Comment by dennisbalon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dennisbalon | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for detailed PoV.

Let me share an example with you. I have been in software dev for nearly 18 years by now. I am pretty good at creating detailed, structured and well thought through docs for developers.

Now, last year we have experienced a need to outsource two moderate size projects. With great attention to documentation and general dev flow.

Bottom line, despite we did get more or less working results at the end of the day I was not satisfied with the quality of the work done.

The best guys we could interview and get to work with us still showed less confidence, less of engineering thinkin, less of everything than guys who worked in my teams. Ever.

Like litterally less professionalism! And I believe that is ok but it is what it is.

Professionalism and true caring about the product is not core compentenct that is needed if you are part of the outsourcing company. Why? Just because that is not what earns money at the end of the day.

Speaking about US, Germnay, Sweden etc. - guess I would agree that while living in those countries it makes more sense to find good outsourcing Partner which wont happen from the first try anyway.

Note: I speak about the outsourcing for startups, for enterprises it’s completely different.

Regarding professionalism:

there is no difference for developer if he works in outsourcing company or in the product company because in the end of the day he wants to be proud of his work. (If he is a great talent)

Thus, for the fair comparison of outsourcing vs employees you have to put both in the same conditions: the same communication, the same management and the same hiring process.

Being in outsourcing business for 10 years I have a lot of examples when founders thought that outsourcing company can build their product for them and I saw success cases only when they treat an outsourcing company as a partner and the project team as their internal team. In opposite case there is a big gap between business and engineering that you don’t have with your core team

I hope that you got your bad experience because of the unsuccessful choice.

I agree that my experience is result of my choices only.

Great point about feeling proud. I think we are we are talking about same thing here here - like from my experience most of the guys working in startups and doing their own projects were concerned about being proud of the work done much more then other guys just doing another set of tasks for someone they`ll never know.

Again, I am talking about the "avg temperature across the hospital". Like there are so many details here but all in all I see more caring people in startups than anywhere else.

> he wants to be proud of his work.

This. A thousand times this. A sense of professional pride is absolutely critical in becoming good at your craft, regardless of what that craft might be.

Right! Exactly! But would you agree that when you are working in an oursourcing company and projects change sometimes a few times per month - you are less motivated to think about being proud compared to just submitting the hours in time?

I think I understand your issue now. And yes, in that case I totally agree - all else being equal, an employee of the outsourcing company will care less about your success than your own employee.

But now you're comparing employees, not employees and contractors.

Young software engineers are easy to brainwash and convince to work long extra hours for free in startups. Contractors usually are the experienced startup employees of the past. They care less about the company's success because they know the company cares nothing about their success.

Heh... your examples are very extreme...

In my last two startups I had people over 40 working those long hours. A lot of contractors I know are lazy young guys that want the buck with minimum fuss.

Most contractors are experience ex-startupers - this sounds statistically incorrect ;)

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