Coaches for online poker had that convenient that you could get a coach whose prices would always been within your reach: if you were a regular winner (or break even) at, say, $25NL then you probably had a few $25 buy-ins you could use to pay a coach begin a regular winner at, say, $50 NL or $100 NL and both of you could find value in doing that.
Then there was also this idea that you could learn from someone only a bit better than you: someone who was beating one or two levels above yours had already stuff to teach you and would be unlikely to give you bad habits.
But for programming I'm not too sure: it's not really a good idea to learn from someone who's just "a bit better" than you. And if you want to learn from someone who can do $100/hour consulting then it may cost you an arm and a leg to learn anything from him.