The main takeaway I got from Joel's essay was that companies whose focus is software need to hire better programmers. Maybe the 99th percentile is extreme and

The main takeaway I got from Joel's essay was that companies whose focus is software need to hire better programmers. Maybe the 99th percentile is extreme and it should have been 9th. But it isn't difficult for me to imagine that the vast majority of programmers work at companies whose focus isn't software, and whose work is mostly things like connecting to legacy telcom systems. That vast majority of programming work doesn't need to be done by crack teams of algorithm gurus. If your company is working in something more performance bound, such as CG animation, then you probably do need top programmers. Salary won't be the only way to get them, though. People with a true love of CS probably get bored with all the database driven CRUD apps.