Tech Hiring Made Crystal Clear · chapter 3: Do You Really Need to Hire?
The decide gate
2026-09-09
Three exits before the funnel opens: automate, contract, or hire, with the recurring-pain test deciding between the last two.
Below: the paragraph from the book that builds this idea, then the diagram itself (Figure 3.1), and a recap. About a minute of reading.
What separates the contract exit from the hire exit is time, and this is my rule of thumb for the whole decision: hire when the pain recurs, not when it spikes once. A migration, a redesign, a compliance push, a launch crunch: spikes. They end. A contractor is built for work that ends. Support tickets that grow every month, releases that always need the same missing skill, infrastructure that pages someone weekly: recurring. Recurring pain deserves an owner whose whole job is to make it shrink. The economics back the rule up: as the next section shows, a hire carries a x 1.4 cost multiplier and months of ramp, so a hire only beats a contractor when the need clearly outlasts the ramp. Figure 3.1 draws the gate as a decision tree.
Recap
- The idea: Three exits before the funnel opens: automate, contract, or hire, with the recurring-pain test deciding between the last two.
- The picture: Figure 3.1, from chapter 3 ("Do You Really Need to Hire?") of Tech Hiring Made Crystal Clear.
- Go deeper: the chapter builds this step by step, with recipes and sources at the end.
This diagram is one of many in Tech Hiring Made Crystal Clear.
Every chapter opens with the gist, draws the hard ideas, and ends with recipes and sources.
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