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

STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook’s $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp: Facebook turning down the founders of WhatsApp and then paying $19 billion for their company a few years later is probably simply another example of the extremely picky hiring practices of technology companies, a pickiness that frequently appears unrelated to actual technical “qualifications.” Technology companies can probably solve their “shortage” by discarding hidden and/or unconscious non-technical criteria as well as discarding excessively narrow “purple squirrel” technical requirements in hiring software engineers and other STEM professionals. Doing this will save them time and money (possibly $19 billion in Facebook’s case) and even make the world a better, fairer place at the same time. :-)