On not hiring (2011)

&gt; <i>I&#x27;m not the world&#x27;s best designer by any means, nor am I &quot;classically trained&quot; in design as they say, but I like my results</i><p>Don&#x27;t we all. There should be a rule that says &quot;any non-designer can draw something that he himself can&#x27;t improve upon&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m certainly not arguing in favor of hiring for the sake of hiring, and freelance-everything is how I see the future.<p>But saying anyone can do anything if they just think about it hard enough is a bit of a stretch. &quot;Jack of all trades, master of none&quot; is real. An actual designer will save you lots of time.<p>Additionally, there is value in dialogue; having someone to talk to about specific problems helps immensely. And who&#x27;s going to take time to talk with you about minute details of your product if they&#x27;re not somehow compensated for it?<p>(Service idea: a Q&#x2F;A site where people could ask questions about their products as they&#x27;re building them. Does this exist already? Some subreddit maybe?)

I enjoyed clicking through the &quot;more about me&quot; link at the bottom of the article and seeing a big picture of Gabriel next to the text: &quot;We&#x27;re always hiring!&quot;<p>A couple people have started picking at the blanket statements in the article, and, granted, none of them are universally true. The point about DIY design irked me a bit, too. With that said, I think the kernel of this article is absolutely right: too many startups are far too intent on raising a bunch of money to hire a ton of people because they think that&#x27;s what growth is about. (And because running a big organization, even one that doesn&#x27;t have a customer base to speak of, is a fantastic ego trip.)

&gt;The wrong person can negatively impact your startup.<p>Of course this is true however the opposite is not only true, it&#x27;s more common. Otherwise, companies would fire more people than they hire.<p>&gt;People also tend to underestimate the time it will require post-hiring and post-ramp-up to manage your hire(s).<p>Categorically true. Hiring is a massive time sink. Recruitment companies are an exceptionally inefficient attempt at a solution which is why more and more early stage startups are recognising the value of hiring an inhouse recruiter.<p>&gt;And finally, hiring takes money. It increases your burn rate significantly.<p>Whilst true, just like the first point, the opposite is also true. Hiring the right people can have an immediate, positive impact on cash flow.<p>I do tend to agree with the overall premise that more staff != success and I think that&#x27;s certainly true of early stage companies.

&gt; I&#x27;m now three years into DuckDuckGo, and still haven&#x27;t hired.<p>What? According to the company webpage, they have 20 employees. [1] This post seems purposefully disingenuous, just to make a point.<p>1: <a href="https://duck.co/help/company/hiring" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duck.co&#x2F;help&#x2F;company&#x2F;hiring</a>

This is the key sentence:<p><i>&quot;We need to build x, y and z, ASAP.&quot; Before you&#x27;ve figured out distribution? What evidence do you have that x, y and z, once built, will make customer acquisition any easier?</i><p>Find the right path, then scale it up. Which yegg (Gabriel Weinberg) did, later that year [1].<p>One could disagree with him and say that hiring people allows you to find the right path quicker, which may or may not be true.<p>1: <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;traffic.html</a>

Can anyone talk to how well this has held up over time for them? A quick search on LinkedIn suggests only 2 employees. (<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=1476706" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;vsearch&#x2F;p?f_CC=1476706</a>) Is this really the case?