Illumina Fired A Lab Director...

Highlights:

• Illumina clinical lab directors get paid $330K USD in salary and RSUs worth $150K

• Illumina appear to have had some compliance issues that caused some concern.

Way back in 2022 Illumina fired one of their lab directors, this resulted a lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that Illumina fired a director of one of their clinical labs because they were discussing concerns about the facility being out of compliance with various statues and regulations:

“plaintiff attended a teleconference staff meeting chaired by X, Senior Director of Quality at Illumina/Verinata. Other staff member in attendance at this meeting were X. At the meeting, plaintiff expressed serious concerns about the multiple ways in which the laboratory facility (which his assigned duties and responsibilities required him to assure was in compliance with federal and state statutes and regulations) was out of compliance with those federal and state statutes and regulations. After he began to speak, X abruptly terminated the meeting and privately stated to plaintiff that he had “no right to inform her staff” that anything pertaining to the laboratory was out of compliance.”

The full details are a matter of public record (and available in the court filing linked below). These also give us a useful data point to calibrate salaries as the full employment conditions and contracts are included. This lab director received $330K USD in salary and RSUs worth $150K. That’s a bit higher than I was expecting, but there you go!

The lawsuit then gets more complicated… the arbitration documents suggest that the lab director was also running their own consulting company, and that they copied a large amount of confidential data from their Illumina laptop when they quit.

Seems like a horrible mess! Full court filing with all the details below: