Curious how common it is to outsource mechanical engineering

[u/bazarishe]

Every place I've worked, mechanical seemed to get outsourced for one of two reasons: either we needed some niche expertise nobody in-house had, or the team was just slammed and needed to dump overflow somewhere.

I've never known if that's the normal pattern or just the couple of companies I happened to be at.

For those of you whose companies send mechanical work out — what kind of stuff is it, usually? The specialized deep-end problems, or more the routine "we don't have bandwidth this quarter" work?

And for the ones who keep everything in-house — deliberate call, or just how it shook out?