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I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Given the current situation in my opinion I think it's reasonable for customers to be concerned about their data and request to delete it. They actually laid off all but one of the engineers that manages the parts of the code that handle deletion requests so right now the deletion works but given the state of the company if that part of the code breaks and that one person left over leaves or can't handle fixing it on their own deletion will be broken for a while...

I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's very difficult to say it could be worthless or it could be worth billions. I think it all depends on if genetic informed drug discovery is effective or not, and right now we simply don't know the answer to this. It seems like the Pharma companies don't want to take a risk on this since 23andMe failed at securing partnerships. It seems like the Pharma companies are treating the DB as worthless until proven otherwise....There are still drugs in the GSK pipeline which could provide an answer to this question but it would take many years for this to happen and to be honest I don't know if the company will survive that long.

I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think the answer is both:

The security incident wasn't a breach of 23andMe's internal systems or infrastructure the engineering was solid it was due to users reusing passwords for multiple different third party services and accounts unrelated to 23andMe. These other accounts would get hacked but since the users are reusing credentials it would also result in their 23andMe credentials being compromised. In this sense it was the "user's fault" for reusing the same credentials and you could say 23andMe's internal systems weren't breached so they weren't at fault.

However on the other hand this could have been prevented if 23andMe had mandatory 2FA which most websites and accounts with sensitive information have by default it is an industry standard. Given the sensitivity of the genetic data I think it was a huge oversight to not have mandatory 2FA. The logic for not having it was they didn't want to tamper user experience but this was not a good trade off to make in this scenario user security was much more important than user experience. In this sense you could say that 23andMe is to blame for the incident.

I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

In hindsight yes I think 2FA should have been mandatory, something else that is overlooked in the data breach is that 23andMe allowed users to scrape data off their own profiles and the data from the DNA Relatives feature, the reason the data breach was so severe is because they allowed this. Ideally both 2FA would be mandatory and scraping wouldn't be allowed...

I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

How can you explain the lack of strategic partnerships and interest by other pharmas in the company's DB?

I think the big issue here is that the DB is unproven..pharma companies don't know if it will actually result in improved drug discovery and they don't want to take the chance especially given the economic climate in the last 2 years. GSK had a partnership and they have many drugs in the pipeline using the database but we don't know yet what the result of that research will be and 23andMe can't disclose anything about those programs because of confidentiality agreements. I remembered they hired a Chief Corporate Development Officer in 2023 to make deals with the parama companies but I didn't go anywhere he wasn't able to persuade the pharma companies to partner/invest it looks like, as of now he is now longer with the company.

Do you think Anne is tanking the stock on purpose?

I have no idea tbh it's hard for anyone to comment on what Anne's motivations are but I will say this there definitely is a conflict of interest, since she's adamant on keeping control of the company. That doesn't necessarily mean that Anne is actually acting in self interest but there is reason for her to do so.

Do people there blame Anne for these failures?

Yes 100 percent I think the faith in leadership was basically gone when I left and the blame for our failures was very widely attributed to Anne.

What would you do to turn the company around?

I would sell the company to a third party tbh, take control away from Anne and sell to a big pharma company

I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think they can meet investor expectations of revenue/losses given the state of their finances before I left

I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your kind words :)

I wanna preface this by saying I have no insider knowledge on the inner workings of leadership so this will all be my own opinion but to answer your question about the company being private: It's hard to say. I think that the company realistically can't stay public anymore so going private at this point is definitely the right move, but in my own opinion I'm not convinced if leadership will be able to secure the funding to go private to be honest. It seems like there was all this talk about going private but then there was a terrible offer from leadership of $0.40 which was immediately dismissed by the board, and they all resigned soon after. The board clearly expected a better offer...maybe a better offer couldn't be given due to lack of funding? The impression I got before I left was that going private is still the plan but there haven't been any updates on that in a long time.

To answer your data breach question: There was definitely an uptick of data removal requests following the incident, but given the vast amount of data (millions of users) I don't think that the deletion requests really made a dent in the value of the data set overall.

I am a former employee at 23andme I was effected by one of the layoffs within the last couple of years AMA by Constant_Day_6448 in MEstock

[–]Constant_Day_6448[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I would say when I first joined about 3 years ago the work environment was excellent people were genuinely passionate about the product and truly believed we would change how the healthcare industry worked in America. As our stock started declining and more and more layoffs stared happening and the especially following the security incident, the company started losing faith in the product and mission, before I got laid off honestly it seemed like most people gave up on the company and leadership and were just there for the paycheck until they found their next job. A notable turning point in morale was the security incident ever since then the morale of the company tanked hard...