> Gar notes:
>
>
> One big advantage of having work done in-house rather than
>> contracted is simply that the odds of the people doing the
>> work identifying with the company the work is done for is
>> much much greater.
>>
>
> On the other hand, what I see a lot is that the in-house team gets asked
> to do something they've never done before, and so they set out to learn
> about it, and approximately build their first "waffle"[*] ... instead,
> maybe the outside team has done the task several times and understands it
> enough to make the thing the right way the first time.
>
> I used to have a cartoon on my wall that showed two Eskimos standing next
> to an idealized-looking igloo ... except that it was upside-down. One says
> to the other: let me guess, you've never actually built an igloo before,
> right?
>
>
While I agree that it is complicated and context alters answers, that
really does not apply. "In-house" does not equal existing employees. If it
is a two year or more process tons of people will be happy to accept a
long-term temp job with benefits that they know will last for two years.
And the outside contractor may well be overselling their skills and be doing it for the first time too, learning at your expense. I agree that there are plenty of occasions when outside contracting is genuinely the right choice from a business point of view. But the tendency overwhelmingly is to use outside contractors when it is not appropriate - far outnumbering
the cases when in-house is done inappropriately. I will admit that the most common case for in-house to go wrong is when managers think in-house=free and you don't need to hire additional people, or where they think "OK, add a couple of bodies" without realizing how many people it takes to do something right.
> /jordan
>
> [*] "Software is like waffles; you have to throw the first one out"
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com