[rosser]

An empty seat is better than the wrong person.

This. So very, very much this.

A bad hire at the executive level won't merely slow you down. You might lose ground, or possibly even crash and burn. I've seen it happen, and I'm sure I'm not the only person here who can say that.

[ryandrake]

"An empty seat is better than the wrong person."

Perhaps at the executive level, but I'm not sure I agree with this as a general hiring strategy. This mentality might go pretty far to explain why there are so many companies that claim they can't seem to find enough talent, while un(der)employment is still high.

Companies interview and interview, but are petrified of hiring "the wrong person" so they just keep on interviewing fruitlessly.

[ig1]

The wrong person doesn't just produce less value than the right person, they can actively create negative value.

They can do shoddy work that negatively impacts the ability of other employees to do work, they can cause reputational damage to the company if they're public-facing, they can create a toxic work culture that disincentives other employees.

[unclebucknasty]

This is a tough one. The thing is that for small companies, bad hires can be disastrous for any position key to the company's execution.

For instance, hiring a bad dev can be very costly. There is all of the time/work required to find, onboard and provide knowledge transfer, the real expense associated with the employee (i.e. compensation), and the fact that it generally takes time to determine it's not working. In that time the product hasn't moved forward as it could have and the company is out of a lot of time and money. And, frequently, it is the principals who are taking time away from building and running the company in order to try to hire/train. So, it's an even bigger disruption to the company.

For, say, a bootstraped company that has a small dev team (or the founders are the only dev) and not a LOT of money, this can be really painful or game ending. There is a real choice to be made between rolling the dice that you'll find good talent, or pushing forward at a slower pace, but without the disruption of hiring/training and without the additional expense.

[tankenmate]

It's the equivalent of old school investing; sit on the money until a really really good investment comes along; in the mean time you miss lots of good opportunities because you don't have a good framework for managing risk. Angel investing changed all that. Maybe there should be a greater move to angel employing; a small commitment up front until traction is proved.