Retained value. The reality of a lot of development is that you, as a developer, learn about the domain in which you're working, and also grow your skills with

Retained value. The reality of a lot of development is that you, as a developer, learn about the domain in which you're working, and also grow your skills with each subsequent project you work on. As an employer, it's desirable to pay someone to do work, and then to have that person do more work for you, and as they know the subject matter better and better and as they progress as a developer, the value they present to you grows. Additionally, this is good for the employee, as unless you're in a moribund steady-state company (i.e. so long as you're in a startup) you're there for the journey, and you develop in step with the company, and get to witness and learn a lot of stuff "at the ground floor". Conversely, if you hire a contractor, the moment they're "done", that value walks out of the door, and if you want to do further product development, you need to train someone up, get them familiar with the existing codebase, and so-forth - and this is expensive, and if your contractor hasn't documented stuff thoroughly - you're up the brown creek without a propulsion instrument. Seeing contractors/outsourced dev as a "cheaper" option is a false economy. Sure, it might be cheap in the short term, but it's a hell of a lot pricier in the long term.