SDA

Hiring vs Outstaffing: where are you actually losing money?

Most companies think this is a simple cost comparison.

Salary vs hourly rate.
In-house vs external team.

But that's not where the real difference is.

The real costs are hidden.

Let's break it down.

Hiring (in-house team)

On paper:
You pay a salary.

In reality, you also pay for:

– recruitment (time + agency fees)
– onboarding (weeks or months of lost productivity)
– benefits, taxes, equipment
– management overhead
– risk of a bad hire

And the biggest one: time to productivity

Hiring a developer can take 2–4 months.
Getting them fully productive — even longer.

That's not just delay.
That's lost opportunity.

Outstaffing

On paper:
Higher hourly rate.

In reality:

– no hiring delays
– no onboarding from scratch
– no long-term commitments
– flexibility to scale up/down fast

You don't pay for potential.
You pay for output.

Where companies lose money

Not in rates.

But in:

– slow hiring cycles
– underloaded teams
– overengineering
– lack of clear ownership

We've seen teams that cost less on paper —
but deliver nothing for months.

And teams that cost more —
but ship value every week.

The real question isn't: “Which is cheaper?”

It's: “Which model gets you to results faster?”

Because in product development:

Speed = money
Delays = losses

At SDA, we've learned:

It's not about adding developers.
It's about building a team that actually moves the product forward.

Caught an interesting analogy.

Conferences today are like medieval fairs in a modern way

Back then, people came from different corners of the county.
Now - from different countries and time zones.
The goal is the same:
• to see who survived
• to listen to gossip
• to find out "what works now"
• and, if lucky, to close a deal with another craftsman

Nothing fundamentally has changed.

The stage is the sermon.
Booths are shops.
Networking is the tavern after the event.
Hackathons are knightly tournaments.
And startups with pitch decks are the same masters shouting: "I have the best sword in the whole kingdom."

And even if people have access to the internet and AI, live contact has not replaced this yet, and people travel thousands of kilometers for other people!

See you at the Podim conference next week! Message me if you want to meet up and chat.