My point: Disqus has been hiring for QUITE a while, very vigorously. I know for certain they are getting a ton of applications. I'm really quite sure they're offering market value for the kind of talent they're looking for. So, what's the problem?
I'd wager they're having trouble finding people talented enough and who make a good culture fit.
Then again, when I think programming I don't think cubicle-wage-slave cranking out Java or something. I guess you could quadruple the number of code monkeys in the world to fill all THOSE positions. I wouldn't want to work with the people who came out of that factory, though.
The OP seems to suggest that offering _significantly above_ the market value would be the solution.
A weird thing about programmers is that they aren't used up when they are bought. They aren't consumed. There is just a minimum benefit that needs to be perceived before it becomes worthwhile to switch from that well-paying and comfortable job.
If you're having a shortage, double your salary/benefits. It should get you a lot more interest from talented people who might otherwise be off the market to you.
I live in Dallas and over here the shops that pay a lot tend to overwork you, they have mostly uninteresting problems, and they use outdated technical environments. For them, the high salary just helps them slap on the golden handcuffs.
The supply and demand curves can be proven to have an intersection under the assumption that they're monotonic in different directions. But with regard to "smart and passionate labor", that assumption is flawed. Offering people more money for labor doesn't necessarily enable more of them to become passionate about it. So it's entirely possible for the market to fail to clear.
That's not what's happening now, of course.
Even if you assumed that the ability to program was purely the result of some genetic mutation, so that there were X programmers in the world and there could never ever be any more, there still wouldn't be a shortage if prices rose enough - because there would be less demand. If each programmer had to be paid twice as much, companies would hire fewer programmers, and there wouldn't be a shortage.