Oxford Nanopore - Baseless Rumors
I received the following anonymous tip last night. I thought it would be worth sharing here so that ONT can respond to these rumors if they want as I guess I may not be the only person to have received this information1:
To reiterate, it’s quite likely that this is just a baseless rumor being spread, perhaps to influence Oxford Nanopore’s share price. I have no way of knowing. But it’s fun to speculate. So let’s imagine that there was a meeting last Wednesday (21st Feb 2024) and Gordon said that unless revenue increases he’s going to fire a third of the company.
Nepotism
First let’s address the comment that Gordon employs unproductive members of his family. There seems to be one person I can find at ONT with the same surname as Gordon. I have no idea if they are unproductive or not.
Having recently received 23.7MGBP payout, I suspect Gordon could afford to pay his family members a salary himself if he wanted to… or give them a job at his charitable foundation.
Layoffs
It’s surprising to me that Oxford Nanopore haven’t already announced layoffs. Pretty much everyone else has. Oxford Nanopore share price has been tanking (I think it reached a another new low last week?). Customer growth also seems to have been slowing.
All of this led me to suggest that the company is failing on its own terms. And should probably change strategy.
But what’s the point in pre-announcing layoffs 10 months in advance? Charitably we might say:
It gives employees time to find a new job.
It helps employees schedule and avoid longer term projects.
It helps employees avoid long term financial commitments.
Less charitably we’d say it’s a lazy motivational technique designed to motivate staff through the fear of being fired.
Many ONT employees would find it difficult to find another job in the Oxford area and have no choice but to keep going.
Personally I wouldn’t find this very motivating. It’s a technique that comes out to the “lazy startup management handbook” that includes:
Threatening your customers for using competitor products.
“Selling” consumables as lease items to control customer behavour.
Restricting discussion of datasets by users.
…and of course threatening bloggers with legal action.
For me, layoffs in 2025 seems suprisingly late. But I guess we’ll see how that plays out.
To those at ONT who might be impacted by potential layoffs: I’m sorry to hear that, there’s some really interesting basic technology at ONT and some great people. But the overall company strategy has been somewhat misguided (in my opinion).
The Discord is a great place to chat (anonymously or otherwise) and I’m always happy to speculate. So feel free to reach out there for a chat or send me an email (new@sgenomics.org)!
If ONT post an update on this, I’ll be happy to link it here.