[man2525]

That's roughly what they do at my company. Many people in the company have some form of Computer Science certificate/degree, so shouldn't be that hard to make them develop...but you hit the Peter Principle much faster in this line of work. The CTO loves the hanging on by the seat of your pants optics. "Look at him go. He doesn't have any idea what he's doing, but he's getting it done. That's what we want." The rock stars puff up and grouse about the recent QA to senior DEV promotion, then ridicule them, then you find out the rock star has been working until past one every morning since part of their responsibility as a lead is to make sure the QA-cum-Senior Engineer's work is code complete. Then they leave. And yes, then a great developer is hired...but they never tell us where they're going...