[theptip]

The correct metric is not what the employee’s salary is, but the opportunity cost of their time. If all your engineers are working on urgent stuff, and each engineer adds in $1-2m of revenue a year, then the cost to your business of taking them off feature work to do recruiting is not $150/hr.

[renewiltord]

Yes, of course. Reasoning for not using that is as follows: if conservative estimates yield a yes, you don't need to assume more.

I know salary (2 years out of date). I don't know oppo cost.

[theptip]

Good point, fair.