Posts from - Stockpimpdaddy - 274204 {see below},274209,274308,274314. At raging Bull.
I have the scoop
straight from the horses mouth. Company decided to reduce dependence on H1 employees several months ago, in part because all but a couple of the H1 employees were unproductive. Fruda wanted to get younger, harder working genius types rather than older, slower, unmotivated types with lots of letters behind their names because he can work and mold the former much better to innovate. Rather than fire the older Indians, he took another, gentler approach, which worked as most of them left on their own. Venkat was the only one that wouldn't go - couldnt get a job anywhere else as everyone rejected his application - and the Company was going to have to be more direct about it (let him go) but is very happy he finally got the message and resigned cause that saves company workers comp. Also Fruda didnt let him go prior because he is probably too nice a guy and didnt want to hurt his family. He kept giving him chances to perform but Richard is not a nice guy, he is sort of the opposite, and it is no coincidence that Venkat left soon after Richard became CEO.
It turns out the two young Indian programmers that remain, Visu and Shiva, are the only one of the original Indian mathematicians that Fruda values contribution from. That is because they are the only ones that can JAVA program, and because they are energetic. Its a performance issue plain and simple - Fruda and company demand extreme performance, it was not forthcoming, and those that did not provide it are now gone, with new people that are younger, more energetic and frankly, smarter replacing them.
The entire company was pissed at Venkat because he never wrote any original programs - he could do nothing without Visu and Shiva. He never thought creatively. His biggest legacy - his most significant accomplishment during his whole time at DNAP was setting up the companys library according to horse. When the algorithm for the ancestry test showed a flaw back in the early development days of that test, he said he would have thought his vaunted stat geneticist would have figured it out. Instead it was his biologist lab techs and Visu (who wrote the program) that figured it out. Why? The biologists and the young, energetic programmer apparently cared so much about the company and the test that he spent the time suffering to figure out the problem. This was his biggest example of why he didnt value Venkat. Turns out Venkats problems were that he was
1) lazy - got into the office at 10 in the morning, never worked weekends like the others, was gone for entire afternoons or several hours in the middle of the morning. Some of the worst work habits horse has ever seen. The story he gave of the company techs caring enough about company to find the flaw in the ancestry test program applies here because this is also a matter of effort and desire, or should we say lack of it on Venkats part. venkat was too lazy to get in there and get his hands dirty. This is only one of the examples he gave me - cant remember the others.
2) Incompetent - the only statistical genetics skill he had was downloading third party programs. This is not a crime, but for a stat geneticist hired towrite original software, this is a big problem. He never developed one program on his own, and not an innovative bone in his body. ALL of company's innovative programming was done by the two Indians that remain (Visu and Shiva), under Tonys Chandras and Mark Shrivers guidance - which incidentally is why they remain. Chandra was the best of them pushed out but his experience was not specialized enough in the field of genetics. Fruda wanted young energetic genius types to replace them.
3) emotionally unstable - he and staff got along fine but all considered him emotionally unstable. Mch like the Korean guy was from before. Very prone to emotional discourse - which is pretty strange for a scientist.
4) unwanted - Most lab techs had been asking for CEO to let him go for quite a while but Fruda resisted, being too nice a guy.
5) Unwise and inexperienced - he brought in people that could not contribute or perform at a high level, though most of these folks are good people and eveyone liked them.
Replacing Venkat is an expert with neural networks they got from New College - a young genius type that didnt need school but only went to school because he had to in order to fit into the professional world. He works there full time now - company does not release PRs on new non-management hires anymore, which is why you havent heard about him. This is a definite upgrade from Venkat. He is building new artificial machine learning programs to help the company further innovate and is currently working on the eye color validation project which he says will produce greater than 95% cross validation accuracy with the injection of new ancestry related markers to the mix. This guy writes his own software, not just download from the net like Venkat and he has already dramatically improved the companys eye color product. They are also going to be bringing in at least one Russian programmer to help the other two, and will be establishing a full time employee at what he says is the worlds formemost lab for the type of genetics research they do based on ancestry to replace Chandra with more relevant and focused experience.
Bottom line is horse feels the company is much stronger, leaner, efficient, and effective now, that it certainly has more financial stability (money in bank) and that it should do its first $1M year this year (two more quarters to go). He laughed when this guy was compared to the Korean guy - who was totally useless and was also discarded. Reason he laughed is Company got rid of both in almost exactly the same way - pushed them to a point where they resigned rather than firing them (much better for company). He said that if a person is good and productive, company wants to make them happy. Its a Darwinian thing - some live to reproduce and become successful and some die off ... If a person is good but cant function creatively or independently - they will get rid of them. If they just plain suck even though their resume looked good - they will get rid of them. Only the best can stay and everyone at that company including Frudakis himself are held to very high performance standards. Reaction after Korean guy left was similar - yet he pointed out the great success the company has had since then - becoming the first company in history to use a genomics product for some measurable social good - in this case solving a serial killer case. Venkat was not involved in any of that work - and that was indicative of the problem. He sat in his office reading journal articles and magazines all day, sometimes giving senseless, nonsensical jobs to the company programmers, none of which ever led to anything useful for the company (like comparing old style DNA profiles he called STRs across US States - ridiculuous and pointless). Just like the Korean guys departure was good for the company, so too will this one be. According to horse, everyone in the company is really stoked to finally be rid of the final wart on what is becoming an otherwise pretty face.
