[hackinthebochs]

Sorry for the late reply.

>What's the rationale behind that assumption? I imagine salary/compensation will make the short list for most commonly occurring response to the original question.

My rationale is based on the sentiment that I see repeated around HN and the blogosphere that surrounds it. Granted, this may be a case of people who spend so much time talking about X aren't out doing X, but its a pretty clear impression that anyone who expresses salary as being overly important is not "passionate" enough or just sees programming as a job. I think anyone who regularly parses these blogs for hiring advice, and thus who would actually ask this question in an interview, are precisely the ones to eat up the sentiment that "the best programmers don't care much about salary". And since every startup thinks they need rockstars or ninjas, they'll happily write off anyone who seemingly expresses this sentiment. Admittedly, I don't really have any first hand experience interviewing for the typical Silicon Valley startup, so I'd be happy to hear that my impression is totally wrong.