[ultrahate]

There's no shame in paying the rent, imho.

People still onboard either:

* don't know the risks somehow, so they must be idiots

* know the risks, but think they'll get paid

* know the risks, but haven't put together an escape plan

* know the risks, and are just waiting for last check before they start whatever the next chapter of their life is going to be

[mattnewton]

If I was hiring a software developer from a similar situation, this would be a huge red flag for me. Competent developers are constant being wooed away, and the fact that you hadn't jumped ship yet makes me think you are in the best case clueless and in the worst case incompetent to the point of unemployability.

The market must be very different for these medical science workers to make this a good idea. It must be much much harder to find a job.

[ultrahate]

Yeah, I was just about to reflex-respond to your comment before I read the last line, because med science is something that I'd contend the vast majority of HN to be unfamiliar with. Depending on what the pay or benefits or whatever the retention situation for medsci workers at Theranos is, maybe it's just good sense to milk that cash for however long they can before going back to whatever else is there for them.

I agree though, it certainly says something about an employee who worked at Theranos, or Enron, or higher-up Samsung, etc.

220 is a lot of people, too.

Anyways, my point about medsci is that the field of medsci is so diverse and specialized that it might be hard to find somebody with both neuropsychology + pharma experience (just an example) and I think that a few people lingering around are probably just being overpaid so much to stay that it would be foolish to give that money up until you absolutely had to.

Super elite talent (Lattner comes to mind) has some different dynamics to it, but it's the same principle of having such a strong but also highly specialized base of knowledge, that it makes sense to ante up in order to get that talent onboard, and for the talent it'd be ridiculous to turn down the money since you're so valuable that you'd be able to morph your new workload into something that will make you a stronger developer regardless. Similar to someone with extremely advanced medical knowledge, just being around the right environment and tools and stuff would probably give that person tremendous ROI, on top of being paid well, that when the storm passes they'll be stronger because of it.

Lots of angles to think about with all of this!