Ask HN: At what stage did your company move from 3rd party to internal software? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: At what stage did your company move from 3rd party to internal software?

#11

Post by HenryBemis » Thu, Feb 29, 2024, 9:10 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #8

muzani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it's the opposite. Most of the things we could buy are pretty boring - stuff like Slack, wikis, HR tools, CRMs, customer loyalty, travel claims management. I wouldn't sign up for a fashion marketplace job only to end up making a HR tool for it. But I wonder if it's a front end vs back end thing, because front end are the peeps who also work on branding, marketing, etc.

Some of the things we built in-house because it wasn't worth buying at our scale: - data lake and supporting tools (we fired over 100 million analytics events in a single day). - a/b testing software (assignment and analysis) - support software - email sending tech (we sent over a billion emails a month) - hr tooling (the company hired in over 50 countries) - payments integrations - probably other stuff I don't remem…

It makes perfect sense to build when you are at a certain scale. I remember talking to Citi's C-suite some time ago and their mentality is/was "we are an IT company that is also a bank". But! you have to be Citi (or the likes of your company - perhaps you are in Citi? :) where you can get the talent, pay them handsomely, and keep them motivated.

Re: Ask HN: At what stage did your company move from 3rd party to internal software?

#12

Post by muzani » Fri, Mar 01, 2024, 12:41 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #8

muzani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it's the opposite. Most of the things we could buy are pretty boring - stuff like Slack, wikis, HR tools, CRMs, customer loyalty, travel claims management. I wouldn't sign up for a fashion marketplace job only to end up making a HR tool for it. But I wonder if it's a front end vs back end thing, because front end are the peeps who also work on branding, marketing, etc.

Some of the things we built in-house because it wasn't worth buying at our scale: - data lake and supporting tools (we fired over 100 million analytics events in a single day). - a/b testing software (assignment and analysis) - support software - email sending tech (we sent over a billion emails a month) - hr tooling (the company hired in over 50 countries) - payments integrations - probably other stuff I don't remem…

Interesting. I wonder why most of these are being sold by startups and not the giants that use them regularly.

I do remember a cool thing that some foreign Huawei guys I worked with used to use. It would call a ride sharing service, pick the more cost effective one, and then handle the claims for that. Presumably it checks that the location is work/home and only applies for such conditions.

Re: Ask HN: At what stage did your company move from 3rd party to internal software?

#13

Post by withinboredom » Fri, Mar 01, 2024, 12:45 PM UTC

muzani wrote: post #12

withinboredom wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the things we built in-house because it wasn't worth buying at our scale: - data lake and supporting tools (we fired over 100 million analytics events in a single day). - a/b testing software (assignment and analysis) - support software - email sending tech (we sent over a billion emails a month) - hr tooling (the company hired in over 50 countries) - payments integrations - probably other stuff I don't remem…

Interesting. I wonder why most of these are being sold by startups and not the giants that use them regularly. I do remember a cool thing that some foreign Huawei guys I worked with used to use. It would call a ride sharing service, pick the more cost effective one, and then handle the claims for that. Presumably it checks that the location is work/home and only applies for such conditions.

Scale and custom stuff. It’s a lot easier to hardcode things than build stuff for the masses.