The Problem With Outsourcing for Expanding Your Software Team

by The Scalers Offshore Development Teams In India

With augmented software teams becoming more and more mainstream as tech leaders in Western Europe, Australia, and North America seek to overcome local talent shortages, the problem with outsourcing when compared to offshoring is something worth exploring. Outsourcing is when you work with an external software house to assist you on a project, offshoring is when you build a dedicated team that's integrated into your overall engineering setup.

It's not your team

The main problem with outsourcing is that the developers you work with aren't your team but external support. With offshoring, the developers are hired by you - though an offshoring partner will handle the sourcing, assessment, and first stage interviews - and they work with you in the exact same way as your engineers at home. Other things to consider are:

Loss of control as they're not your own in-house engineers
Higher risk of data security threats as they're not always working to your company's protocols etc
A focus on cost and speed over quality

Silver linings

While there are indeed several cons of outsourcing there also exist pros. The positives are that you don't need to worry about any hiring at all as the developers are within the software house and are allocated to your projects as per their skill set. It's a great way to plug an unexpected drop in development capacity or to ease a temporarily overfilled pipeline. On the flip side of this, the engineers are working on a multitude of projects and allocated to multiple clients - lessening their cultural buy-in to your organization's mission and values.

Ultimately, outsourcing provides flexibility. Since you’re hiring people on a contract basis, you only pay them for the work they do - no resources are spent on idle workers.

Wrapping it up

To say there's a problem with outsourcing is perhaps a little reductive, as it depends on your requirements. If you need some engineers to help out on a one-off project or to plug gaps for a short time, then it's a great solution. However, if you're in need of full-time employees who care about your products, and are invested in your business then it's difficult to make a case against the offshore dedicated team approach.