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For background, we are doing desktop engineering applications, with an AutoCAD like UI, something similar to etabs.

One thing that really bugs me is, is there any need to hire the very best developers? For starters, we are experiencing great difficulties in recruitment; most resumes we see are either doing simple CRUD apps, or SharePoint customization which I don't think really involves a lot of hardcore programming. Even those whom we call for interview, most can't do Fibonacci sequence and a simple binary search, and we are gracious enough to give out hints and spell out the problems explicitly so that the candidates don't have to lookup a dictionary to check what does "Fibonacci sequence" mean.

This got me thinking: Yes, we do need some level of programming aptitude when doing computational geometry/ linear programming stuff, and we do need some level of programming aptitude when designing the software architecture/ or deciding which software pattern to use, but beyond that, a lot of our code are just plumbing code ( I think), which can be done by someone with some familiarity with programming.

Given that we really need programming talents now, and given that hiring superstar developers are very hard, I want to lower my standard and hire only the so-so ones, in direct contradiction to what Joel preaches.

What do you think?

Edit: You don't need to rewrite the whole computational geometry/linear programming libraries; all you need to do, as far as my application is concerned, is to be able to know how to cast the problems at hand into appropriate computational geometrical/linear programming terms and know when/how to use the existing libraries. So it's not as difficult as it seems.