I don't think that extraordinary skill and power are linked at the language level. Within a rounding error, an "extraordinarily skilled" developer can probably

I don't think that extraordinary skill and power are linked at the language level. Within a rounding error, an "extraordinarily skilled" developer can probably be just as much of an asset to a company with an "extraordinarily powerful" language as they could with an "ordinarily powerful" (read: mainstream) one. Now, super-skilled folks might like playing with Lisp or Haskell or what-have-you (and if it affects your ability to retain them and get value from them, you might want to let them), but their skilled-ness is usually transferable to other languages if the need arises.