Hacker News Reader

Comment by wes-exp | Hacker News Reader

Two things:

1) You don't outsource your core in business, so outsourcing tech is not appealing for tech startups, period.

2) Typically tech startups are more of a growth optimization problem than a cost optimization problem. Outsourcing to cheaper parts of the US, let alone overseas, usually doesn't increase the startup's growth potential.

View on HN

Your [1] is flawed because what is core is continuously shifting as the advantages of the knowledge you can get somewhere else exceed the costs.

An example from banking:

"Morgan Stanley has about 500 people employed in India doing research and statistical analysis. About 100 of Goldman Sachs’ 3,000 employees in Bangalore are working on investment research."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/business/worldbusiness/12i...

Be careful not to conflate offshoring with outsourcing, which the article does. Some startups will have their own employees overseas, but my point is specifically about outsourcing to other companies.

> Be careful not to conflate offshoring with outsourcing

Ups, thats my fault, lets add offshoring to the title.

Great clarification

1) the tech is rarely the product (so, rarely the core), does the end user care how nice the code is? what's the stack? or that it just works and provides a valuable service?

2) OP's point is that you should spend less on dev and more on marketing thus, more optimized for growth(?)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com