While I appreciate Carson's candidness in blogging how they do things, there's a couple of dangerous things in his recommendations.<p>"I’d recommend waiting until you’re overwhelmed with your work."
This is a bad idea. Do not. Hire when you can afford to pay close attention to what you are doing. Your first hire is crucial to your company culture and direction, so you need to be on the spot here. Packed schedule and cognitive overload do not a good hiring setup make.<p>Additionally, that recommendation assumes that you are hiring someone to do the stuff that you don't have the time to do. While that's certainly true and helpful in many cases, it shouldn't be the whole truth. I like the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself". Because if you do, maybe you'll see that you weren't packing your schedule with the right things after all.<p>"Avoid hiring a friend as a first employee."
Right, there is the fact that it potentially changes the dynamic. But not in all cases. If you, say, hire your closest friend since childhood, it's very possible that your friendship will survive anything the work life throws at you, and makes that in turn stronger. On the other hand, hiring a more 'distant' friend has the massive benefit that you not only know the person, but likely know their network, too, and there is no better filter or background check than sharing the same social circle. Carson does mention this in "ask friends for recommendations" of course.<p>"I’d recommend your first employee should be a designer with strong frontend dev skills."
Um. What if that's exactly what we don't need? Ok, cheap shot, but it's a bit silly to say that everyone needs a designer-dev (then again, Treehouse training does prepare people for that...).<p>And while he says that you should start with freelancers, he doesn't mention that the first hire can also (in most legislations) start as a contractor or on trial period, which is a safety net for both the employee and the employer.