I was expecting to see a mixergy-style talent story where they got 10 geeks with intuition and little spending. I don't see the intuition or talent here.
Likewise - I actually think they were very unimaginative. All of that stuff is expensive and obvious. I was thinking we'd see some scoured GitHub/SourceForge/etc. type of stuff or a programming competition, maybe even a super-poach of a good team.
Karma ++ to whoever put up a "hire geeks on the cheap" post.
It's really difficult (and really, really expensive) to recruit developers in Cambridge (even for Red Gate, which has a fantastic and very friendly company culture). We're talking upwards of £10-20k PER developer...so the innovation is finding and hiring 10 developers for a fraction of the normal cost (they interviewed hundreds of applicants and were still very picky about who they hired).
