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Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

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Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#391

Post by tauntz »

rty32 wrote: post #384
wordofx wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building and running your own software team is probably around $5M/year Do people just pull random numbers out of their ass with no actual experience? 99% of developers do not live in Silicon Valley on 1m salaries.

Cost is not just salary. To begin with, health insurance and other benefits. And they'll need dev environments, they may need additional cloud resources depending on how the project goes, and there will be additional overhead when the team interacts with other departments.

OP is in Europe - no idea in which country but just as an anecdotal example, building a world-class dev team in Estonia is ~100k per senior engineer (total cost, including health insurance etc). Of course there are auxiliary costs in addition to the team itself but not anywhere close to 4.5 mil/year for a 5 person team.

And to be honest, I'm not convinced a moderately complex in-house crud app would really require 5 senior developers but impossible to have a strong opinion on that based on the details that OP provided. It might be a one man job, it might take a team of 10..

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#392

Post by hyperpape »

casesandberg wrote: post #161

If you choose to stick with your existing provider, you can negotiate a service contract where the provider hires and manages engineers that work exclusively on your account. We did this in the past with pretty good success. We were planning to exit in 1-2 years and didn't want to invest in an entirely new platform or build it ourselves when we knew the acquiring company would end up rolling up our service into their…

Having seen this from the other side, you have to be aware that this will only help with prioritization.

If the provider has a hard time delivering because of internal issues, they will still have a hard time delivering with dedicated development resources.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#393

Post by ethbr1 »

carlcoryell wrote: post #284

I used to run the Singapore and Seattle offices for Pivotal Labs and helped a couple of companies build in-house teams to do exactly this. My first question is to check the basic economics: $2-300M in annual revenue, ~15% margins, you’re probably looking at earnings/profits around $30-45M. Building and running your own software team is probably around $5M/year, which feels like it could be a substantial hit to your m…

With a company OP's size, I'd definitely look at it from this perspective.

Funding (and related longevity) are key drivers of technical debt. If a team has to constantly pivot projects to politically justify their existence, bad technical things happen.

So figure out a budget model that works, is sustainable, is justified on ROI (as logistics dev will be compared to capex alternative investments).

As a "halfway" solution, you could find 1-2 senior inhouse architect type people (ideally, who have reasons to stick around like quality of life) and pair them with project-based freelance/outsourced development teams. (Hard to find good small dev firms, but they exist)

That way, if dev screws up the project because they're incompetent, you have more options. But you retain the core institutional knowledge and some dev ability inhouse.

And it maximizes budget flexibility and gives you time to find the right people for the inhouse team.

I would caution... the goal of this arrangement should always be to grow the inhouse team until it's big enough to ship projects on its own.

But it's easier to slowly grow a good team than to hire one all at once.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#394

Post by Gettingolderev »

Have you thought about / are you big enough to buy that vendor?

Otherwise: Find a really good HandsOn CTO, give them enough budget to build up a team and have freelancers, build it out.

But before that, have good people analyse the business requirements first.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#395

Post by wiresurfer »

So a little backstory, I have worked in Logistics and warehousing, albeit as a senior dev on robotics solutions and its needed implementations.

What you don't want to do is hire a team inhouse if your pain timeline needs fixing in As someone mentioned. Senior freelancers preferably with some domain exposure.

Don't think of this as a software problem, but a house rennovation project!

Here is the playbook we have recommended and executed for many clients,

- Hire a documentation guy. Start writing/drawing out all business processes your current third party system serves. Use BPMN if possible.

- Sit down with a senior dev to draw a High Level Design of this system. And find subsystems or funcitons which you can live with, vs things which absolutely need retrofit/rewrite.

- See how you can define a scope of work where what's good keeps running, and a new smaller better subsystem starts taking over functions you need replacement.

- rinse repeat.

--- Strategically speaking, Hiring is a bit painful. Depends on geography. Retaining someone beyond 3-5 years is difficult. People churn out of boredom as the work gets repetitive and they don't get to flex their tech stack itch.

Money wise, is the third-party company a potential acquihire target? If its small, why not take it over and inhouse the team. You would get the "catered to us" part sorted and you can still sell to other customers if you so desire. This has its own risk-reward. But I will let you be the judge of it.

And in anycase, get an independent technical consultant to cover your blind side.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#396

Post by fhars »

One solution is to partly outsource the development. You would try to build up a small team that deeply understands your business and the solution and and owns the system can maintain it long term, but cooperate with a specialized service provider for the initial development (which will probably require more developers than you will want to ratain long term). Such a service provider will also be able to support you with he generation of the initial project vision, requirements engineering and usability/user experience engineering with experienced teams, whithout you having to hire for such roles out of the blue.

While there are many such companies in Europe, I can recommend the one I just so happen to work for, mail me if you want to discuss it further.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#397

Post by surfingdino »

I worked on the logistics IT team for a global marketplace and can assure you that all software in that space is of subpar quality, because all players in this space have to rely on global shipping and logistics incumbents who do not care about how outdated their systems are and have essentially lost ability to understand their own systems. This creates an opportunity for you to create a set of products and services that you can build to improve your own operations and to resell to other businesses in your space.

However...

Software development always costs more than "civilians" (companies whose core business is not software development) expect. I would advise you to work with someone who has built systems for logistics before and can help you describe your current baseline in a way a software developer can understand, then define the target state and break down the journey into clearly defined deliverables. Then you can have a conversation about making it happen. Happy to help you as I have worked on and delivered national and international-level projects in the banking and shipping space.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#398

Post by penetrarthur »

As a software developer myself and judging by the description, this sounds like a perfect job offer so many mature software developers.

You are pretty much ticking all the boxes:

- real life application that has a big impact on an existing real industry, not another web3 crypto project or AI startup of potential intergalactical importance(AirBnb for hamsters). - existing business with predictable income flow means that the project is not going to be scraped within 3 months, which is again going to attract experienced devs who are willing to plan their life, vacations and work-life balance. - software is going to be built after a third-party product which makes it easier to build the actual thing because there is an existing reference product. - software is going to be build from ground up, chosing the proper technologies, not the newest flashiest JS framework or PHP version from mid 2000s - internal products tend to have softer deadlines and, therefore, technical debt does not accumulate so quickly, which is again something experienced devs enjoy. - in order to help with the project, several existing employees of the company will gladly transition into something new(its basically a raise for them)

You will be surprised how easy and cheap(in Europe) it is to hire experienced developers to build something like that. I would strongly suggest hiring the actual team instead of using some outsourcing company, because they will build unnecessary complicated processes all based around billing more hours.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#399

Post by Normal_gaussian »

You would benefit from some more in depth conversations with several strategic technical consultants - essentially a CTO type person - to get some definitive immediate steps and longer term understanding of how you may want to change your business relationship with technology.

Several of the comments here are very good -

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41195008 - is probably the one I align most with.

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41193136 - is going to be a common take.

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41195910 - is an extreme stance that requires and benefits specific sorts of senior leadership.

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41196183 - is quite scary, but the point is a valid one.

I'd suggest you reach out to a few people who have responded at the strategic level and see where the conversations go; I'd also suggest you reach out to myself (contact in bio / south UK based); and finally tap on your network for others as well. You will end up doing a reasonable amount of internal and external exploration activities before a path is determined - so expectation management is a must.

Best of luck.

Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?

#400

Post by JCW2001 »

Silhouette wrote: post #278
intelVISA wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna go against this heavily tbh: If you don't have a 'trusted wrangler' freelancers won't build anything worthwhile as they're not interested in the long term unless forced. There must be somebody you know, or friend of friend, to get a warm intro to an experienced developer you can pay to oversee said team on an interim basis. No consultants, agencies etc. they'll fleece a non-tech like you, save your money an…

If you don't have a 'trusted wrangler' freelancers won't build anything worthwhile as they're not interested in the long term unless forced. Freelancers' careers live or die based on where future work is coming from. Happy clients are good for repeat business. Happy clients refer other potential clients. Happy clients are good for portfolios or case studies. Smart freelancers are all about keeping their clients happy…

In practice this simply doesn’t pan out. There are many many terrible freelancers out there. And without someone technical in-house vetting their work, you’ll have no choice but to judge their based on their output. This is a huge problem.

Software needs to be designed with an understanding of the business needs and goals. You need someone who understands how to keep the software well designed (ie. Easy to debug, update and extend in the future).

Judging solely as a user of the software gives you no insight into whether or not a plate of spaghetti code could be holding behind the scenes.

Good code has two traits: It does the job it was designed to do. It is easy to update and maintain.

Everything else you read online is nonsense. And you need someone trusted inside your company to ensure the second trait is being adhered to.

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