Hiring

Conventional wisdom says to hire fast and scale your team. Rework says the opposite: hire slow, hire late, and only hire when it truly hurts. This chapter challenges everything you think you know about building a team.

Do It Yourself First

Never hire someone to do a job you haven’t tried yourself. If you don’t understand the work, you can’t manage it, evaluate it, or know if the person you hired is doing it well.

“Never hire anyone to do a job until you’ve tried to do it yourself first. That way, you’ll understand the nature of the work. You’ll know what a job well done looks like.” — Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Know the Work

• Doing the work first gives you empathy for the role
• You’ll write better job descriptions because you understand the reality
• You’ll spot great candidates because you know what great looks like
• You might even discover you don’t need to hire at all
• Managing work you don’t understand is a recipe for disaster

Hire When It Hurts

Don’t hire ahead of need. Don’t hire for hypothetical growth. Hire only when the pain of not hiring becomes unbearable. Every new hire adds complexity, communication overhead, and cost.

The Pain Threshold

• Hire only when doing without would be worse than the overhead of a new person
• Premature hiring leads to artificial work — people making up things to do
• Every hire adds communication complexity (and potential for meetings)
• A team of three communicating is 3 connections; a team of six is 15
• If you can manage without hiring, you should

Pass on Great People

Just because someone is talented doesn’t mean you need them right now. If you don’t have the work, don’t hire — no matter how impressive the candidate.

Resist the Temptation

• Hiring someone great “just because” creates problems without solving any
• Great people with nothing meaningful to do will leave or cause friction
• Wait until you have real work that matches their real talents
• Saying no to a great candidate today doesn’t mean no forever
• Creating positions to accommodate talent puts the cart before the horse

Strangers at a Cocktail Party

Hiring a bunch of people at once creates a team of strangers. They’re polite, guarded, and superficial — like people at a cocktail party. Real teamwork requires the trust and familiarity that only comes with time.

Grow Slowly

• Teams need time to build trust and develop working relationships
• Rapid hiring dilutes your culture faster than anything
• Each new person changes the team dynamic in ways you can’t predict
• Better to have a tight-knit team of five than a loose collection of fifteen
• Add one person at a time and let the team absorb the change

Resumes Are Ridiculous

Resumes are a fiction. They’re full of exaggerations, keyword-stuffed, and tell you almost nothing about how someone actually works. Cover letters are slightly better — at least they require effort and original thought.

Better Hiring Signals

• Look at what candidates have actually made, not what they claim
• A cover letter shows effort, personality, and communication skills
• Years of experience are less important than quality of experience
• Someone with six months of intense, meaningful work beats someone with six years of coasting
• Hire managers of one — people who set their own direction and don’t need babysitting

Hire Managers of One

The best people are self-directed. They don’t need close management, daily check-ins, or detailed instructions. They figure out what needs to be done and do it.

What to Look For

• People who define their own goals and execute without constant oversight
• A track record of self-driven accomplishments
• People who have run something — a side project, a freelance business, a community
• Independence and initiative over impressive credentials
• Trust is cheaper than management

Key Takeaways

• Do the job yourself before hiring someone to do it
• Hire only when the pain of not hiring becomes unbearable
• Pass on great people if you don’t have work that matches their talents
• Grow your team slowly to preserve culture and build real trust
• Resumes are mostly fiction — look at actual work and cover letters instead
• Hire managers of one: self-directed people who don’t need babysitting