5.3 KiB
Solution vs. Staff Augmentation
#comparison #positioning #pricing
Summary
The two business models a development shop can sell, and the claim that you must pick exactly one. Primary source is now 2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively (which lays out the full table and the one valid combination); 2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era condenses it. The 2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer method doesn't discuss the choice but presupposes the Solution side.
Side-by-Side
| Solution | Staff Augmentation | |
|---|---|---|
| What's sold | An outcome and accountability for it | Bodies/hours slotted into the client's process |
| Margin | 30–50% | Race to the bottom on rate |
| Replaceability | Hard to replace | Replaced within a week |
| Priced against | Value of the result | Competitors' hourly rates |
| Direction under AI pressure | Defensible — the buyer needs judgment | Directly substituted by the ~$200/mo alternative |
| Compatible with | productized-service, outcome-based-selling, pricing-from-value | Hourly billing, commodity positioning |
The Core Claim
Choose one — running both under a single brand collapses everything into staff augmentation.
"Solution vs Staff Augmentation: выбирай одно… Одновременно под одним брендом = всё скатится в staff aug." (2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era)
The anti-patterns table restates it as: Solution or Staff Aug under separate brands — never both models on one site. So the claim isn't that staff aug is illegitimate; it's that the two can't share a brand, because the cheaper, more legible offer wins every comparison a prospect makes. A buyer who can see an hourly rate will anchor on it, and no outcome pitch survives contact with a visible cheaper unit price.
The one valid combination (2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively): sell and deploy a solution first, then leave a person on support afterward. That gives long cash flow and continued contact — the sequence matters (solution → staff), because the relationship is anchored on the outcome before any hourly work appears.
Worked example — the Squad-model. A former outstaffing shop whose seniors sat "on the shelf" next to $25/hr Indian devs stopped selling people entirely; assembled 4-person squads (2 engineers + QA + PM); chose an ICP of startups that just raised a round; and offered "Start in 7 days, price of two US programmers, something to show investors by month 6, or we finish at our expense." Result claimed: ~19 squads × $15–18k/mo ≈ $7M/yr, 90 people. It's the Solution model in one case — outcome + accountability + narrow ICP + productized package — and evidence that "you need a big T&M team" is a dogma (future-of-engineering-work: team size is no longer a signal).
Why It Matters Here
This is the structural precondition for most of the vault:
- pricing-from-value is unavailable to a staff-aug brand — rate comparison is the buyer's default frame.
- methodology-as-moat can't develop when you're supplying bodies to someone else's method.
- ai-market-shift makes the choice urgent rather than academic: staff aug is precisely the undifferentiated execution the ~$200/mo substitute attacks, while Solution work is the "$6 spent per $1 of AI" side of the same shift.
Evidence
- Primary: the full Solution vs Staff-Aug table, the "collapses into staff aug" claim, the one valid combination (solution → support), and the Squad-model example — 2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively
- Condensed: "выбирай одно… Solution — маржа 30-50%… Одновременно под одним брендом = всё скатится в staff aug" — 2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era
- Implicit: the entire offer-design method assumes Solution — 2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer
Related Pages
- productized-service — the Solution model's delivery form
- pricing-from-value — the margin consequence
- ai-market-shift — why staff aug is the exposed side
- outcome-based-selling — what Solution actually sells
- overview
Contradictions / Uncertainty
- Stated as a law, with no counter-example examined.
Status: tentative. Firms plausibly do run both under separate brands or business units — the source allows this — but the claim that a single brand always collapses is asserted from experience, not demonstrated. - The 30–50% margin figure and the $7M Squad-model numbers are the speaker's (dmitry-rodenko) own anecdotes — attributable now, still uncorroborated.
- The transition is partly addressed after all: the "solution → then leave a person on support" combination is exactly a staged path, but the source doesn't cover a shop currently living on staff-aug revenue funding the switch to Solution — where the choice actually bites for a small operator.
Next Questions
- Is there a documented case of both models coexisting under one brand successfully?
- What's the sequence for a shop currently living on staff-aug revenue — how do you fund the switch?
- Does the collapse mechanism depend on the two offers being visible to the same buyers?