You avoided the question: what if something goes wrong with your in-house process? Is there anything you can do vis-à-vis your employee that you can't do to Google? Is that worth the price of keeping that person on your payroll, drawing benefits, driving up your costs? Would you fire them? Worth the employment claims risk?
These are not binary decisions. People vastly overestimate the value of doing things in-house. Most of the candidates for those "in-house" data management jobs couldn't cut it at Google. Why not leverage Google's HR and recruitment, training, and expertise in infrastructure operations to your benefit, esp. when you consider:
(1) that your own hires offer you no better protection; and
I didn't mean to avoid that question. I think I answered it implicitly: if you care about it then take control of it.
There's a lot that you can do about your employee that you can't to with Google. You can educate them, align their motivations with yours, etc. You can review the process and make sure it doesn't depend on one person. The list goes on.
Of course there are times to outsource. Times when practicality makes it necessary, when money makes it desirable, and so on. I do not take issue with the very idea. Sometimes it's the right choice. But sometimes it's the wrong choice.
Cool. It sounds like we draw that line in different places. I think your comments about aligning motivations is universal, and applies regardless of whether or not a services is sourced. My position is the illusion of "control" by assigning tasks to full time employees is almost never worthwhile in light of the enormous costs and risks of putting someone on your payroll. When a disaster strikes and you're caught empty-handed, you'll either be firing an employee, or firing a vendor. It's a lot easier and is less risky and it costs less to fire and replace a vendor.
These are not binary decisions. People vastly overestimate the value of doing things in-house. Most of the candidates for those "in-house" data management jobs couldn't cut it at Google. Why not leverage Google's HR and recruitment, training, and expertise in infrastructure operations to your benefit, esp. when you consider:
(1) that your own hires offer you no better protection; and
(2) backup solutions are necessarily imperfect.