[soneill]

No, you put in the time to find a good programmer who will work for a reasonable price. Typically that means finding someone who graduated fairly recently and is looking for additional work, or someone that doesn't have a lengthy track record/portfolio. It's not easy (I've probably talked to a hundred some odd programmers in the last year, and maybe three would fit the bill), but you can find the right people if you put in the work.

It's no different than finding a good salesman, or a good PR person, or a good anything. You can find great talent at a reasonable price if you're willing to dig. Rockstars don't always come at rockstar prices, because a lot of the time they don't even know they're a rockstar.

[nostrademons]

That's dangerous, because very often they'll figure out they're a rockstar as soon as they accomplish something useful for you, and move on to firms that will pay them rockstar money. Meanwhile you're left high-and-dry with a bunch of code written by a talented-but-inexperienced coder, and you have to find a replacement - often right as people start taking interest in your product.

I worked pretty cheaply for the first year or two of my career, as did several of my friends. I'd like to think that my employers got quite a bargain. But I only stayed with them a year or two, as my $32K/year job became a $66K/year one became a six-figure income, or as my friend's $15/hour wage became $75/hour became $72K/year employment became six-figures.

[soneill]

The expectation would be that our revenues will grow to the point that retaining talent won't be a problem. We only just started the market entry process at the start of the month, so it's too early to say, but if I'm losing talent in a couple years because I can't afford to retain it, then our problems go way beyond our talent growing too expensive.

[jyu]

There are other costs besides price. Someone who graduated recently, or doesn't have a length track record etc may also need a lot of time for self learning, mentoring, accumulate a ton of hidden technical debt, not write maintainable code, have bad naming practices and code conventions, limited experience coding in a team environment, low output, etc. And getting someone to come in to clean up the mess will cost more time and money and effort. This is on top of nostrademons' the market corrects itself eventually.

And I am someone who used to outsource many technical projects to Eastern European developers, and wound up becoming a developer. You maybe getting good talent at a good price, but there's always a cost.