If you think you're hiring the top 1%, but you're not paying at top-1% levels, you're probably not actually hiring the top 1%.
That's my main takeaway anyhow. Extraordinary people command extraordinary compensation - if you can't cough up the cash you're not going to get to play.
I find that people who are truly good actually love what they do. I don't know if I fit in that category, but I remember walking to work a few weeks ago thinking about one particular project: 'if I wasn't here I'd be doing this for free'. That said, I'm paid above average for the industry.
The best combination of passion and reward I've ever seen has been small hedge funds and quant shops. They're smart, love what they do, and have equity and fat bonuses. I've been lucky enough to be both work with and be rejected by these guys and it's one of the few cases where I truly believed the 'one percent' angle.
I'm not being caustic with the simple search, a few of those have excellent resources and discussions. You can also research the top recruiting firms in NYC / London who specialize only in Quant dev related roles. Top-3 financial firms require an Extremely high level of math, PHd. (for Senior roles), no job hopping, a target school (very rarely State schools), etc.
Edit: My own Boolean's recruiting for entry-level Quant Developers. Very specific criteria. CS Degree (no EE / Math programmers), Target schools, (but, "top" state schools allowed), NO Masters / PHD (an argument over too much specializing or saturation of education, meaning, the fund wanted to teach the hire).
They would relocate / sponsor from anywhere in the world. Only very specific schools from out of country (like India, the The Indian Institute of Technology was the only school to look at).
site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub | inurl:in) (BS | BA | “B.A.” | “B.S.” | Bachelor) (2006 | 2007 | 2008) SQL (java | vb | "c++") (logic | algorithm | multithread | concurren* | "multi-thread") (Princeton | Yale | Harvard | Columbia | Cornell | Stanford | "Carnegie Mellon" | Rutgers | Amherst | Brown | Penn | Pennsylvania | MIT | “m.i.t.” | Duke | Northwestern | Tufts | "New York University" | NYU | Dartmouth | “cooper union” | bucknell) (-PHD -“P.H.D.” -“p.h.d”)
(BS OR BA OR “B.A.” OR “B.S.” OR Bachelor) AND (“computer science” OR “CS” OR “C.S”) AND SQL AND (java OR vb OR "c++") AND (logic OR algorithm OR multithread* OR concurren* OR "multi-thread") AND NOT (PHD OR “P.H.D.” OR “p.h.d”)
I don't know, I've met some seriously talented, seriously underpaid programmers over the years. Money isn't everything, especially to people who live for the intellectual stuff.
So make that "being a top 1% employer", which includes pay, perquisites, environment, culture, the interest of the work itself....
Harder to measure than pay, but so is being a top 1% programmer. This can be a good reason to talk about pay -- an employer can claim excellent culture without any truth to it, but it's harder to self-deceive about money. And pay often correlates to important ephemerals like respect.
In regards to intellectual stuff, that's with rare exceptions only in the academic world, which pays in the bottom quartile easily. The side note is, I've known PhD candidates to get paid low for full-time work but mucho dinero for hourly contract work.
In regards to top 1% compensation, the true top 1% aren't hireable because they have their own startup companies. The top 1% compensation as has been discussed on HN before goes to domain experts. Lesson learned: become a domain expert.
Unfortunately while low pay will rule out great programmers, great pay doesn't necessarily lead to great programmers, just people who can convince others they are great programmers.
For those wanting specifics: for a mid-level Python gig at a large investment bank, base of 80K GBP, bonus between 20 and 40K GBP, expecting base to rise accordingly over successive years.
However expectation was 10 hour and 12 hour days, and work environment seemed, for want of a better term, hierarchically abusive.
Furthermore, anyone who's seriously good is contracting, which should net you around 5-600GBP/day.
Paying high wages to knowledge workers causes them in general to be less productive. The top 1% might rather go for the money anyway. But the top 1% also care about working conditions (more screen space, faster computers, fewer interruptions, etc). Perhaps more than money, after they're being paid enough not to have to worry about money.
I think older workers are less likely to be fooled by "cool toys", but all geeks want a system that they can be productive on.
As a Python programmer, I care more about hard drive speed and a nice monitor, but if I had to compile C++ I would kill for a faster CPU, and more RAM.
Some things boost moral and make workers more productive, so the employer benefits twice.
On the flip side, I find that my productivity drops to zero below a certain level of compensation, at least when I'm working on other people's projects for money.
That's my main takeaway anyhow. Extraordinary people command extraordinary compensation - if you can't cough up the cash you're not going to get to play.