Hire When It Hurts

What It Covers

37signals cofounders explain their hiring philosophy of waiting until pain is felt before adding staff, avoiding premature hiring and underemployed workers creating unnecessary work.

Key Questions Answered

• •Hire on pain not anticipation: Wait until quality slips or critical work cannot be completed before hiring. Assess hurt over months not weeks to distinguish terminal frustration from temporary spikes.
• •Underemployed specialists create harmful work: Hiring roles like general counsel without forty-two weeks of necessary work leads to unnecessary complexity, longer contracts, and wasted resources like 125k on needless international trademark registrations.
• •Run with slack not to bone: Evolution from extreme leanness where losing one person creates crisis to maintaining modest margin. Sustainable hurt threshold is five out of ten over extended period, not eight or nine.