STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp

- Culture matters a lot in hiring. By this I mean a Stanford grad is much more likely to hire another Stanford grad in a field of qualified candidates. This isn't simply a form of nepotism as such. Two grads from the same college will share a larger common cultural base;

- The culture the founders bring shapes the organization. Many startups are started by Stanford and MIT grads. It shouldn't surprise you that this biases the makeup of their workforces and what they look for;

- Speaking as someone who has interviewed in the field of programming there are many frauds. I don't even necessarily mean deliberate frauds but there are clearly people who are employed as programmers/engineers who have no business being such. It's astounding how you can stump someone with 5-10 years of experience by asking them to code a simple loop (seriously);

- If people are worried about foreign labour putting downward pressure on wages, the indentured servitude that is the US work visa and immigration system should be the target of your anger. It allows bodyshops to hire people from, say, China and India and pay them a pittance because they know those people can't leave for 8+ years if they ever want a green card.

Make a green card automatic after, say, 6 years on an H1B, even if you change jobs, and a lot of those problems would go away.

As for other fields, I can't speak to those, other than anecdotally a lot of fields seem to have the earning potential of being a waiter in Manhattan.

Yes, let's. I want Mark Zuckerburg to admit out loud that the reason he can't find qualified engineers is because he's not willing to pay. No more of this "they don't exist" lie.

This, coupled with the Google/Apple/Intel/Adobe/etc. collusion to prevent salary negotiation wars, it's very clear: Silicon Valley companies aren't special anymore. They are now just like every other corporation in America. They're focused on nothing but the bottom dollar. They have their HR departments spewing morale boosting propaganda and they do their damnedest to keep those employees locked in as wage slaves. Free lunches! Games in the break room! Climbing walls! All that shit is designed to keep you in the office, to entice you into working overtime, for free.

When I'm looking at job listings, I look for the tell-tale lie on their websites: If they say something like, "our employees are our greatest asset," I know they doth protest too much. They really treat employees like fungible commodities. Unfortunately, I've let my judgement be blinded too many times and have had to learn the hard way that it is true in every case.

In either case, your statement is almost completely incorrect.

The WhatsApp founders were turned down before WhatsApp even existed. Therefore, it was not some bold tactical decision on the part of FB. Their technical acumen was up to snuff, so they were rejected based on some other criteria (not necessarily age).