4 ms·

What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves? There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in

What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves? There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in outsourcing assume it's easier for the downstream org solve them. Personal experience suggests it's often a false sense of security, and you often have to have your own experts anyway. Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. The outsourced entity also doesn't patch, because there's no business case approval to do so. The problem is usually tech is ran by finance.

Juliate 5y ago
> Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. [...] The problem is usually tech is ran by finance. Same. Where actually, the budget is right there, it's just a matter of choice and priorities: do what's right now or invest 10x in it later because you didn't take care of it when you ought to. I've been on both sides of the argument: "budget" is a magic word for those who want to skip responsibility for their choices.
- ownagefool 5y ago
  Yes and no. Sometimes the budget is yours sometimes you're sitting in meetings upon meetings with someone else deciding there's no immediate ROI so no budget for you. So sure, the company is always to blame, but unless we're arguing the individual was not convincing enough, the person citing budget may not be choosing alone where to allocate it. On the bright side, inefficient companies leave the market open for the rest of us. :)
- vinceguidry 5y ago
  This. For every short-sighted decision made by the finance overlords, I've seen ten failures on the tech wizards' part to plan for their own future well-being. Laziness keeps them from even making a case.
hamsamrma 5y ago
ime the primary reason to outsource is to get rid of the responsibility and the long-tail due-diligence that comes with it.
- thaeli 5y ago
  Also the blame. On prem outage? IT management is in the hot seat for a fix. AWS outage? Well, major us-east-1 outages make the news so the blame is more diffuse. And even outside of that, it's much harder for anyone internally to blame IT management for the outsourcing, so long as they were smart and got the CFO to take credit for the cost savings of going cloud or something. HN often underestimates how much of enterprise IT, and large business generally, is about making sure that upsides are concentrated enough your management chain can take responsibility, and downsides are either diffuse enough or deflectable enough that your management chain can avoid responsibility.
raverbashing 5y ago
> What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves? Then you go and fix that as you have the means to do that. Were it outsourced and you can only wait for the vendor to do it
pclmulqdq 5y ago
A lot of outsourcing decisions seem to be made on the premise of "what if it breaks?" It's a terrible fallacy. Your wafer saw (or server) that is utilized 1% of the time is going to need a lot less maintenance than a shared wafer saw that is used 16 hours a day. You will actually experience a lot less downtime by investing in your own wafer saw (or your own servers) rather than outsourcing (to a foundry or a cloud provider). I think the real draw of outsourcing is diffusion of responsibility: when it breaks, you can blame someone else.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  At work, I wanted to use google sheets for our schedule because it just works: can have view only links, and it handles multiple editors at the same time gracefully. Got asked “well what if google goes down?”, so back to our problematic system of excel sheets it is :(
  - zitterbewegung 5y ago
    I experienced the opposite when Google actually went down and all of our email, docs and information went away for the day. Then one day our Internet went down and then the company bought a Microwave internet link and an off site server.
  - Radim 5y ago
    That may have been a wise person! "What if Google takes us down" (rather than goes down itself) is a valid business risk to at least consider. Google & co are doing their best to remove themselves from a rational person's critical path. They're too big, you're too small; they're full of AI and politics, you have no recourse.
    - andreyf 5y ago
      if someone had told me that "full of AI" was going to be an insult one day, I would have said they were too cynical about the glorious AI future, but in hindsight perhaps you are right
  - 5y ago
cupofpython 5y ago
> you often have to have your own experts anyway. +1 on this IME the most successful outsourcing arrangements revolve around scale of work, not substituting an entire department. Keeping the amount of in-house experts lean and having them manage outsourced resources. So it is more of a tool for someone internal who has the needs organized rather than a dependency on a 3rd party to know what is best for you
phkahler 5y ago
>> There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in outsourcing assume it's easier for the downstream org solve them. IMHO a lot of outsourcing decisions are based on the idea that someone else can do it better than we can. This is demoralizing and will eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the most competent people get frustrated and leave. I suspect it may also be projection from managers that are in over their head or don't understand what their own people are saying. And then of course there are times when it's true that someone else can do it better.
josh2600 5y ago
As someone employing a lot of engineers right now, one of the problems is that engineering will just keep requesting resources ad infinitum if there’s no budgetary limit. The constraints of the business are actually always financial, and without proper financial modeling you’ll cease to have a business. This is true in process scaling no matter the process.
buescher 5y ago
Then you go out of house until the saw can be repaired or you can recruit a new employee to run it. If it's really to your advantage to have the capability in-house, no one will bat an eye.

Juliate 5y ago

> Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. [...] The problem is usually tech is ran by finance. Same. Where actually, the budget is right there, it's just a matter of choice and priorities: do what's right now or invest 10x in it later because you didn't take care of it when you ought to. I've been on both sides of the argument: "budget" is a magic word for those who want to skip responsibility for their choices.

ownagefool 5y ago
Yes and no. Sometimes the budget is yours sometimes you're sitting in meetings upon meetings with someone else deciding there's no immediate ROI so no budget for you. So sure, the company is always to blame, but unless we're arguing the individual was not convincing enough, the person citing budget may not be choosing alone where to allocate it. On the bright side, inefficient companies leave the market open for the rest of us. :)
vinceguidry 5y ago
This. For every short-sighted decision made by the finance overlords, I've seen ten failures on the tech wizards' part to plan for their own future well-being. Laziness keeps them from even making a case.

hamsamrma 5y ago

ime the primary reason to outsource is to get rid of the responsibility and the long-tail due-diligence that comes with it.

thaeli 5y ago
Also the blame. On prem outage? IT management is in the hot seat for a fix. AWS outage? Well, major us-east-1 outages make the news so the blame is more diffuse. And even outside of that, it's much harder for anyone internally to blame IT management for the outsourcing, so long as they were smart and got the CFO to take credit for the cost savings of going cloud or something. HN often underestimates how much of enterprise IT, and large business generally, is about making sure that upsides are concentrated enough your management chain can take responsibility, and downsides are either diffuse enough or deflectable enough that your management chain can avoid responsibility.

raverbashing 5y ago

> What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves? Then you go and fix that as you have the means to do that. Were it outsourced and you can only wait for the vendor to do it

pclmulqdq 5y ago

A lot of outsourcing decisions seem to be made on the premise of "what if it breaks?" It's a terrible fallacy. Your wafer saw (or server) that is utilized 1% of the time is going to need a lot less maintenance than a shared wafer saw that is used 16 hours a day. You will actually experience a lot less downtime by investing in your own wafer saw (or your own servers) rather than outsourcing (to a foundry or a cloud provider). I think the real draw of outsourcing is diffusion of responsibility: when it breaks, you can blame someone else.

Scoundreller 5y ago
At work, I wanted to use google sheets for our schedule because it just works: can have view only links, and it handles multiple editors at the same time gracefully. Got asked “well what if google goes down?”, so back to our problematic system of excel sheets it is :(
- zitterbewegung 5y ago
  I experienced the opposite when Google actually went down and all of our email, docs and information went away for the day. Then one day our Internet went down and then the company bought a Microwave internet link and an off site server.
- Radim 5y ago
  That may have been a wise person! "What if Google takes us down" (rather than goes down itself) is a valid business risk to at least consider. Google & co are doing their best to remove themselves from a rational person's critical path. They're too big, you're too small; they're full of AI and politics, you have no recourse.
  - andreyf 5y ago
    if someone had told me that "full of AI" was going to be an insult one day, I would have said they were too cynical about the glorious AI future, but in hindsight perhaps you are right
- 5y ago

cupofpython 5y ago

> you often have to have your own experts anyway. +1 on this IME the most successful outsourcing arrangements revolve around scale of work, not substituting an entire department. Keeping the amount of in-house experts lean and having them manage outsourced resources. So it is more of a tool for someone internal who has the needs organized rather than a dependency on a 3rd party to know what is best for you

phkahler 5y ago

>> There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in outsourcing assume it's easier for the downstream org solve them. IMHO a lot of outsourcing decisions are based on the idea that someone else can do it better than we can. This is demoralizing and will eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the most competent people get frustrated and leave. I suspect it may also be projection from managers that are in over their head or don't understand what their own people are saying. And then of course there are times when it's true that someone else can do it better.

josh2600 5y ago

As someone employing a lot of engineers right now, one of the problems is that engineering will just keep requesting resources ad infinitum if there’s no budgetary limit. The constraints of the business are actually always financial, and without proper financial modeling you’ll cease to have a business. This is true in process scaling no matter the process.

buescher 5y ago

Then you go out of house until the saw can be repaired or you can recruit a new employee to run it. If it's really to your advantage to have the capability in-house, no one will bat an eye.