How Secretive Was Working at Theranos?

Tyler Shultz realized right away that Theranos was extremely secretive. Employees had to sign very overbearing NDAs. He was given a list of words not to use when describing his job to people, and he could not say anything about the work.

The limits reached home and the lab. They told employees not to tell a spouse what the job was and not to talk to colleagues about what the job was. It was as if he were working at the CIA. Every room had a locked door, and even within the locked rooms there were sometimes barricades no one was supposed to look behind.

When he first joined, he worked in a research lab developing antibodies that would be used in the tests. Not a single person he worked with had ever seen the product the company had just launched.