The people I have spoken to just want a bunch of good developers, no salary cap or specific titles were mentioned - so no I don't think it always comes down to salary.
If someone is a good developer and happy where they are and with what they are earning (i.e., usually they believe it to be industry average or above - people can't be happy unless they earn above the average, you know.
), they really won't be motivated to look elsewhere. From what I've seen, a lot of jobs in SA don't advertise their range, and from my own experience working in SA, companies can be very cagey with what they are willing to pay, so there is very little to convince people that the grass is greener elsewhere, so they stay put. In the US and UK, things tend to be a little more open - I think that it is primarily because the companies are bigger, so it's harder to keep compensation under wraps, especially in light of websites like glassdoor.com and public H1B databases.
Perhaps the people who you are referring to should consider advertising their position and posting the upper limit of what they are able to pay. Sure, they will get a bunch of opportunists hoping to get lucky, but if their upper limit is well above average, and they filter well, they are far more likely to get a higher count of good candidates applying. Some good candidates will have the "I want the upper range value" syndrome, but these can be assessed on a case by case basis (usually facotring in how good the candidate interviewed, and what they earned previously, to see if such a demand is reasonable).
Personally, whenever a head hunter contacts me, I ask for the range, and if they're cagey, want to meet, expect me to interview first, or fill stuff out, or send in a CV for internal show and tell, or whatever, I just pass - it's not that it's all about salary for me, but I'm sure as hell not going to waste time in a tug of war only to figure out tha the upper limit for the position is an untenably small fraction of what I currently earn, however awesome the environment may sound. Similarly, I would also never apply for a job unless the range was specified and significantly above what I currently earn - there is simply no motivation to waste my time on this unless I actually want to move companies.
