It doesn’t take a high level algebra to recognize that raising a company profit could be done by two ways; raising the company’s sales figures, or, when this is difficult, lowering its expenses is the only other way.

Unfortunately, in software development business, among the different payables the highest bill is the developers salaries, so layoff is commonly a big part of this exercise.

However, what many don’t realize is that people are also the assets of such companies, and while companies in other industries can safely sell off some of their assets, developers cannot be sold like soccer or hockey players but divisions can. What I am suggesting here is an alternative solution that would rather look better than a bulk layoff; it is Companies Incubation.

Business Incubation is not a new term, it has been used for long time in creating companies and making them stable before they go on their own and become profitable. It is a practice of governments, especially in the 3′rd world countries where private investors have interest in quick and short term ROI rather than in new sectors that don’t have a sure market.

In the more developed world, incubation has several different models; startups are feeding on private investors pockets as well as National Research allowances, but there are many other cases where incubation was not the intention but eventually led to the birth of new little companies; split corporates under the antitrust law is an example.

Now back to the layoff issue, let’s ask ourselves this question: if you were offered lower salary with take it or leave it options, that is to completely leave the job, which would you choose? I’m pretty sure some may consider hanging around with a little less money.

Let’s change the question a bit to make it more acceptable and we’re now going to give you the choice in public to a whole number of developers, this will eliminate the speculations about “why me“; and more people will likely to accept the “other” choice.

The ultimate proposal will be to give all developers in certain division that is subject to be closed the choice to leave the company together taking the division and its products with them. How many times do we see people leaving their jobs and their projects behind on the shelves? Did anyone try to evaluate the loss here?

I think in many cases this could turn out to be very doable especially when developers tend to be super enthusiast about marketing products they worked on for long time.