Ask HN: At your company, what things do you want to outsource but can't? - stretchwithme
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johngalt
The problem with outsourcing isn't what we can or can't outsource. It's the
constant friction of vendor relationships.

Outsource a function that requires a group of skilled people? The vendor you
picked will gradually reduce the quality/availability of the staff you work
with. Until eventually you're paying a vendor to train their new hires.

Outsource a software service? Expect them to use vendor lock-in to their
advantage. The price will increase 10%+ annually. Changes will become
exorbitant.

Outsource a department? Watch their scope become narrower over time, and their
demands on anything outside the department increase. Eventually you need
massive forms filled out 'just so' to get anything out of them. Errors become
rife, and require a lot of effort for an outside party to fix. Emergencies for
the business are not emergencies for the outsourced department.

As someone who makes these sorts of decisions regularly, it's rarely a
question of what we _want_ outsourced. It's a question of how we can package
the function in a way that is conducive to a vendor relationship.

Not a rant against outsourcing. There are other structural risks with in-
sourcing.

~~~
rb808
That is perfect description of what happens.

The other quote I had was every 5-10 years management gets the idea to either
outsource or insource to save money. Just switch back and forth every time you
get a new CEO.

~~~
arethuza
I have heard of management consultances generating revenue by simply
recommending as "best practise" as whatever the opposite of what their
customer/victim is currently doing.

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codegeek
I am not sure about "want to" but you can never outsource the "core" of your
company. You build software as your core product ? Don't outsource it. You
provide marketing as your core ? Don't outsource it. The only thing you can
consider outsourcing is things that are tangential and will never directly
impact the viability of your company.

~~~
zacurry
What about whatsapp ? Didn't they outsource their product development to
Russia?

~~~
siddharthdeswal
This article started that rumour due to an error:
[https://elpais.com/tecnologia/2012/07/03/actualidad/13413401...](https://elpais.com/tecnologia/2012/07/03/actualidad/1341340111_145629.html)

Towards the end, they have clarification that states: "Technological
development is mainly done at the WhatsApp headquarters in Mountain View and
not in Russia as the information suggests. There the company maintains a
'small technical team'."

~~~
zacurry
Thank you, I stand corrected.

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vintageseltzer
My firm has been grappling with outsourcing the transcription of sensitive
internal communications for years.

Our weekly sales calls are done over teleconference, but not everyone can
attend. Obviously, a lot of information that we don't want to be public is
shared during these calls, like sales figures and client status reports. The
calls can last anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.

Right now, our copywriters in marketing transcribe these calls, which they are
not happy about. It can take half a day or more to transcribe one call, and
it's not the best use of their time. Although they rotate each week, it still
takes up a significant amount of time and is not really part of their job
description.

Our COO does not want to use an external service to outsource this, as she is
concerned about leaks. The fact that many transcription services exist where
an NDA must be signed does not mitigate her concern. However, she also does
not feel like hiring a full-time transcriber is worth the cost.

The copywriters have tried automated transcription tools but they are not good
enough.

I have no idea how this can be solved except for hiring a full-time
transcriber ...

~~~
jbob2000
Listening to a tape and writing down what you hear is entry level work. You’re
wasting more money sitting on the fence about this than you would by just
hiring a college student at $15/hr.

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sytse
Hiring people as employees around the world without setting up an entity
everywhere. Stripe for employment.

~~~
mmanfrin
This is a good one. It never occurred to me the hoops one would have to jump
through to hire someone in another country by the books.

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sethlesky
The challenges I've had with outsourcing been due to outsourcing prematurely.
Similar to premature optimization. Until I've spent significant time in a
role, outsourcing it tends to create more work than it saves.

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sigi45
Everything which is not core but without managing the outsourced task.

I don't save money/time when i have to explain to much and when i have to
finish it or checking the result takes to much time.

~~~
avmich
> I don't save money/time when i have to explain to much

Wonder how many tasks have "definition" part and "execution" part, so you can
make "definition" yourself and let somebody else to do the "execution". Do you
mean this approach should work?

~~~
sigi45
When i have to define so much, that i could do it myself, i don't save
anything much.

Defining only works when you outsource it to someone who knows the task better
than you.

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lee101
Hi, I'm founder of [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) I'd love to
outsource the marketing, i created a referral program where you can earn
.003btc per paying user referred.

But without traffic people don't learn about it.

We have a good conversion rate and good product but without the traffic its
meaningless really, advertisers in the bitcoin space seem to accept bitcoin
and send fake traffic that never converts into a real user at the rate of
other sources (e.g. HN).

Also the way most advertising companies work is they want to see the money
upfront, with startups you don't really have it until you get traffic, there's
a chicken and egg problem there that makes it hard to get off the ground even
when everything seems to be going great.

The advertising companies aren't really bothered about sending you real value
just filling the numbers and they aren't aligned 100% with your success, i
suppose there are a variety of models that have been tried out already e.g.
some companies hire people and offer sales bonuses ect. some offer seo/content
marketing ect but again arent incentivized to actually deliver just to take as
much of your money as possible... :/

perhaps some kind of paid retweeting service like bitcoin birds (but one that
actually works) could work well too. The mainstream advertisers are crazy
expensive cpc too.

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nurettin
It is hard to outsource reports and mobile applications because setting up a
sandboxes version of the database and APIs in order to protect sensitive data
from vendors becomes harder as your system grows.

There is also the fact that they will need the same level of expertise with
the database as you have and that already takes months each time we get a new
recruit in the team.

It will just be impractical to hand over all the knowledge and the experience
working with a MLOC ERP, so we write our own apps and reports.

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mmanfrin
Ad-hoc/per project PM/Ticketing. In my day job I've come to appreciate having
a backlog of tickets to help me get over the mental hurdle of systems I have
to build. I'd love if there was a service where I could chat with a PM for a
day or so to explain my project, the vision, the features I want to build, and
the structure of the thing; then have them take my assets and make a whole
slew of tickets with the specific assets attached to each.

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snowpanda
I have nothing to add, but as someone who had a business, I just want to say
that that's an extremely smart question to ask.

~~~
mathgeek
Being that this is HN, it's pretty much assumed the person posting is fishing
for business ideas.

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mud_dauber
My leadership team.

They are managing not for growth, but for their own survival until retirement.
Totally devoid of innovation or initiative.

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fourthark
Architecture & project management. I was promoted from contractor to employee
and was told basically not to spend any time on the project anymore because
there are new (bright, capable) contractors to work on it.

But it's never in a contractor's best interest to take responsibility for the
big picture. So I spend lots of time testing contributions (okay but not much
fun/reward) and being a project manager (detestable and a black mark on my
resume afaic).

Why I took responsibility when I was a contractor? Clearly I do not always act
in my own best interest.

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agsamek
We would like to outsource backup of our KVM VPSes. We have a few
requirements:

1\. Access to snapshots of the last 30 days with single day granuality.

2\. Backup has to be encrypted.

We have 7 full servers with over 100 vpses.

~~~
cool_username
Not looking to do work for you, just a tip. Look into ZFS. Daily snapshot,
incremental etc? No problem.

However something you'll need to think about if you're snapshotting - do you
need to snapshot the memory state/disk buffers too? e.g. a database. Or
anything where the total state of the VM is split between disk and CPU/memory.

If the answer is no this is an easy problem to solve.

If the answer is 'yes' life gets more complicated.

~~~
agsamek
We manage this somehow. The issue here is that taking snaphshot is only a part
of the problem. Then there is transfering data, managing it, retention, hard
drive management and so on. And we don't see competitive advantage here. We
just need this requirement to be fulfilled.

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jaggederest
Marketing, but not just marketing.

I want marketing that demonstrates direct returns and validity through
empirical testing.

Most marketing people and companies I've seen will happily take your money all
day for no demonstrated return at all, and it's incumbent on you to hold them
to account. Holding them to account is the expensive part, not doing the
marketing.

~~~
mmanfrin
PPA/CPA? There's a big industry built around letting others market for you
based on results alone.

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matt_the_bass
Speaking of outsourcing, does anyone have any advice on finding, evaluating
and hiring contract dev teams?

I posted an “ask hn” a few days ago about this but it did not seem to make it
to the ask page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15816396](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15816396)

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jetti
I (and many in my department) wish we could outsource some extract work that
is weekly and takes about 2 to 10 hours of my time. Unfortunately, the state
of Texas forbids any offshoring when it comes to their Medicare data so that
throws a wrench in our plans to do that.

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dbg31415
I'd love to outsource sales. I'd want them to work for a variety of similar
shops, and work out deals that use the best services for each job... instead
of trying to shoehorn the staff we have into whatever jobs they can get.

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chillydawg
My own job. Trust is the key issue. Trusting someone to do an important job
takes time.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
If it’s something that always must be done exactly right, then it should be
automated. Computers are good at that type of thing.

~~~
chillydawg
I'm a manager of humans and systems - I can automate parts of my job, but long
term planning and strategy are very much human domains.

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polote
Build a Magento plugin, because PHP is shit and coding a Magento plugin is a
nightmare. Can't do it because it may be too expensive ...

~~~
kissmd
please drop me a few lines of spec, i'll send you an offer, you will like.

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expertentipp
Management. And recruitment, so that I could have direct access to the CVs of
those applying.

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muzani
Audits. A lot of it is outsourced but I wish they would fill in forms for me
as well.

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thereIsCon
Oncall.

~~~
grahamburger
For what types of systems? This is something I've worked on a little bit. How
far would you want to outsourcee to go in fixing issues? (Ie how much would
you trust them to touch/change?)

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igorgue
Everything, if you could, you would outsource everything, and just jump around
one and it'd be so much fun.

~~~
rb808
that's this guy
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368593.The_4_Hour_Workwe...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368593.The_4_Hour_Workweek)

