It's almost as if there exist a group of fresh-grads who just completed their CS degree but can magically write a better compression engine or a revolutionary protocol that is better than TCP.
Lots of companies need programmers who are "pretty good," whatever that means to you.
What are the consequences to not building on your technology by a certain date? Maybe your competition will beat you to the punch. Maybe the costs that could be saved by implementing the software will continue to be expensed. Beyond that, not a whole lot.
This leads us to a situation where just having anyone on the job is not viable. It is prudent, in many, cases for a business to simply wait until someone who is "top talent" is freed up to do the work. Simply knowing how to program isn't going to be enough.
When talking about talent what all these companies want are the person who is smart, experienced, and can execute. That person who can build something from nothing. That person who actually works.
If you can get 2-3-4-5 of these kinds of people together on the same project amazing things can happen. It's very hard to hire these people because they are usually off building something...for their own startup.