[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.