I had a long visit from Richard Rabins of Alpha Software on Wednesday. It was supposed to be a short software demo and a brief lunch, but time got away from both of us. I'll write about the demo another time. One of the topics we touched on in a wide-ranging conversation hit a nerve. As Richard's story goes, when Alpha sold the AlphaWorks package to Lotus, at the last minute Lotus mentioned that they wanted one I had a long visit from Richard Rabins of Alpha Software on Wednesday. It was supposed to be a short software demo and a brief lunch, but time got away from both of us.I’ll write about the demo another time. One of the topics we touched on in a wide-ranging conversation hit a nerve. As Richard’s story goes, when Alpha sold the AlphaWorks package to Lotus, at the last minute Lotus mentioned that they wanted one of the key AlphaWorks developers to work for Lotus.“I let them know that they could have mentioned that a bit earlier. The answer was nevertheless a resounding NO! Software developers are not fungible commodities to be bought and sold. You can’t grow or train great developers: they just happen. We eventually compromised, and he went on loan to Lotus for six months.” “Software developers are not fungible commodities” struck a chord with me. As you probably know, “fungible” means interchangeable, and a fungible commodity like wheat or oil can be traded in a futures market.I’ve never met two software developers who had exactly the same talents, skills, and training. Even if such a pair of twins existed, they’d know different things, because they’d have different experiences.This leads me to consider the personnel policies of many large companies. If you lay off an expensive but productive ten-year veteran who knows every detail of your architecture and every line of your code intimately, and then replace him with an inexpensive kid with a gleaming new CS degree, what are you going to get? Then consider outsourcing. If you lay off your expensive US-based internal development staff and outsource to India at a third the hourly cost, will you ultimately save any money? Will you be able to maintain the quality of your products? Will you improve your time to market, or will you discover that your product is now well on its way to perdition?What’s your take? Software Development