There's actually another solution for the "talent war", and it will probably be exploitable for at least 5 years. Functional programming. First, the median pro

There's actually another solution for the "talent war", and it will probably be exploitable for at least 5 years. Functional programming. First, the median programmer who actually knows FP would be at least 90th percentile in general, and a strong argument can be made for 95th. If you're using a language like Scala or Ocaml and filter out people who don't actually know them, you can usually hire 50-80% of the people you bring into the office... which keeps interview costs down. Second, people who insist on functional programming still have a tight job market, so there hasn't been the same bidding war and salaries have only gone up 20-30% instead of 50-75%. A good (1.8+) Java developer costs $225,000 per year... because people who get to that level of skill in Java are just rare (and Google is buying them all). You can get that same level of developer in Ocaml or Haskell (and probably a better product, because it's a better language) for about $135-150k.