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Hiring in-house developers vs a studio for your first product

Hire in-house when the product is your company and you will build it for years. Use a studio to get to a first version fast, then hire against a working product and real users. Most founders who try to hire first spend 3–6 months and a large part of their runway before a line of code ships.

Side by side

	In-house hire (2 engineers)	Authect (fixed-price studio)
Time before work starts	2–4 months to recruit, plus notice periods	Kick-off call this week; build starts on approval
Monthly cost	Two senior salaries plus taxes, equipment, tools and hiring fees	A fixed project price; nothing between projects
Time to first release	Add 2–4 months of hiring to the build time	3–6 weeks for most first versions
Skill coverage	Whatever the two people know	Backend, front end, infrastructure, AI and security across the team
Flexibility	Hard to scale down; layoffs are costly and slow	Scale up or pause per project
Long-term ownership	Best possible: the team lives with the code	Good: documented handover, standard stack, optional support
Risk if it doesn't work	Salaries continue	The project ends

When to hire in-house

You have funding for at least 12 months of two salaries and the product is the company.
You (or a co-founder) can interview, manage and review engineers.
The roadmap is long and continuous rather than a launch followed by iteration.

When to use a studio first

You need something live to raise money, sign a customer or test demand.
You can't yet afford, or justify, two permanent senior engineers.
You want to hire later against a real product, which makes the hire easier and the job description honest.

The sequence that works

Build the first version with a studio at a fixed price, launch, learn, and hire your first engineer when there is a product to own and revenue or funding to pay them. The handover is the point where this either works or fails, so insist on documentation, tests, a standard stack and a runbook. Authect delivers all four on every project and stays available for the first months if you want the overlap.

Common questions

Will an in-house engineer be able to take over code built by a studio?

If it is on a standard stack with documentation and tests, yes, within a week or two. Authect builds on Next.js, TypeScript, Node and Postgres, and hands over architecture docs and a runbook precisely so a new hire can own it.

Can a studio work alongside my existing developer?

Yes. We work in your repository, follow your conventions and review process, and pair with your engineer where it helps.

Isn't paying a studio and then hiring paying twice?

You pay once for the first version and once for the team that grows it. The alternative is paying salaries for months before there is anything to grow.

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