How to Differentiate Software Engineering?

How do you expect people to answer without knowing anything about your company and your team?

If you don’t know what they would lose if they were to get rid of you, how can you expect us to know?

If my team left my company they would lose knowledge that would take a decade to recover due to technology complexity + specific domain knowledge that no contractor would be able to pick up in a timely manner. Because of said knowledge the day to day operations would halt and no one would be able to run it, leaving all the people that use our work to make all the sales for the company unable to work.

You have to figure out what your value is, if any.

Edit: if I may add something for all tech folks out there: you don’t program. You use programming as a tool to generate value for the company and its customers. You have to know and understand by heart how said value is generated. Tech is the means to an end and is useless without knowing how it’s used.

Is the push-back to replace the entire department with contractors or bring on contractors in ancillary roles? If the former, then the simplest one-liner that I can give you is that "you can't outsource your way to prosperity." Never going to happen. I would suggest asking why they wish to relinquish control of their business to a third-party(s) that have no intrinsic motivation in the success of the business? Given that you are in R&D, knowledge/experience is the company's bread and butter and handing that over to contractors is an unnecessary risk.

Your programmers have a shared experience base with the other departments. They aren't considering all the time and energy that would be required to bring new people up to speed on a given subject without that history.

Remind management of those potential costs, and the value of all that shared experience.

Also, talk to the staff (not management) of the other departments, and get them thinking about the implications that would happen in their lives if your staff were outsourced. They could probably give you estimates of your value to help make your case to management.

Contractors are often much more expensive. Also they're mercenaries. They don't have the company's interests at heart.

Loyalty has a value. You can train people for things specific to the company. You can build cultures and processes around the company's needs. A contractor can be the spearhead, but you still need a spear shaft.

Don’t, just bail on any place that doesn’t get this. If it’s not in the company’s DNA it never will be.