Slow Company Hiring

My philosophy on hiring is that you should hire someone because they’re a good person and a good fit for your company, rather than hiring just because you need to fill a seat. This means taking the time to find people who are good at what they do and are hungry to learn new things, rather than finding out that your project is slipping behind and you need more engineers, testers, writers, etc.

This is the Slow Company approach to hiring. It’s not about the raw number of people you’re hiring in a year, though if you’re doubling in size every 3 months, you’re probably going too fast. It’s about taking the time to find and court the best people out there. It’s about hiring because you found someone who would be a great fit in the company, even if they don’t have a project to work on right away.

When you’re bootstrapped, there’s no pressure to scale up quickly in order to make a land grab before your competitors snatch up all the talent or users. If you took VC money, you’re under pressure to deliver big results, and to do so quickly. This means you hire rockstar engineers and designer ninjas, people who have track records or blog a lot about what they’ve done, because it sounds impressive to the funders.

It also means you hire a lot of people to “diversify the risk,” in fund-manager-speak. Nevermind the staffing and management issues, you should be like Color and have 7 founders. “One of them is bound to succeed!” No, the reality is that the vision becomes muddled and you’re spending more time dealing with communication problems between parts of the company than with actually shipping a good product.

Instead, a Slow Company looks for people who are in it for the long term. Obviously we want someone who wants to learn and wants to work hard, but who also know that it’s better to be well rested so that the 40 hours you put in are the best 40 hours you can give. That work is best done when your mind is clear and functioning properly, and not clouded by lack of sleep. Working 80 hours a week is a sure recipe for hitting a brick wall and burning out. Once the project ships, they’ll be looking for greener pastures.

A Slow Company also invests in its employees by providing the best equipment and providing training in whatever they need. They’re going to be with the company for years, because the company and its products are going to be around for more then 2 or 3 years. They’re not in it for the stock options, and they’d hate to see the company sold and turned into another property that AOL or Google owns. They’re in it for the customers, and for making a product that is the best it could be.

Slow Company hiring isn’t about limiting how many employees you have, it’s about hiring for the long term.