If you can't code very well or are an mba with an idea, then it may make sense to offshore. It may be cheaper to send the code offshore than to send it across t

If you can't code very well or are an mba with an idea, then it may make sense to offshore. It may be cheaper to send the code offshore than to send it across town. But it might not be too. You have to add in the cost of communication as well. I would argue that it makes absolutely no sense to offshore code for a hacker. It typically takes me longer to document the requirements of what I want than to actually write it. I would expect the same out of any good hacker. If it is code that would take less time to document than to write. That most likely isn't code you could send off to an average programmer now is it? You are going to get code that stopped being developed at barely good enough. I don't know about everyone else but I don't want code that is barely good enough in my app. You lose the domain knowledge of that component you outsourced. That is what you need to take your app to the next level. You most likely will end up debugging that code at some point. You miss the opportunity to iterate. I'm sure there are just as many (proportionally) great developers off shore as on shore. It is harder to go across the world than across town, across town is harder than across the room. My final point is that I have a much better chance of getting someone great here than off shore. I've worked with thousands of developers over my career so far. I can count on one or two hands developers that I could say write me an X and I know I would get a really well written X. Most of the others would eventually get me a working X but we would have go through several iterations. If I have to iterate I could have written it faster myself. It may possibly make sense in some situations. The Hacker startup world is not that place. As a hacker it makes absolutely NO sense. Okay last point. Most of us have read Pauls' Essays. We are all trying to "Build Something Great", That hopefully people want. Would Leonardo outsource? Build me a design for a flying machine / Tank / Submarine. What the hell do you think he would have gotten back? Right, I didn't think so either.