I disagree. Device/diagnostic companies get 483's all the time. What's telling is the scope of these observations. Theranos is failing on most counts of the quality system regulations. Judging by the observations they don't even have a corrective action (CAPA) process. That's a huge red flag.
I can't imagine many people being willing to move to Theranos today, as long as their current job isn't totally awful. Reputation is very important in this field; heck, if I saw a resume with someone coming on board at this period, I'd be asking them some hard questions about why they did it.
I would theorize there's no shortage of biochemists or lab techs. The graphs seem to show a gradual increase in unemployment and a gradual decrease in employment for life sciences PHD grads. 2010 was a crossover year where afterwards less than 1 in 5 grads will get a job but more than 1 in 5 will be unemployed. This doesn't count underemployment; a biochem PHD working as a waitress is technically employed.
If only the upper 20th percentile of the grads currently get jobs, lowering one companies standards to accept the 21st percentile of grads is still pretty far along the right side of the bell curve... they'll do fine. Regardless of the details, its hard to describe a market where 80% don't have industry jobs as being limited by the labor pool.
The whispers of Theranos being a shitty company, at least in the healthcare/biotech community, have been around for almost a year. To get the type of talent they need, they will have to pay a pretty big premium, but it does seem they've got nothing but cash to burn.
