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The risk you're talking about definitely exists. It's interesting how people treat that risk, though. You could make a similar argument to say you should never

The risk you're talking about definitely exists. It's interesting how people treat that risk, though. You could make a similar argument to say you should never rent office space. Your stuff is stored in a building you don't own, and the landlord could deny you access either accidentally or deliberately. (This actually does happen sometimes with incompetence or landlord/tenant disputes.) But few people really feel like it's a big issue. In practice, most companies will rent office space without batting an eye. I suppose one difference is there are some explicit tenant protection laws, but it still feels like a similar calculated risk thing. You outsource because the risks are low enough, trust is high enough, and the alternative of doing it yourself takes away too much from focusing on your business.

mmt 8y ago
> the landlord could deny you access ..or grant themselves access. That's the other risk that the parent comment pointed out. > In practice, most companies will rent office space without batting an eye. Presumably, though, they also put in security cameras and don't leave the "crown jewels" (source repo?) exclusively accessible from that office space and needing nothing more than the landlord's key to do so. > it still feels like a similar calculated risk thing It certainly feels like it, but is it actually? Is anyone actually even pausing to think about it, let alone calculate the risk? > the alternative of doing it yourself takes away too much from focusing on your business I can't help but wonder if the effort required isn't routinely over-estimated. Some of these things aren't that hard, and, when they're critical to the business, there's an argument to be made that doing it oneself is focusing on the business. I can personally attest to repeatedly running into labor/effort over-estimation in the cloud-vs-hardware decision. This, like (at least rudimentary) chat is a well-enough understood problem that an accurate estimate is actually possible.

mmt 8y ago

> the landlord could deny you access ..or grant themselves access. That's the other risk that the parent comment pointed out. > In practice, most companies will rent office space without batting an eye. Presumably, though, they also put in security cameras and don't leave the "crown jewels" (source repo?) exclusively accessible from that office space and needing nothing more than the landlord's key to do so. > it still feels like a similar calculated risk thing It certainly feels like it, but is it actually? Is anyone actually even pausing to think about it, let alone calculate the risk? > the alternative of doing it yourself takes away too much from focusing on your business I can't help but wonder if the effort required isn't routinely over-estimated. Some of these things aren't that hard, and, when they're critical to the business, there's an argument to be made that doing it oneself is focusing on the business. I can personally attest to repeatedly running into labor/effort over-estimation in the cloud-vs-hardware decision. This, like (at least rudimentary) chat is a well-enough understood problem that an accurate estimate is actually possible.