> This tool will cost us $500 to buy. What's your hourly pay rate for 40 hours
This argument makes sense, but I worry that it’s a bit short-sighted. There are a lot of metrics that are hard to quantify where it might end up better: for one thing, I’ve found that integration costs and maintenance of integration of third-party systems are routinely underestimated: I’ve implemented “buy” for various systems where the work to integrate was essentially the work to build. The cost of learning a proprietary toolset rather than developing experience with open tools. The cost to the industry as a whole when something like AWS or React becomes the unreflective default choice.
This argument makes sense, but I worry that it’s a bit short-sighted. There are a lot of metrics that are hard to quantify where it might end up better: for one thing, I’ve found that integration costs and maintenance of integration of third-party systems are routinely underestimated: I’ve implemented “buy” for various systems where the work to integrate was essentially the work to build. The cost of learning a proprietary toolset rather than developing experience with open tools. The cost to the industry as a whole when something like AWS or React becomes the unreflective default choice.