“Only Hire When It Hurts” Is Garbage Advice
There’s an unfortunate mantra among startups that goes something like this: “Only hire when it hurts.”
At its core, it’s meant to encourage discipline. Don’t overhire, don’t bloat, be lean. But taken literally, it’s a disaster. It’s how you end up with burned-out founders, confused teams, and completely undisciplined searches that waste everyone’s time.
I get why the phrase caught on. It sounds scrappy and noble, the kind of tough-love advice that fits neatly into a thread on LinkedIn or X. But in practice, it’s become an excuse for reactive leadership, one that prioritizes short-term pain relief over long-term business health.
There’s nothing disciplined about that.
Let me explain what I mean with a story I hear, in different versions, almost every week.
“I need a head of ops. Now.”
It starts like this.
You’re a founder. You’re busy in an unhealthy way, fielding 15+ context switches a day between sales calls, customer escalations, strategic partnerships, board prep, tax issues, and team management. Your inbox is exploding. Your accountant is pinging you about some obscure sales tax issue in North Dakota. You’re running on caffeine and chaos.
Your gut says: I need a head of operations.
So you start asking around: investors, advisors, other founders. You piece together a job description. You’re not totally sure what you’re looking for, but maybe it sounds something like this: “We need someone who can fly, dive, read minds, and single-handedly keep the plane from crashing.”
You run a quick search, mostly “in-network.” You get 400 applicants. You scan a few resumes (man, you wish you already had a head of ops to deal with this). You bring in a few people to interview. You add a few stakeholders to join the process because some think you need an executive assistant and others think you need a COO.
Eight weeks later, no one “feels like the right fit.”
You’re back to square one. Only now you’re even busier, and even more convinced you don’t have time to fix your hiring process.
See the Issue?
This is what happens when you let pain drive your hiring instead of planning.
Founders often think waiting until it hurts will force clarity; that somehow, the stress will sharpen their thinking. It doesn’t. It clouds it. When you’re overwhelmed, you’re in survival mode. You’re reactive, not strategic. And you’re far more likely to launch a hasty, mis-scoped search that burns time, money, and credibility.
The irony? The founders who say they don’t have time to think about hiring are often the ones who spend the most time stuck in endless, unproductive searches.
What This Reveals about Leadership
I see this pattern a lot, and let me assure you, this is not a hiring problem. It’s a leadership problem. Specifically, it reveals three things:
- Lack of foresight and planning discipline
If your company’s strategy depends on key hires, those hires need to be mapped into your growth plan before you’re underwater. “Hiring when it hurts” is not a strategy; it’s a symptom of poor forecasting. - An inability to delegate and prioritize
If you’re running your own search while juggling 15 priorities, you’re not leading, you’re firefighting. Leaders who cling to every decision (or refuse to invest in help) create a bottleneck that slows the entire organization down. - Discomfort with investing in infrastructure
Let’s be honest: many founders resist spending on recruiting until it’s already too late. They view it as a cost, not an investment. But whether it’s a talent partner, a hiring framework, or simply setting aside time for thoughtful workforce planning, upfront investment always costs less than reactive hiring chaos.
The Smarter Approach to Hiring
Here’s the fun part: most of the founders who get caught in this cycle know they should have done it differently. They’ll say something like, “Yeah, I should have thought long and hard, and maybe invested some budget upfront. But who has time for that?”
Exactly.
The founders who break this cycle do one thing differently: they build hiring into their operating rhythm. They set up a process before they need it. They invest in clarity before urgency hits. And when it does hurt, they’re ready to act decisively.
In the End
Hiring shouldn’t be a cry for help. It should be a reflection of discipline, clarity, and leadership maturity.
If your hiring process starts with, “I’m drowning,” it’s time to step back and ask: What system should I have put in place months ago to prevent this from happening again?
That’s what separates founders who build lasting companies from those who just survive the next quarter.
Want to Build a Process That Works Before It Hurts?
At Avenue Talent Partners, we’ve seen this movie too many time, so we built the Hiring OSTM to prevent it. It’s a repeatable, founder-friendly framework that helps you anticipate roles, act decisively, and make confident, efficient hires before the pain starts.
Want to learn more? Check it out here.
