disease here is what we should be curing before we try to
tackle obesity...I mean no ill will towards you, since you
believe in what I was doing and hoped I would succeed at
Theranos. I feel like I owe you this bad attempt at an exit
interview since we have no HR to officially record it.Upset, Elizabeth called him into her office, told him she disagreed
with his criticism, and asked him to resign “with dignity.” Justin
agreed to help smooth the transition by sending his colleagues an
email with detailed instructions about where to find the various
projects he’d been working on. But as he sat down to write it, he
couldn’t resist including a few personal thoughts on the state of those
projects, earning him one last reprimand from Elizabeth.
Aaron Moore and Mike Bauerly stayed at Theranos a few more
months, but their hearts were no longer in it. One of the nice features
of the new office was that it had a big terrace above the building’s
entrance. Mike had furnished it with deck chairs and a hammock.
Aaron and Mike would retreat there for long coffee breaks, the
afternoon sun pleasantly warming their faces as they bantered.
Aaron felt someone needed to tell Elizabeth to pump the brakes and
to stop pushing to commercialize a product that they were still trying
to get to work. But for her to listen, the message had to come from one
of the three senior managers—Tim, Gary, or Tony—and none of them
were willing to tell her. Tony, who was under a lot of pressure from
Elizabeth, finally had enough of hearing Aaron’s complaints and asked
him to leave the company. “Go find a place where you can be a big fish
in a small pond,” he told him.
Aaron agreed that it was time for him to go. To his surprise,
Elizabeth tried to convince him to stay. It turned out she thought
highly of him despite his prank. But his mind was made up. He
resigned in June 2008. Mike Bauerly followed in December. Every
member of the Apple contingent had now moved on, marking the end
of a chaotic period for the company. Elizabeth had survived an aborted
board coup and was back firmly in control. Remaining Theranos
employees looked forward to calmer and quieter times. But their