It's not possible unless you have enough money to pay a good developer salary. I've been a part of one once, and the only reason I dealt with the clueless founders was because they paid me better than a regular coding job.

So yeah, it's possible, if you're rich or can get funding before you've got a product.

I've also been approached by countless guys asking me to work on their startup for free or something like 10% equity. Bitch please. I've been a consultant and run all sides of a business, what could you possibly bring to the table besides a nebulous and nearly worthless idea?

To those guys I've started asking for 60% equity and they usually walk away as if it was an insult.

Let me be clear about it. You can run a business with engineers alone and write software. Even one single engineer can run his own software business. If was running a start-up that makes software with two founders do I want one of them to make 0% of the product?