Build Quality In isn't just something you do when you don't have the luxury of a QA department. It's something that you can do to prevent having to have a distinct QA department at all.
Agree. Having a seperate department can be helpful for large organizations, so that you can have one team supporting many products. However, if you prefer to hire generalists[1][2], then you can do away with it. Which is also a great away to mitigate Conway's Law[3]
[1] http://jessicamah.com/the-ceos-job-part-2
[2] http://blog.eladgil.com/2010/12/5-myths-to-building-awesome-...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Law