Is outsourcing cheaper than hiring in-house?
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In year one, almost always. A fully-loaded US engineer costs $130,000–$220,000 annually and takes two to four months to arrive, while an agency pod at $12,000–$20,000 a month is productive in one to two weeks. Over three to five years on core product work, in-house usually wins.
What costs do people forget when comparing?
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Recruitment fees, benefits and taxes, equipment and software, management time, and above all the hiring gap — two to four months where the salary line is zero but so is the output. Counted properly, the fully-loaded figure is typically 1.3 to 1.5 times the salary.
What should never be outsourced?
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Architecture decisions you will live with for years, anything that requires deep domain knowledge only your team has, and product decisions. Implementation can be outsourced; judgment about direction should not be.
How do we avoid losing knowledge when an agency leaves?
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Insist on your repository from day one, require documentation as a deliverable rather than a promise, and keep at least one internal person in code review. If those three are in place, the handover is a formality rather than an emergency.
Can we start outsourced and move in-house later?
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Yes, and it is the most common healthy path. Ship with an external team, hire in parallel, and transfer ownership area by area as internal engineers arrive. The transition is straightforward if repository access and documentation were handled properly.
