Where have all the coders gone?
tomjen2:   Long time passing.
  Girls picked them every one.

But seriously, these kinds of coders are very difficult to get your hands on, you might want to go read some of Joel Spolsky's writtings on how to interview programmers.The basic problem, as you have found, is that the greatest programmers aren't looking for a job, not even now during a recession, and certainly not with you.Standard advice involve networking, showing up at user groups, trade conferences, et cetera.These can take a long time to work however, so in your case I would take a look at how to make your company more interesting for the type of people you want to attract.Try to look at your company as and outsider might do:1)What would a great programmer love about the work? Because , as you might as well face now, you are not going to get anybody really good really excited about the prospect of maintaining an in house Java ERP system. You would have a good chance to get one to work on a new system build in Clojure though.2)How are your managers going to treat people? The old fashioned manager based on the military/factory hierarchy or the new get out of the way so the people can do awesome work while I watch their back politically?3)This is something you might not have thought about, but do you really need this type of person? They are way better technically, but Joe the coder is going to be way easier to satisfy, employ, manage, keep around and replace. You don't need the rangers to take Berlin, you need a lot of expendable barely literate soldiers.Anyway this is just a few things you might want to think about.