There is a lot of buzz recently for outsourcing software development (thank you Guy Kawasaki), and it still bothers me somewhat. At one point someone made the observation that outsourcing tech is fine as long as tech isn't supposed to be your core speciality.
I can't imagine outsourcing the foundation of a project that I might have to work on for years to come. Maybe this is a bit overly romantic, and it would be more efficient to outsource the initial version, and build a custom one if and only if interest emerges.
Much of my discomfort about the outsourcing stems from the fact that these people are charging 5-10k and taking 4-8 weeks to build something really unspectacular. Then again, its easier to build a slick technology demo than to create a reliable tool...
I have a different test. How far can you get with zero "employees", meaning no equity?
Salaries with no equity just keep you on the economic treadmill. Thus I feel somehow it's unethical and expliotative to employ anyone the traditional way. When I read stories about immigrants folding cardboard boxes for HP printers all day, to me that is not an acceptable cost of having a successful company. Of course then there's the issue of motherboard manufacturers in China and Taiwan using sweatshop conditions or something close to it -- making products we all use -- and people claiming this is an improvement for those workers. I find the whole notion of people having to work dead-end jobs -- often in poor or even appalling conditions -- just so they won't starve, to be extremely distasteful.
Cogswell - sorry I don't have the link, but check Mark Andreesen's blog on the view of the dot com bubble and how over-hyped the failure rate was. He made some good points about how, despite all the lavish stories, a good number of companies made it through just fine.
If Dot Com buble companies had been a little more thrifty, we might see a few more of them around today. I think the cheap factor is just a correction for the spending spree during the first bubble.
I can't imagine outsourcing the foundation of a project that I might have to work on for years to come. Maybe this is a bit overly romantic, and it would be more efficient to outsource the initial version, and build a custom one if and only if interest emerges.
Much of my discomfort about the outsourcing stems from the fact that these people are charging 5-10k and taking 4-8 weeks to build something really unspectacular. Then again, its easier to build a slick technology demo than to create a reliable tool...