Outsourcing your engineering puts ownership and profit of your company in the hands of who you outsourced to. Outsourcing software is selling your company to the company writing your software, only you're paying, too. They keep the profits.

Engineering is the core foundation.

If you do sloppy estimated engineering, your product fails, and you have no company. If you do excessive overbuilding via estimated engineering, a smarter engineer will undercut you with leaner and often stronger product and survive, and you will lose business and fail.

Unless you have your engineering in house, you are not a company, you are a no-profit service looking for a monopoly owner because you have no product anyone wants to buy. If you're a factory, then add in mines to that, since without mines, you are always chasing favor of every mining company, which right now has been cornered by your enemies, so you will fail in that case too.

I have known these things since I was young in the 1970s.

Being an MBA and having a business plan is just a way to introduce yourself to thieves. It doesn't help you make product. To make product, you have to think like a user of your product, which means you need to have the hands-on experience, which usually means being an engineer. If you are an engineer and want to do business, then you also need to understand the ins and outs of economy, negotiating, and business. That means dual careers. It also means hiring lawyers to help you get through regulations by being able to sue the heck out of all your enemies, but not to make your lawyers your bosses. You are their boss. Every time they forget that, fire them. If lawyers you fire or should fire make an offer you can't refuse, reflect that offer back at them and win.

Such is business. Such is life.

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