I won't comment on the 'superstar' tag, but I would class myself as an 'above standard' programmer who produces roughly 5x the work of other programmers in the company and my code is a lot more reliable than that produced by other programmers in my company. I also have close ties to other high-quality programmers so I have some idea about how 'we' feel when it comes to searching for new jobs/employers. I have also some minor experience in looking for new programmers (I have had to recruit circa 20 programmers to my team) and so I know how it works from both sides.
Personally, I do not have the time or the patience to go around looking for work, I am happier to submit my CV to a few recruitment agencies and let them do all the hard work. For me, this has not been so successful, mainly because I think many employers get a shock when the see the salary I expect (especially after the agency fees have been added). As mentioned in other comments, advertising on interesting websites (like slashdot) would be a great idea. I actually find our best recruitment comes from adverts in the local daily paper (these are not necessarily read by the programmers, but friends and family tend to pass these things along. I would also suggest putting some idea about the payscales in the advert to show you are serious along with catch phrases like 'superstar programmer needed'.
Another issue I find is convincing management that such programmers are needed - I find they tend to like cheap labor - i.e. kids straight out of tech-college who are happy to get their first job and will not expect good pay or working conditions. In my experience, what tends to happen is programmers are recruited to the lowest level and then if they are any good, they quickly get promoted and 'pampered' as they become essential and management starts to fear about losing them. This, however, leads to a situation where many experienced programmers simply get tired of looking for a new job (as they are only offered these 'starting positions' with bad salaries/conditions) and simply give up and stay where they are (another reason for putting payscales in any kind of advertising)
With regards to various comments that say take on beginners and then weed out the bad ones - I can tell you that many of my projects have had serious problems exactly because of this. What happens is that you end up with some junk code that needs constant support (or totally rewriting) and as time goes by, the cost of the support far exceeds the cost of hiring at a slightly higher rate. There are, however, some advantages in having two poor programmers instead of one good one working on a project (you have redundancy if one decides to leave or gets ill and neither feels essential enough to demand better pay/conditions) - so I would never suggest leaving a single programmer (no matter how talented) working on a vital piece of code.
Slashdot Mirror
I won't comment on the 'superstar' tag, but I would class myself as an 'above standard' programmer who produces roughly 5x the work of other programmers in the company and my code is a lot more reliable than that produced by other programmers in my company. I also have close ties to other high-quality programmers so I have some idea about how 'we' feel when it comes to searching for new jobs/employers. I have also some minor experience in looking for new programmers (I have had to recruit circa 20 programmers to my team) and so I know how it works from both sides.
Personally, I do not have the time or the patience to go around looking for work, I am happier to submit my CV to a few recruitment agencies and let them do all the hard work. For me, this has not been so successful, mainly because I think many employers get a shock when the see the salary I expect (especially after the agency fees have been added).
As mentioned in other comments, advertising on interesting websites (like slashdot) would be a great idea. I actually find our best recruitment comes from adverts in the local daily paper (these are not necessarily read by the programmers, but friends and family tend to pass these things along. I would also suggest putting some idea about the payscales in the advert to show you are serious along with catch phrases like 'superstar programmer needed'.
Another issue I find is convincing management that such programmers are needed - I find they tend to like cheap labor - i.e. kids straight out of tech-college who are happy to get their first job and will not expect good pay or working conditions. In my experience, what tends to happen is programmers are recruited to the lowest level and then if they are any good, they quickly get promoted and 'pampered' as they become essential and management starts to fear about losing them. This, however, leads to a situation where many experienced programmers simply get tired of looking for a new job (as they are only offered these 'starting positions' with bad salaries/conditions) and simply give up and stay where they are (another reason for putting payscales in any kind of advertising)
With regards to various comments that say take on beginners and then weed out the bad ones - I can tell you that many of my projects have had serious problems exactly because of this. What happens is that you end up with some junk code that needs constant support (or totally rewriting) and as time goes by, the cost of the support far exceeds the cost of hiring at a slightly higher rate. There are, however, some advantages in having two poor programmers instead of one good one working on a project (you have redundancy if one decides to leave or gets ill and neither feels essential enough to demand better pay/conditions) - so I would never suggest leaving a single programmer (no matter how talented) working on a vital piece of code.