For sure. The talent/cost relationship is a curve and you want to find an optimum point somewhere in the middle rather than maximize or minimize on one axis only.
Exclusively hiring Java devs at below-market salary, as a lot of Fortune 500 companies do, is equivalent to a strategy of minimizing the salary axis while ignoring the talent axis.
Meanwhile in my day-to-day experience at work I am perfectly comfortable with making the generalization that "expensive, awesome programmers provide a lot more value than cheap, barely-competent programmers," because I personally have to work with the product of cheap, barely-competent programmers five days a week, so I know what an unmaintainable mess it is.
Exclusively hiring Java devs at below-market salary, as a lot of Fortune 500 companies do, is equivalent to a strategy of minimizing the salary axis while ignoring the talent axis.
Meanwhile in my day-to-day experience at work I am perfectly comfortable with making the generalization that "expensive, awesome programmers provide a lot more value than cheap, barely-competent programmers," because I personally have to work with the product of cheap, barely-competent programmers five days a week, so I know what an unmaintainable mess it is.