[dmharrison]

It's been my experience that once you have dev you don't go back. I was lead engineer for a pretty complex technical product that needed strong technical testing and money wouldn't win. I think it's part perception. I have seen using something like a performance engineer role work, in that it's technically QA but usually works in as a dev role and highly specialised and technical. We used our (small) technical consulting staff during their downtime a bit which helped. They'd get to train up and be involved in the product direction and we'd get highly experienced engineers which could give us feedback like if an API /felt/ right. One thing I have come accross that I thought was very successful was at small software company here in oz (now part of oracle). They'd get fresh software engineering grads or final year students and get them in as (paid, mostly part time) technical testers under the mentor of experienced testers and software engineers. They'd get them to write and develop automated testing systems and learn to test systems and understand what made a good system. They'd then go work in the R+D teams better prepared. So part apprenticeship learning product development, part recruitement and job selection filter.