I have seen this work several times. In many cases, it's easier to change roles inside a company than to switch to a dev role at a new place when you have no developer experience. Starting out in QA is a great way to develop domain knowledge, which can be more important than programming skill in many businesses.

Or entry level Developer in Test (takes no less skill actually, but it's less desirable) or entry level sysadmin or tech support, even helpdesk etc. This is what people were doing in the last recession. If you are good at coding, tech support and other entry level IT stuff at the right company can be a great playground to advance your career, because there is so much opportunity to practice