/hiring

name: hiring
description: "Use this skill when the user needs to hire a developer, find a technical contractor, vet engineering talent, manage freelancers, write a job brief, decide between hiring and contracting, or bring on their first technical team member. Also use when the user says 'I need a developer,' 'should I hire someone,' 'how do I find a contractor,' 'I need technical help I can't do myself,' or 'AI keeps getting this wrong, I need a human.' Covers contractor sourcing, vetting, management, and the founder-developer working relationship for non-technical founders."

Hiring Technical Help

The most expensive developer is the cheap one who breaks things. This skill helps you decide when to hire vs. use AI tools, find and vet contractors, and manage the founder-developer relationship — even if you can't evaluate code yourself.

**This skill is for hiring and managing technical people.** For writing specs contractors can build from, use **plan**. For trying AI tools before hiring, use **build**. For legal contracts and IP protection, use **legal**.

Core Principles

• Hire for the problem, not the role. Define what you need done before you look for who can do it.
• A great contractor beats a mediocre full-time hire every time at this stage.
• You can't evaluate code, but you can evaluate communication, reliability, and results.
• The most expensive developer is the cheap one who breaks things. Budget for quality.
• AI tools have moved the line. Many things that used to require hiring now don't.

When to Hire vs. When to Use AI Tools

You Do NOT Need to Hire If:

• You need a landing page → Use Lovable, Framer, or Webflow
• You need a CRUD app (create, read, update, delete data) → Use Claude Code, Lovable, or Replit
• You need to integrate Stripe → Tell AI to do it (see payments)
• You need basic auth → AI tools handle this well
• You need UI polish → AI + design system handles 80% of this
• You need simple bug fixes → Describe the bug to Claude Code

You DO Need to Hire When:

• **Complex integrations** — Connecting to enterprise APIs with poor documentation
• **Performance at scale** — Your app is slow under load and AI-generated fixes aren't working
• **Data migrations** — Moving from one database or architecture to another
• **Security audit** — You need someone to verify your AI-generated code is secure
• **Native mobile apps** — AI tools are weaker here (improving, but still)
• **Infrastructure you don't understand** — Something is broken in production and you can't debug it
• **Ongoing maintenance** — You're spending more time fixing than building

Decision Framework

Do I need to hire?
1. Can I describe the task clearly enough for an AI tool? → Try AI first
2. Did AI fail or produce something that doesn't work? → Try a different AI prompt
3. Still stuck after 2-3 serious attempts? → Time to hire
4. Is this a one-time task or ongoing? → One-time = contractor. Ongoing = consider part-time.

**Tell AI:**

I'm trying to decide if I need to hire a developer. Here's what I need done:
[describe the task]

I've tried: [what AI tools you used, what happened]

Help me decide: can this be solved with a better prompt or approach,
or do I genuinely need a human developer? If I need to hire,
what type (freelance contractor, part-time dev, agency)?

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Types of Technical Help

| Type | Cost | Best For | Where to Find | |------|------|----------|---------------| | **Freelance contractor** | $50-150/hr | One-time tasks, specific features, bug fixes | Upwork, Toptal, referrals | | **Part-time developer** | $2-6K/mo | Ongoing development, 10-20 hrs/week | Indie communities, referrals | | **Fractional CTO** | $3-8K/mo | Architecture decisions, code review, hiring other devs | Toptal, referrals, FounderPath | | **Dev agency** | $5-20K/project | Full builds, redesigns | Clutch.co, referrals | | **Technical co-founder** | Equity | Building the company together, long-term | Co-founder matching, network |

**For most solo bootstrapped founders: Start with a freelance contractor.**

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Finding Good Developers

Where to Look (Ranked by Quality)

1. **Personal referrals** — Ask other founders: "Who built your product?" Best source by far. 2. **Indie communities** — Indie Hackers, r/forhire, Twitter/X developer community. Developers here understand SaaS. 3. **Toptal** — Pre-vetted, expensive ($80-150+/hr), but high quality and low risk. 4. **Upwork** — Huge pool, variable quality. You need to vet carefully. More on this below. 5. **Arc.dev, Gun.io, Lemon.io** — Curated freelancer platforms. Mid-range pricing. 6. **Agency** — Good for well-defined projects. Expensive. You lose the direct relationship.

Red Flags When Evaluating

• **No portfolio or GitHub** — They should be able to show you work they've done
• **Can't explain things simply** — If they use jargon to answer simple questions, they'll be hard to work with
• **"I can build anything"** — Specialists outperform generalists. Look for experience with your stack
• **No questions about your project** — Good developers ask questions before estimating
• **Price way below market** — $15-25/hr for a "senior developer" means they're either lying about experience or in a situation where communication overhead will eat the savings
• **Won't do a small paid trial** — The best test is a real task (see below)

Green Flags

• They've built SaaS products before (not just websites or WordPress)
• They ask clarifying questions about requirements
• They push back on bad ideas ("You don't need that. Here's a simpler approach.")
• They communicate proactively ("Here's my progress. I'm blocked on X.")
• They have experience with your stack (React, Next.js, Supabase, whatever you're using)
• They can show you something they built that works and looks good

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The Paid Trial: Best Hiring Strategy

Never hire based on interviews alone. Do a paid trial.

How It Works

1. Pick a real but self-con