I don't agree without reservations but like how against the grain this currently is. Outsourcing everything does seem like a sign of immediate hyperoptimization

I don't agree without reservations but like how against the grain this currently is. Outsourcing everything does seem like a sign of immediate hyperoptimization and missing building a more lasting engineering value. Do as little as possible to extract some margin. There is business wisdom in this but indeed such companies would seem more brittle. Sometimes it's like there's an ecosystem of plumbing companies selling to other plumbing companies without much visible external cash intake. That being said, I think most of the things she mentions are not customer facing but still pretty differentiating to the businesses. Another perspective is that the first crop of truly successful Internet companies were in the position to solve the big backend problems with running big Internet companies in-house. Nowadays getting to the scale while building some fundamental in-house stuff makes less economic sense (you'd lose to someone who doesn't). It's probably better to have some unique technology but more closely related to the specific business.