
Top 5 reasons to outsource software development - vasya-gh
https://perceptionbox.io/remote-teams/top-5-reasons-to-outsource-software-development/
======
vaxman
Outsourcing is for big companies that care more about process (timecards being
accurate) than the product detail. For example, governments, insurance
companies, banks, etc. These companies are focused on the big picture, not
where the buttons go on the UX, how fast the code runs or even how much it
costs to run the code.

Many startups have stumbled upon outsource traps --they wind up breathing like
a defeated Darth Vader, with "MVPs" developed offshore (not just India, all
over Asia, Eastern Europe and South America) that don't even run (screenshots
from "that time they ran for a while" and zip files of code), usually tethered
to some awful and expensive AWS system that supports a few users (instead of
tens of millions --with "elastic scalability"). There is usually almost no
money left, (seed) investors are screaming at them, they are having emotional
problems from the stress, there is nobody within arm's reach (though I heard
of one guy once who actually flew as close to St. Petersburg as he could
without entering Russia just to meet with the sales manager of the "team" that
ripped him off and surprise attack him.) There are lots of reasons, generally
code that was designed NOT to be maintainable by competing "teams", code that
looks like a child wrote it and will never scale, code that is missing key
components to compile, code that contains "heavy lifting" problems (floating
stack corruption, null pointer dereferencing, leaks, etc.) It's hard to blame
the line-programmers (excuse me, "developers" lol) either --they are small
cogs in a big f'd up system. Startups here on YCombinator, steer clear of
outsource traps!

------
vasya-gh
The best reasons to outsource software development are all tied to business
requirements. The same reasons apply to startups and enterprises. Enterprises
may be better equipped to hire their own in-house development teams. However,
doing so isn’t always a wise investment.

------
marginview
get ready for a lot of phone calls and arguments (especially over cost) as you
debate the meaning of sentences in specification documents.

