Are You Better Suited to Work for a Regular Company or an Outsourced Development Firm?
By: Emma White
Tags: Developers, Distributed Teams, Remote Work

Are You Better Suited to Work for a Regular Company or an Outsourced Development Firm?

Depending on where you live, there might be caveats to consider for each type of job.

Upon graduating from college, after numerous years of deep-diving into application development, you were fairly certain what your career would look like. You’d be hired by a company as a software engineer and ride that out, making bank until you could retire rich and happy.

But then life threw a few obstacles in your way. One of those obstacles might have come in the form of you not fitting within that corporate environment. Or, maybe you found you were, in fact, perfectly suited for such an arrangement. The business-friendly world of 9–5 employment was/is a perfect fit for your temperament and needs.

Or not. You never know until you try, right?

What if you had a way to at least get an idea if you were best suited towing the standard company line or more inclined to succeed as a developer within the realm of outsourcing services?

Let’s take a look and see if we can help you make that decision.

Why you might want to work for a regular company

There are those who do actually function better within the realm of a regular company. But what is it that makes this relationship work out so well?

First and foremost, it’s all about regularity. For those who depend on their future being as “knowable” as possible, the idea of having a regular schedule that rarely fluctuates can be appealing.

The concept of regularity is appealing to quite a large cross-section of developers. Why? Because everything else in their lives is always in flux — new technologies, new methods, new languages, new APIs, and new schools of thought. These make for a constant ebb and flow of change, so having a solid foundation to stand on makes it much easier to go roll with change.

Along those same lines is a distaste for change. You might have focused on a single programming language in college and would prefer to stick with it. If you’re hired by a company as a Java programmer, you can be sure (unless something big happens in the industry) you’ll be working as a Java programmer for a long time. In other words, you’re not going to have to worry about much in the way of change.

Another reason a regular company might appeal to you is the corporate ladder. You enter the company as an entry-level software engineer, with hopes of graduating to senior engineer and maybe all the way up to CTO. Titles really get you going and helping the company grow in ways beyond coding is where you have your sights set. If that’s you, the regular company gig is where it’s at.

Why you might want to work for an outsourced development firm

Working for an outsourced development firm is drastically different than working for a regular company. Where you’d be coding applications and services to serve a singular purpose and business, with an outsourced firm, you’ll find yourself creating and perfecting software for multiple companies and purposes.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to know every single programming language on the planet. You could still be a Java developer, only for numerous companies. One day you could be crafting code for a desktop application, the next for a mobile app, and the next for a web service.

Do you like change? Do you like constant challenge? What about the idea that your future is defined by never-ending possibilities?

If so, you might be the perfect fit for one of the many software outsourcing companies.

But what about climbing that golden corporate ladder? Sure, it’s the goal of many engineers. But for a growing number of workers, the freedom associated with a more freelance style work environment, where you’re working short-term gigs for different companies, is better suited to the gig-worker frame of mind.

Another aspect of working for an outsourced development firm is that of a continually changing landscape. One week you may be working for Company X, the next for Business Y. For anyone that gets bored easily, the ever-changing landscape of outsourced work makes for a desirable affair.

And although you might be worried you’ll find yourself swimming in very deep waters without a lifeboat, you won’t. Working with an outsourced development firm isn’t akin to freelance. You still report to a company — it’s just not the company you’re coding for. Instead, you report to the hiring firm who is responsible for deploying teams (or individual developers) to a business.

So, effectively, the outsourced dev firm is the best of both worlds, between a regular corporate job and a freelance gig.

The caveats of each

Depending on where you live, there might be caveats to consider for each type of job. For example, if you live in the United States, you might find the necessity for health insurance will preclude you from working with an outsourced development firm. Although not every firm is created equal, most consider you a contract or freelance worker, so there’ll be no benefits to be had. So, if you require health insurance, you best look for standard company employment.

As to the caveats for working in a regular business, you could wind up getting pigeonholed into a single role, one that only allows for a certain amount of upward mobility. In other words, you could find yourself developing on one project, with one language, for the entirety of your career. That could also equate to a fairly low ceiling to your earning potential.

Conclusion

Chances are pretty good that you are perfectly suited for one of these two career paths. But fear not, if you’re unsure which is the right one for you, you’ll find out pretty quickly. Once you’re employed by either a standard company or an outsourced development firm, you’ll know within a few months if you’ve made the right choice. If you find yourself unhappy with the environment you’re in, seek out the other, and see if it’s not the ideal fit.