Some top Verily executives, scientists and engineers have left in the last year, several returning to Google, others departing for competitors. While job-hopping is not uncommon in Silicon Valley, STAT interviewed several analysts who said it appeared those leaving had lost confidence in Conrad’s leadership and found the company to have a “demanding, erratic and unforgiving” environment.

One of the engineers who left had been part of the team that built the “connectivity bridge”. In March, HCB News reported that Verily had developed the medical device to collect and sync patient information for people involved in clinical studies to the cloud. STAT reported that Conrad had “suddenly lost interest in selling or further developing the technology.”


Conrad, who declined to respond to questions for STAT’s earlier story, recently met with STAT writer, Charles Piller, at Verily’s offices and labs, to try and dispel some of the claims made in the first article. He described morale as high and said, in general, he has “good relationships with employees, regulators, corporate partners.”

The CEO told Piller, “Business is pretty dang good for us.”

He did admit that not answering questions the first time was “a catastrophic error in judgment” because Verily “has a good story to tell.”

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