I don't know, I've met some seriously talented, seriously underpaid programmers over the years. Money isn't everything, especially to people who live for the intellectual stuff.
So make that "being a top 1% employer", which includes pay, perquisites, environment, culture, the interest of the work itself....
Harder to measure than pay, but so is being a top 1% programmer. This can be a good reason to talk about pay -- an employer can claim excellent culture without any truth to it, but it's harder to self-deceive about money. And pay often correlates to important ephemerals like respect.
In regards to intellectual stuff, that's with rare exceptions only in the academic world, which pays in the bottom quartile easily. The side note is, I've known PhD candidates to get paid low for full-time work but mucho dinero for hourly contract work.
In regards to top 1% compensation, the true top 1% aren't hireable because they have their own startup companies. The top 1% compensation as has been discussed on HN before goes to domain experts. Lesson learned: become a domain expert.
