Your goal is to get a quality output and get your work done in a right manner. It can make sense the developer can work from anywhere to meet the desire goal. Let's hit me on email so we can have indepth conversation for the assistance. Here is my email : vivekp@intuz.net
Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?
601–607 of 607 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?
#602This is going to be a long reply. Sorry about that.
# Full Disclosure
- I am part of an agency that helps companies like yours build products either for internal use or for their customers. - We are partners for a couple of large enterprises, but most of our customers have between 50 to 300 employees.
# Experience
- We have worked with a company in a specific niche that was using a platform from a small provider. - We ended up rebuilding their entire platform from scratch. Spoiler - it was not easy. - I prefer being called a technology partner rather than an agency/vendor. Our clients' success is how we define our success.
# Thoughts
- Your own product will never be 100% complete - If you are someone who loves to optimize things and wants efficiency, then every single workflow or process can be optimized or even entirely removed. And, it is absolutely okay, as long as you are always in a better place than you are currently and are growing your revenue while reducing stress/manual overhead with every single update.
- The only way this works properly is if a senior team member from the agency is embedded as part of your team.
- Only work with companies/agencies/partners who come via a referral. Picking agencies from Clutch etc. is not the way to go. All those listings are always paid, even the ones which say they are not.
- This has been said before - When working with a tech partner, start with an extremely small but challenging project. Set clear milestones for them to hit and for you to be able to measure success.
- IMPORTANT - Define one product owner on your team who will be responsible for all decisions. This is a bigger deal than you would think. You have domain experts in your team, who can be consulted, but that product owner will be the primary decision maker.
- IN-HOUSE TALENT - Use the tech partner to help grow and train your team. They are in the industry to hire tech people and can find the right people for your team.
- DESIGN - Do not skimp on this. I am sure there are workflows and processes which have been present for a long time. People in your team are used to them. But this new phase gives you an opportunity to redefine/reevaluate everything. Delete. Redesign. Implement.
- Don't be a stickler for Agile vs Scrum vs any other new shiny methodology. Figure out the system that works best for you, your existing team, and your extended team. Yes, this takes time, but it is possible to agree on some things and then build from there.
- Communication - When working with an agency, working with a partner who has someone embedded allows you to bring them into all conversations early. The right partner will help you make better decisions. And this senior embedded person will be able to communicate and manage the extended team using off-the-shelf tools which you have visibility on. Example - Our core tools for communication include Slack, Airtable, and Figma.
- Long-term thinking - having the correct incentive structure for your tech partner allows them to make better decisions for the product and the business instead of thinking about getting done with one project and making a profit.
- Legal Contract - It does not always work, but it is important to have a good contract with timelines and SLAs for your work.
Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
A cost centre is, by definition, somewhere that only produces costs and is never attributed with any revenue or profit. A smart management team can figure out that investing in IT, Software, etc is going to have a positive ROI overall by increasing efficiency among other things. Unfortunately my experience (and many others') is that only the balance sheet will be considered and the goal will always be to reduce the c…
> A cost centre is, by definition, somewhere that only produces costs and is never attributed with any revenue or profit. Which means that if investing in IT is an enabler for gaining revenue or profit, it's not a cost center by this definition--it's necessary to gain revenue or profit. As you note, many companies don't appear to be smart enough to see this, but that doesn't make it wrong.
What customer has paid the company for IT's services directly?
None?
It's a cost center in the same way the janitorial staff or legal are. The company won't be there without contracts or with overflowing trashcans, but it doesn't mean the company is making money off of janitorial services or drafting contracts.
Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?
#604Both the strategies have their own pros and cons. For most companies having an in-house team works best, but then you would need to hire someone to manage them. Getting work done through outsourced agency is always tough. You may try to change the vendor the the challenges would always remain. What works best is to hire a single senior developer to begin with, who can work closely with your third party team. He can i…
This is exactly the situation my company ran into. Don't hire a contractor, their incentive won't be aligned with your company and you'll overspend. My company hired me to replace their terrible software vendor and by their own account it's been a clear success. I visit the factories and stores and work with the employees to tailor make the software for their needs. We're finally about to hire our second developer ne…
Amazing to know
Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a fully staffed team it’s not 5m a year. For a company twice his size. These are very generous consultant pitch #s not reality. We doubled running 1-$200k/guy … 2x full stack devs (me) 2x data guys 1x MSP for IT. That team was awesome and did serious buzz saw damage because we shipped solutions that made the company better every day. Didn’t have to be huge. Just help someone do something better.
What does on-call look like for you?
It was brutal, but the mentality was - it's brutal now but you have the power to fix it, so engineering hours went into fixing broken windows.
That adopted mentality pays off tech debt fast.
Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does on-call look like for you?
It was brutal, but the mentality was - it's brutal now but you have the power to fix it, so engineering hours went into fixing broken windows. That adopted mentality pays off tech debt fast.
Sure; but eventually you've got a bus number problem and a "I want to be able to take a vacation and I want my coworkers to be able to take a vacation" problem, and that requires more people.
At least that's how I feel about team sizes.
Re: Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?
#607> Besides, can we even attract experienced developers to a non-glamorous industry like logistics?
I wouldn't worry about this. For some devs the industry might matter, but for many code is code, independently if it's for finance, healthcare or logistics. Just make sure salaries are in line with the market.
Internalizing devs will likely produce cost savings long term unless off the shelf tools are good enough for you, but it's an investment that needs long term commitment. Initially you'll still have to pay for your existing product plus the devs, so it'll feel like you just added a cost. Make sure you are committed enough to pass that phase. Your first hires should be able to work independently, talking directly with employees about requirements, without requiring extensive documentation or dedicated PMs before starting. Too much structure initially would be detrimental, you'll probably want to keep the team small anyway.