Most members of my team (DevTech) have a background in software development, having developed code professionally in previous jobs. People often join DevTech because they enjoy the variety and flexibility the role brings as well as the direct communication we have with the Autodesk development community.
That said, we still like to hone our coding skills - some of this we get from fielding questions we receive from ADN members but it's also helpful to work on the odd software project. Back in the day - during my stint living in India - DevTech was part of Autodesk Consulting and so members of the team were often involved in developing code for customers. These days our mandate is clearer, to focus on providing services through the Autodesk Developer Network.
The majority of the software projects we currently work on are samples for publication, whether as DevNotes on the ADN site or as samples we ship with the ObjectARX SDK. During the last year or so we've been running an internal initiative called "DevTech Labs", through which we develop customer-oriented features and bonus tools for posting to Autodesk Labs.
The first fruit of these labours is now available: the CommandComplete bonus tool. Sreekar Devatha, a member of the DevTech team based in India, was the primary developer on this project. I think he's done a great job on this very useful tool. :-)
This post from Scott Sheppard lists some of the feedback we've received to date. There's also further feedback received by email and the discussion group that we'll take into account when working on an update to this tool.