[ChuckMcM]

One of the best talks I had was a two hour discussion of this very topic with John Walecka. John had invested in Freegate and we were discussing risks and why things failed.

He helped me understand both the concept of 'stacking risk' (where the startup is taking on more unknowns than it should) and 'over burning' where a startup attempts to hire itself into shortening its schedule which not only fails but exhausts needed capital.

To this day I never hire an engineer if I cannot write down EXACTLY what they will be working on and how it will help the schedule. Even if they are a "super star", if I don't have something for them to do that will check off things that are currently on the path to the next milestone, no offer.

Whenever I've watched over hiring from inside or outside it tends to end badly.

[vishnugupta]

> Whenever I've watched over hiring from inside or outside it tends to end badly.

I can relate with this. I first saw this phenomenon play out twice within a large FAANG company where the leadership wanted to ship an immensely complex product fast by throwing people and so over hired. Both products failed miserably.

And the I saw a repeat of this at the entire company level. The extent of over hire was immense, fueled by cheap investor money and their push to grow-at-all-cost. The company is now just barely managing to survive, after a few rounds of layoffs and pivots.

Over hiring is a huge red flag from the long term success perspective. However, as an individual, if you get in early on in the cycle and play it well you will rise very fast in the org chart. I’ve seen a few do that consistently. Good for them I guess.

[thewarrior]

The two are connected. Over hiring is done on purpose to game promotions. In startups for funding. Depending on the timing and where you are in the hierarchy it can go either way. People switch every 2 years now so it’d doesn’t matter how the team does in the long term.