Hiring Programmers

If you're only looking to hire from a pool of early-20s unattached white males, maybe. Other people may have obligations that make it a requirement to care a lot about money regardless of whether they are a fantastic programmer.

People who call themselves "coders" or "hackers" are likely to be highly competent...people who call themselves "developers" are generally less desirable.

I don't find this at all. Someone who calls themself a "coder" or "hacker" sounds like an 18-year-old who wants to pretend to be Mark Zuckerberg. "Engineer" and "developer" are pretty interchangeable and I'm likely to use either to describe myself depending on the conversational context.

I don't know of anyone who calls themselves a "programmer." I'm not saying it's not a term someone should or could use, it's just not something I hear.

He’s also now too expensive...$90,000 a year

I think this might elucidate some of my different perspective. If you live in Silicon Valley and $90k is too expensive for a programmer, you're not looking at the top tier of talent. At < $90k in today's market you're going to have to be very lucky and hire someone junior who grows into someone awesome.