This is not how paid software development works (beyond maybe stealth mode/no customers start-ups- if you have no money then you do what you have to). If you ha

This is not how paid software development works (beyond maybe stealth mode/no customers start-ups- if you have no money then you do what you have to). If you have a going business, the trade-off is totally in favor of paying someone not at your company to do this sort of thing. All up, even a new grad (= the cheapest you will find) in $NotSeattleOrSVButStillUS costs your company about one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year (more in SV or Seattle). You could have one of them spend several months coming up to speed on how to fix weird device driver issues necessary to get the latest kernel patches to run on your DB server, which costs you minimum 50k and gives you tremendous risk (what happens if a necessary security patch comes out while she is on vacation? If you train two people that's twice the costs.) Or you pay someone else to worry about that. Red Hat will charge you 2k for patches for a year for a standard server and if it doesn't work, will fix it. If writing OS network stacks are a part of your company's core mission, go ahead and do it. If the one sentence description of where your companies money comes from doesn't mention anything in kernel land, having programmers spin up on that is a waste of their time and your money. You cut RH a check and get your programmers to write you something that does bring in money, because every minute they spend porting in patches is a minute they aren't earning you money. As a side note, if your business plans for your developers to be working on a weekend you work for a terrible business and all the employees should leave and go to a place where they aren't exploited.