Don’t get infected by BLOAT

I’ve written before about the importance of hiring slow.

Not only do I see many people hiring too fast, but they often hire too many.

Far too often people’s answer to most problems is: WE NEED MORE PEOPLE!

More people creates more complexity… 

and introduces additional points of failure. 

Avoid the temptation to answer every challenge with hiring “JUST ONE MORE PERSON.”

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a few hours in a small group setting with Jason Fried, CEO of 37signals, at their office in Chicago. 

As he walked us through how he runs his company, he mentioned that they had only 50 team members and planned only one net new hire that entire year!

At the time, I was CEO of Daxko. 37signals and Daxko were both doing “tens of millions in EBITDA” (that’s all he’d share regarding their size), so we were at least in the same broad size range. 

During a break, I went up to him and said: “Jason, I’m guessing we’re in a similar revenue range, but I have 250 team members, and I can’t believe you only have 50!”…

“What am I doing wrong?!?”

He said (and I paraphrase): “We make very fast decisions and are typically very agile…

but the one thing we really agonize over is hiring just one more person.” 

37signals had made avoiding bloat part of their DNA.

Similarly, in a Warren Buffett interview a couple years ago, his response to a question about why Berkshire Hathaway had leased office space all these years rather than buying the 15-story building where they are headquartered caught my attention.

In part, he responded by saying, “If we had a big headquarters office, we’d fill it. Believe me. I mean, if we had 15 floors of our own, we’d have 15 floors worth of people.” 

Learning from these examples, we should all get in the habit of debating the need for every new role…

and question whether there is another better alternative.