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Comment by sbacic | Hacker News Reader

You can substitute "outsourcing" with "employees" and everything you wrote would still apply.

In fact, I'm not sure if even the basic premise is correct - sure, you need a partner to handle the technical side but as you've surmised yourself - there is a place for outsourcing teams to build the MVP.

And obviously, even unicorns eventually end up hiring people.

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No you can’t. And if you can - bad manager are you if your employees work no better than a team of strangers far far away.

I’d like to clarify that by “outsourcing” I meant dev teams which you as a founder can not either manage, nor influence or actually giude/support/answer questions quickly.

I believe that the magic happens right when someone joins the team - in the best case it motivates better communication and mutual interest in the end result.

I don't think it has much to do with managerial ability - both employees and outside contractors are in it for the money and their loyalty start and ends there. No amount of managerial prowess is going to change that.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that individual characteristics are far more important than whether somebody is salaried or contract.

I wont argue about individual characteristics being the key.

But for myself as a rule I defined that salaried team members are in most cases more motivated for a long successful releationship and care about the project more.

Also, lets not forget that when we are talking about doing a startup, core members need tobhave more motivation than just a wire trsnafer at the end of the month.

Best practices for motivating startup team members are not anything new.

Sorry, but I'm not sure I follow. You talk a lot about "need to have" but don't actually say _how_ a salaried employee is supposed to have these virtues (as opposed to a contractor) simply by the fact that he's employed by the company.

Let me try to clarify myself. I am not saying that by definition a salaried imployee has any benefits compared to a good contractor. People are different and in my own experience I had amazing contractors, like e.g. our current DevOps which is just amazing despite working only 30+ hours poer month with us. But he is an exception.

I am just saying that at the end of the day from my experience it is much easier to find more caring and willing to think deep abour the project from among full time employees compared to outside contractors some of which may not need to remember your name since its "just a 160 hours project".

> both employees and outside contractors are in it for the money and their loyalty start and ends there

I only have 60ish years left on this earth at most. If you think I'm giving you 40ish hours a week of them merely in exchange for money I can get from someone else then you have a lot to learn about how people work.

I have been actively hiring for the last 15 years of my life. And running two startups for the last 13 years. I know what motivation is better than many other managers out there.

And I am sure many people attend work not only for money.

Problem is that many who work in outsourcing do the opposite - they attend work, to get money, to exchange it for goods and comfort.

So in this picture there is not much place for "being proud" and respecting the project you are on.

>bad manager are you if your employees work no better than a team of strangers far far away.

I agree.

But I also am certain that unicorns are usually still not built when everything goes perfect.

That's what makes them unicorns.

I dont mean that unicorns are results of perfect coding. But thats an all different topic :)

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