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I’m sure this is a great idea at some San Francisco start up full of unicorns who can do everything backed by endless venture capitalist cash. I have spent a g

I’m sure this is a great idea at some San Francisco start up full of unicorns who can do everything backed by endless venture capitalist cash. I have spent a good chunk of my career at a Fortune 10 energy company. We hired people who specialized in working with SAP, Oracle databases, MSSQL, messaging (think MSFT Lync), email infrastructure, physical servers for web apps, Cisco, desktop provisioning, application development, mobile device management, ticketing software, etc. etc. It’s very hard and very expensive to acquire the right talent to manage a particular technology, administer it, support it, etc. Every vended software we work with has some company that looks at our name and comes up with some outrageous cost for a few licenses, dev seats, or whatever their business model is. Acquiring the right quality talent is even harder. You bring them in. You try to teach them about your business so they feel valued and part of something big. They don’t stick around. They want to be at the Googles and Amazons of the world. They leave. In this scenario, I’d rather use SQS than try to interview, hire, train, and make the hardware/software investment in running an SQS equivalent service in house. I don’t want to hire DBAs and build that profession in my org. It’s not our core business. My customers in the business don’t give a shit about it. They want something fast, reliable, and dependable. Fundamentally, this argument of just do it yourself to save money is short sighted. There are a lot of factors. If you believe hiring Some internal teams is always cheaper than using managed services, you’re in for a world of hurt.

cloverich 8y ago
The Google's of the world became such because they decided to invest in homegrown talent. You are pouring millions of dollars into purchasing and maintaining software, and in your own words your customers want something fast, reliable, dependable. Are you so sure software isn't a core part of your business?
- throwaway98121 8y ago
  Googles core products required them to hire people that could interview, hire, design, build, and deploy software. Along the way, they had many failures and learned a lot of lessons. If my company’s core products or services are centered on let’s say acquiring surface and mineral rights, discovering hydrocarbons, and using the right technology for drilling, it makes practically zero sense for me to now also try to become an expert at maintaining servers, hiring top tier software engineer, etc etc. I don’t have the kinds of problems to keep them engaged nor do I have the budget. Software is a part of the business insofar that it enables business, but it’s not ultimately what drives profit. Many of the top tech companies outsource HR software or recruiting entirely, use travel and expense software software as a service, Oracle financials for payroll instead of writing it themselves, etc etc. Why? Because they want to invest their money and talent into the core areas that make them a profit.

cloverich 8y ago

The Google's of the world became such because they decided to invest in homegrown talent. You are pouring millions of dollars into purchasing and maintaining software, and in your own words your customers want something fast, reliable, dependable. Are you so sure software isn't a core part of your business?

throwaway98121 8y ago
Googles core products required them to hire people that could interview, hire, design, build, and deploy software. Along the way, they had many failures and learned a lot of lessons. If my company’s core products or services are centered on let’s say acquiring surface and mineral rights, discovering hydrocarbons, and using the right technology for drilling, it makes practically zero sense for me to now also try to become an expert at maintaining servers, hiring top tier software engineer, etc etc. I don’t have the kinds of problems to keep them engaged nor do I have the budget. Software is a part of the business insofar that it enables business, but it’s not ultimately what drives profit. Many of the top tech companies outsource HR software or recruiting entirely, use travel and expense software software as a service, Oracle financials for payroll instead of writing it themselves, etc etc. Why? Because they want to invest their money and talent into the core areas that make them a profit.