Having tried this approach I can tell you that offering more money results in perhaps a doubling of the number of barely competent programmers, a ten-fold increase in the number of completely clueless, and no apparent increase in the number of people we'd actually want.

My results are not statistically valid, I've only gone through the hiring cycle five times, but my impression from actually trying it is that salary is not what it's about.

Dan Pink said it well:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782171

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357390

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439939

The problem isn't attracting candidates, it's getting the candidates to see your job opening, to understand that it's a great place to work, and then filtering out the clueless.

There are 10+ HN submissions of this by now, here are ones with comments to check out:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782171

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357390

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439939