Phew, lot's of testosterone out there. There's some fundamental principles at play here. First in the economics of Supply and Demand, there's a shortage of good developers programmers, generally in the marketplace. The CIO doesn't sound like he's aware of this, obviously in such a climate, there's money to be had, if you're good? Second, Being "older" and "looking in" from the outside, there's an increasing "penchant" amongst the rising up generation, and I'm going mildly stereotypical here, "I want to create, design and make", which doesn't really gel with older traditional businesses that want to maintain codebases, that, that are key to their enterprise. Yes, they could shift with the times, and kill off decades of codebase and start again in Ruby on Rails, or similar, but at what cost? The whole iT industry goes through cycles like this every 10-20 years. Ironically, you either lose people to more innovative technology OR, later, you end paying more because it's gone to legacy and no-one around "does that anymore". Look at COBOL (before most of you were born). I love the IT industry, it's constantly changing which always creates opportunity, some struggle with this concept. Last, I think the CIO needs to recognize these and changes and adjust his approach, if you were him, with financial constraints, what would you suggest he do in recruiting?