Outsourcing vs. Insourcing: What’s the Smart Move for Your Dev Team?
Hiring a full-time developer sounds like the safe, obvious play. They're yours, dedicated, and always around — right?
But when you dig into the actual costs, risks, and realities, outsourcing your development team often turns out to be the more strategic, flexible, and lower-risk move.
Let’s break it down.
1. Ramp-Up Time: Outsourcing Moves Faster
A new full-time dev takes 3–6 months to ramp up — assuming you even find the right person. During that time, you're investing time, salary, and internal resources just to get them up to speed.
Outsourced teams are ready to go. They bring the process, tools, and know-how. You skip the recruiting drama and start building day one.
2. What Happens When an Employee Leaves?
If your in-house dev quits or underperforms, you’re stuck. It takes months to rehire and re-ramp. You lose knowledge, momentum, and continuity. Your project stalls.
Outsourced teams are designed for coverage and redundancy. Someone rolls off? They have a backup. You don’t absorb the disruption — the vendor does.
3. The Real Cost of a Full-Time Developer
That $120K salary? Not the whole story.
Add 20–30% for benefits (healthcare, PTO, 401k), 10–15% for taxes and overhead, and 5–10% for training and onboarding.
You're easily looking at $150K–$165K+ per year, and that's just one person.
With outsourcing, you pay for outcomes, not overhead.
4. Underperformers? Outsourcing Handles That Fast
In-house, dealing with underperformance is messy — performance plans, HR involvement, awkward conversations. And while that drags out, you’re still paying.
Outsourcing flips that. If someone’s not delivering, they’re replaced. Fast. No severance, no paperwork, no time wasted. You keep moving.
5. Risk of the “One Person” Model
Hiring one in-house dev often means betting the farm on a single brain.
That’s risky:
If they leave, your project’s in trouble.
If they get sick, everything pauses.
If they build without documenting, good luck scaling.
Outsourced teams build with shared knowledge, peer reviews, and process. You get continuity, coverage, and institutional memory baked in.
6. Focus on Your Core Business
Managing developers isn’t your core business — delivering value to customers is.
Outsourcing lets you stay focused on strategy, product decisions, and customers, while your development partner handles implementation, QA, and scaling.
Bottom Line
Outsourcing isn’t just about saving money. It’s about:
Reducing risk
Accelerating delivery
Gaining flexibility
Avoiding personnel headaches
Staying focused on what matters
Insourcing might seem safe — until the person you rely on leaves, drags the project, or burns out. Outsourcing builds in resilience from day one.
If you want speed, stability, and fewer sleepless nights, outsourcing your development team is often the smarter bet.