[imperialWicket]

It is unfortunate how true these statements are. I followed to standard path of starting in QA and moving to development. While I do not think it's a bad path of itself, I think it is unfortunate that a lot of really great QA analysts hang up their QA title in order to develop. I think one of the core problems is that QA is treated as entry level; which is odd, because as you point out, most devs are practically incapable of testing effectively.

Even though most orgs do not officially treat the positions as an entry level (QA), and a mid-level (junior dev) - I think the general unspoken understanding is that devs are higher on the food chain. The two positions need to be established as more distinct and less like rungs in the same ladder.

[gamble]

If it's hard to find good QA guys when there's a career path, it's even harder when there's a wall between dev and QA. QA is considered entry level in most companies because the jobs are entry level. Most companies barely value the monkeys-on-keyboards style of QA, much less the more skilled and better paying QA roles that would tempt smart people to stick with a career in QA.

[absconditus]

I believe that Google treats their "QA" people well. Of course their "QA" people are probably better developers than most developers at other companies.

(I put QA in quotes because their testing structure does not seem to be at all similar to most companies.)