I’m looking to hire someone to help me with some design and web development needs.
I’m not quite ready to do that right now, but I will be soon.
I designed and built my first paid website in 1998 and have made thousands since. Doing this work has been part of my professional identity for over 2 decades.
I’ve also been an entrepreneur for almost as long, creating everything from side projects that garnered some heavy attention to startups that never really got off the ground to full-on 8-figure businesses. I know everybody’s a CEO nowadays, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am too.
That dichotomy puts me right in the crosshairs of the maker/manager conundrum that continues to wreak havoc on my schedule and leaves me feeling on an almost-daily basis like I’ve accomplished nothing. Lots of motion, not a lot of progress.
Every productivity matrix, book, and course I’ve come across over the last few years tells me that I need to give up some tasks so I can spend as much of my time, effort, and attention in my Genius Zone. As I wrote about in my 2023 Year in Review, I’m quickly arriving the idea that being a web designer and developer is in my Excellence Zone, not my Genius Zone—which is a tough thing for me to come to grips with after building a 26-year career and reputation on it. Still though, it does feel right to give this up to give me some much-needed focus.
So I know I need to hire. Now what?
My first step is figuring out what I can afford to pay for any amount of help. Between money set aside, projections, a little bit of investment money, and my accountant’s recommendations—hi Dad!—I can responsibly pay someone $3k–$5k/month or $36k–$60k/year. (Whether that’s part-time or full-time and contracting or employment is something I’m still deliberating, and I’ll admit that employee benefits aren’t exactly a headache I’m excited to take on right now.)
That financial range determines a lot. Average compensation in tech as of this writing is $111,193/year ($9,266.08/month), about double the high-range of what I can pay. That probably means I may be limited to a 1) a senior person at part-time availability (20ish hours/week) or 2) a junior person at full-time availability (32ish hours/week).
Unfortunately, a junior-level person won’t cut it here. I ran an apprenticeship program for 7 years that 20 people went through. I regularly hired interns and juniors on SuperFriendly projects. For years before that, I managed interns and juniors at other agencies. I’m intimately familiar with the level and pace of work from most junior people. As I’m looking for someone to take over the work that I’d be otherwise doing, an average junior person’s work would probably add more to my plate in order to give them the support to be successful. I get quite a few offers from people volunteering to work for me for free. As much as I appreciate it, I suspect I’ll be helping them more than they’re helping me. I believe strongly that there's a place for that, but not every situation has to be that.
Do I really think I can get someone senior for a rate that would typically be paid to someone more junior? For better or worse: yes, I do. Here’s why:
For one, getting a job in tech is really hard right now. I’ve heard stories of it taking a year or more for some to land a new job with no income in the interim. Perhaps there’s someone really good who could use the interim cash for 6–18 months while waiting to line up something else.
Another factor is that I have other forms of compensation that could be valuable to some people. For someone who mostly needs cash, my offer is probably unappealing. But I believe there are people out there who are skilled and just need the right opportunity… not the opportunity to learn, but the opportunity to demonstrate their already-honed skills, the opportunity to receive some direction and modeling from someone me, and the opportunity to get access to my network to connect them to an even better opportunity for them afterwards. I believe there’s a person out there that would take less cash for those opportunities and see it as a good investment in their careers.
I’m working on writing a full job description that outlines the role and responsibilities in detail, as well as a few suggestions as to who might be the right kind of person for this, but I’m at least a few weeks (more realistically, a few months) away from finishing and posting that. Surprisingly, even a short tweet that I was going to be writing about this has my DMs flooded from people who have already “applied.” I don’t expect anyone to tell me how they’re a good fit without a job description, but if you wanna shoot your shot anyway, here’s a short form where you can tell me why you think you’d be a good fit. Hint: if you’re not following my portfolio tips, you probably won’t be a good fit for me.
Even thinking about changing the way I hire is already starting to poke at some of my values.
I don’t subscribe to the idea of “paying people what they’re worth,” but I do believe in compensating someone well, a thing that only they can determine, not me. I don’t want to take advantage of anyone, especially as someone who holds some influence over others. I always want everyone that works for me to feel well compensated, through the combination of cash, learning, and access that’s right for them in this season of their work.
I’m realizing I’ve always hired with the premise that I’d be giving someone more than they’re giving me. Naturally, this biases me toward hiring people that are around one notch below the job I’m hiring them to do so they can stretch and learn that skill—often directly from me.
But I’ve also been reflecting on how I act the complete opposite when my clients have hired me. I don’t expect that I’ll get more than they will. I expect that they’ll get more than I do out of it. I take the default position that what I deliver will be above and beyond what they’ve paid for. I’m fine with that. Even moreso, I think that’s the job of being a great service provider and the key to it.
These two perspectives don’t fit together well. I’ve learned about myself that both of these approaches share the same root: a fear of ever being indebted to anyone. It works, but it also often leaves me at a disadvantage whether I’m the hirer or the hired. So I’ve been giving myself the permission to want to find someone who will happily deliver to me as a client what I deliver to my own clients.
The common wisdom in hiring and delegation—mostly to short-circuit an endless search for a person that doesn’t exist—is to be fine with someone who can do tasks at 80% of the level you do it. Speaking from personal experience, it works! I’ve had that approach for years. But over years, those 20% compromises add up. I want someone who can do a task at 100% of what I can do. Not in the way I do it—I actually care very little how someone works—but in the outcomes they deliver.
Heck, I’m really honest, I want someone who can do a task at 120% of what I can do. When I share that with people, I always get the same pushback: “Come on, Dan; is that really realistic? Can anyone fulfill that expectation?”
Yes. I do, for my clients.
(Oof, it’s really uncomfortable to toot my own horn like that. But hey, it’s my newsletter.)
Some of you have probably seen where this is going already, but who I really want to hire is the 15-year ago version of me. I wasn’t the best then—I’m still not the best now—but I was still helpful to people who hired me. I made their lives easier by taking work away from them, by taking initiative. I was affordable. I recognized the value of opportunity. I recognized that compensation takes many forms. I didn’t deliver every time—I wasn’t perfect and still am not—but I did deliver way more times than I didn’t. I’d love to hire a person who is currently doing their version of what I used to do 15 years ago who wants to do a version of what I do now. Perhaps, by working with me, their 15-year journey shortens to 10 or 5.
Overall, I’m realizing that a lot of my past history and values have been at my expense. I’ve limited the growth of my own businesses by holding these things as sacred and unchangeable. But it’s time for me to try on some other strategies. As the saying goes, “What got you here won’t get you there.”
Time to get there.
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