In practice this simply doesn’t pan out. There are many many terrible freelancers out there. And without someone technical in-house vetting their work, you’ll have no choice but to judge their based on their output. This is a huge problem.
Why? There are many terrible everything out there. Eventually you are always relying on the quality of your developers' output and their honesty in explaining it whether they are hired as employees or working freelance.
Crucially that is as true of the technical in-house person as the outside freelancer. I've seen scenarios with my own eyes where an experienced freelancer was better - sometimes much better - than the in-house "senior" people but the latter made critical reports about the freelancer to management. Maybe they were defensive because someone better than them was brought in. Maybe - and I suspect this is more likely in at least some of the situations I'm remembering here - the in-house person was so far below the outside freelancer in ability that they simply didn't realise how much better the freelancer's work was than their own or understand the reasons the freelancer was following certain good practices and the risks they were mitigating by doing so.
So my question to you is this: Why do you believe you can trust someone to evaluate the quality of the work more accurately and honestly just because they are inside your company?
Why? There are many terrible everything out there. Eventually you are always relying on the quality of your developers' output and their honesty in explaining it whether they are hired as employees or working freelance.
Crucially that is as true of the technical in-house person as the outside freelancer. I've seen scenarios with my own eyes where an experienced freelancer was better - sometimes much better - than the in-house "senior" people but the latter made critical reports about the freelancer to management. Maybe they were defensive because someone better than them was brought in. Maybe - and I suspect this is more likely in at least some of the situations I'm remembering here - the in-house person was so far below the outside freelancer in ability that they simply didn't realise how much better the freelancer's work was than their own or understand the reasons the freelancer was following certain good practices and the risks they were mitigating by doing so.
So my question to you is this: Why do you believe you can trust someone to evaluate the quality of the work more accurately and honestly just because they are inside your company?