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rurpHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

There are a lot of factors in whether or not to go this route, but it's certainly plausible that …

… There are a lot of factors in whether or not to go this route, but it's certainly plausible that it's a good decision. I worked for a smaller company that did something similar and gradually built out their own internal workflow software tailored to the business. Overall it worked out quite well and they ended up with much better software at a lower price than they would have paid for outside tools. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of the opposite result as well. You're right to be cautious but I think it's an idea worth exploring further.

Original discussionAsk HN: Should we bring software dev in-house?594 source comments · at import
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45HCPWHN

I'm an executive at a mid-sized logistics company (~200 employees, $200-300M annual revenue) getting more and more frustrated with our software situation and am considering taking software development in-house. I've been lurking here for years, so looking at the HN community to talk me out of it. We're using a third-party product that functions, but barely. The provider is understaffed and unresponsive and the platform is stagnant. It's a fight getting basic bugs fixed let alone new features implemented. We're having to resort to a separate low-code platform to fill in the gaps. Our business operates in a specific niche and there are no other providers who cater specifically to our industry. As we are growing we're running in to the limits of what this product can offer. We're being hampered in our speed of execution and missing crucial insights. I feel like we could do much better with …

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L-fourHN

This is my experience it's almost always better to continue working with the existing solution as you slowly replace it's features with your own until you no longer need it. The replace everything at once approached is fraught with risk.

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theshrike79HN

Strangler Fig pattern works really well: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerFigApplication.html You split out segments of the old application and rewrite it, slowly moving traffic over - eventually slowly strangling the old application and replacing it with new parts.

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