Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house? • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by ruzig » Sat, Aug 10, 2024, 9:44 AM UTC

rvba wrote: post #447

ruzig wrote: post #264

Here is a success story from a unicorn startup. They started a traditional business; there was no IT at that time. The business was good, and they had already made a lot of money. They want to create a digital product for the business. They first hire a local person and freelancers. Then they work together to build the product. The local person acts like a CTO and product lead. Freelancers are developers. Then they w…

Sounds like outsourcing the development to Poland

No, from Asia. I'm a part of this story. Now they hire massively there to scale the business. From the time they reached unicorn status, the budget engineer was about 3M, around 100 engineers.

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

#592

Post by sulandor » Sat, Aug 10, 2024, 9:56 AM UTC

davedx wrote: post #376

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…

$5M/year? In the US maybe. A team of 5 senior freelancers in Europe will cost about 150-200k per person.

seems like a good ballpark number with some leeway for unexpected things

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

#593

Post by makowskid » Sat, Aug 10, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

Hi! I've done this exercise for multiple companies of different sizes as a CTO. One of them was a bit bigger than yours (org which is a retail arm of the Singapore Changi Airport), and 5 others were smaller, usually startups & scale-ups. Some of my happy customers are listed here: https://a2zweb.co

Please let me know if you need a hand with bringing tech fully in-house.

Cheers Dawid

https://www.linkedin.com/in/makowski/

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

#594

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Sat, Aug 10, 2024, 11:33 AM UTC

mindcrash wrote: post #556

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with EDIFACT, but just from the context I'd assume that a) there is something on the other end that expects the data to be exactly in a specific format, which may not be documented correctly or in a language your devs can read, b) the consequences of not getting it 100% right are expensive, c) there are a lot of these "somethings", each potentially requiring their own format/special quirks for which…

EDIFACT is designed to fix _exactly_ this. It does not only specify the _what_ but also the _how_ Wikipedia provides a pretty good explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDIFACT The beauty of EDIFACT by the way, is that with enough time and effort it can get parsed and validated using any text processing tool at your disposal because everything is _rigorously_ specified by the UN. For example I once had to do it…

I would have assumed that it's meant to fix it, but I wouldn't expect it to actually have fixed it.

Has it? If so, that's a pretty remarkable feat, and I'd love to be wrong about this one. And are the open source libraries good enough at it?

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

#595

Post by dennis_jeeves2 » Sat, Aug 10, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

>I'm an executive at a mid-sized logistics company.

Curious, what are your hard skills, or what aptitude do you have?

>Strategies for attracting and retaining tech talent in a non-tech industry

Old saying: Treat others as you want to be treated. ( other have enumerated it: good pay, stability of employment, autonomy etc.) This is true for most skilled professions. It's probably less true for professions that require less hard skills - where behavior like coercion may work, though temporarily.

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

#596

Post by em-bee » Sat, Aug 10, 2024, 8:52 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #311

spoonfeeder006 wrote: post #297

I have no experience in hiring programmers at all, but here's a couple tips based on my experience working at a company, and also family member's experience who is involved in hiring So never ever hire a freelancer until after you've talked to a bunch of their previous clients. Not sure if this is possible though, but if you can, its probably really good I've seen what a non-software engineer hiring freelancer progra…

I think I may be the kind of person we're talking about here. I wouldn't ever let a new prospect client talk to previous clients. They'd all immediately compare rates and try to low ball me. Conversely, I'd never take on a client "cold". Too many a-holes, crazy people and fraudsters out there. I only work for people I have a long history with, or on occasion the next transitive hop out on the network from those peopl…

doesn't finding someone with a strong recommendation through your network also result in talking to previous clients?

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

#597

Post by rkuodys » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 7:55 AM UTC

I think I have some similar experience. The company I've joined was solving specifically this problem: non-IT company building in house after deal with 3rd party fell through. Some good experiences: 1) I was the first on the team as PM but also I could code. That meant that looking for development solutions it was easier to evaluate offers and advise CEO on budgets etc. 2) We practised GEMBAs - going to watch colleagues work. If your tech staff is willing to do that, it's really beneficial. You get the empathy for the users and collect feedback that otherwise SME wont provide (due to their limitations) 3) Allocate time and space for meetings between tech and business people - we practice weekly meetings where people come with requests. We have a chance to understand the demand (not just written task) and find the solution - be it new feature, workaround or existing feature not introduced to the person. 4) Lesson learned for me is that management style and structure for IT and non-IT part of business differs (at least in our case). IT staff is more self-reliant meaning that higher level of freedom should be allowed.

If you're interested to discuss more, happy to do so rimantas@kuodys.lt. Greetings from Europe.

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

#598

Post by divan_barnard » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 9:11 AM UTC

We had a client with a similar need in the logistics sector.They also struggled to get a custom online software solution that is suitable for their company. The biggest issue with these projects is that development costs can increase alot especially if the scope of work is not clear. If you want some more information or want to learn more about our logistics solution you can contact me on divan@fleetwise.app

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

#599

Post by cdman » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

I lead a migration very similar to this. We had taken over a system that was handed to a business person with all the technical team leaving because of a dispute. We rewrote the system and migrated all the user accounts over to the new system in a couple of months, after which we ran it for a couple more years, until the company got sold.

I would say the most important learnings were:

- there is lot of "extra stuff" around the product that is somewhat independent of "how complicated the product is". Even a simple CRUD app needs source control, a test suite, (ideally) some automated system for source quality check (like linters, analyzers, formatters, etc), a system for deploying it to a dev / staging / production environment, etc.

- production also needs monitoring (both "is it working" and "is it working within the expected parameters" - for example is it fast enough). Ideally there would also be some alerting around this monitoring so that you don't have to wait for users to complain to find out that something is not working.

- there is a saying of "use boring technologies" (https://boringtechnology.club/), which I 100% subscribe to. That will ensure that there are lots of examples for each aspect of the product you're trying to implement (for example authentication and authorization, creating an admin dashboard, etc).

- In addition I would say "use some managed platform to offload lots of these worries". Yes, it will seem weird to look at the bill at the end of each month and say "why are we paying $Xk each month for Heroku when I can rent a server from Hetzner for less than $100?" - but managing that Hetzner server (and probably more than one server, to make sure that a single hardware failure doesn't take down your entire product), ensuring backups are working, etc would cost more. Optimizing between "buy" vs "build" is a delicate balance.

In the end I think programmers who like to start new projects are a rare bread. I'd be happy to chat about this more (I'm also in Europe). Feel free to reach out to me at cratt[at]grey-panther.net.

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

#600

Post by wkirby » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 1:54 AM UTC

from-nibly wrote: post #80

wkirby wrote: post #57

Unless this software is your core business, I would look at a third alternative: contracting the work out to experienced developers to replace the platform. If it works well, you can bring development in house slowly after the platform is more mature. Worst case, you’ll have a more responsive external party managing the platform for you.

Worst case is that you don't know how to run a software team and you end up spinning your wheels for ages and then have to onboard a Dev team and convince them they want to clean up someone elses tech debt. Thus making everything cost 10x what management initially thought. This is probably the last thing I would suggest.

If the agency devs are so mismanaged that the project is a disaster, why on earth would you then hire in house devs instead of reverting to the external platform?

Agencies serve as a good middle ground between buy it (not working for OP at the moment) and going through a hiring process for an entire engineering org you’re not convinced you’ll need. Agency not working? Terminating the project is so much easier than firing the 6 devs you just got through HR.