizabeth’s favorite place to hold corporate events. The winery’s main
building and its adjacent events facility were built on stilts into the
hillside and offered panoramic views of the estate’s rolling vineyards
and of the Valley beyond.
The occasion was the company’s annual Christmas party. As
employees sipped drinks from an open bar inside the winery’s main
building before sitting down to dinner, Elizabeth gave a speech.
“The miniLab is the most important thing humanity has ever built.
If you don’t believe this is the case, you should leave now,” she
declared, scanning her audience with a dead serious look on her face.
“Everyone needs to work as hard as humanly possible to deliver it.”
Trey, the friend Greg had met while living in Pasadena and recruited
to Theranos, tapped Greg’s foot. They glanced at each other
knowingly. What Elizabeth had just said confirmed their armchair
psychoanalysis of their boss: she saw herself as a world historical