Do not index
Do not index
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about hiring.
This will probably be the first of a series of blog posts about it, as I have more than one problem with the concept of building a team.
I’ve been working alone for a long time, and the few times I worked together with other individuals I was disappointed, to say the least.
Today, I want to share one concept that is kind of related to hiring: relationships are not linear.
Another way of saying this might be: 1+1 != 2.
So let’s go through an example: let’s say I’m making $10k/m. Most advice at this point is: ok, hire someone so you can make $10k/m + $X
Again, most people think adding a team member would mean increasing the output. Maybe you can make $15k/m, $20k/m, etc.
What they miss is that the change is not instant.
There are a lot of decays, above all initially because you have to train your new hire so your time will be spent there.
Then, you will need to manage him/her, and you will need to do that a lot more in the initial phase – so your time will be spent there.
Also, the new hire is going to make mistakes (it’s just entropy).
You need to account for all of these “decays”.
Following the example I made previously, that means that I would not be making the things that brought me to $10k in order to make time to train and manage the new hire, so by definition I would make less than $10k by hiring someone.
So in reality, even if 1 + 1 eventually can sum up to 2, it looks more like 1 + 1 = 0.3, initially.
Then maybe 1 + 1 = 0.5, 0.7 …
Eventually, hopefully, it’s a 2.
But it’s crucial to also account for that time where 1 + 1 will not equal 2
Thanks for reading,
Mike
