Scaling Your Team? Read First | 매거진에 참여하세요

At my org, we run everything—business, design, development, and operations—with just three people.

There’s pride in staying lean. Agility, clarity, ownership—everything feels tight and efficient.

But lately, it’s felt… heavy.

And now, I’m considering hiring. Not because I want to, but because I need to.
If you’re in the same place, this post is for you.

The Hidden Signals That It’s Time to Hire

1. 1. The Trap of “I Can Still Do It”

When you’re capable, you tend to keep doing things yourself.
Then your range expands. You juggle. You multitask. You survive.

Until, one day, you realize you’re skipping the details:

• - You skim a Figma file and assume “It’s probably fine.”

• - You nod through a dev update and think “They’ll figure it out.”

• - A key metric dips, but you settle for “It’s probably just a fluctuation.”

That’s not laziness.
That’s cognitive overload.

The question is not “Can I still do this?”
It’s “Should I still be doing this?”

If you're proud of how quickly you're making decisions—that might be the biggest red flag of all.

2. You’re Operating on Summaries, Not Substance

Startups grow. Complexity increases. And decision-making starts drifting from data to instinct.

If you used to:

• Open spreadsheets and dig into numbers

• Read code to validate design logic

• Prototype before signing off…

…but now don’t, not because you shouldn’t, but because you can’t—you’re past your operational limit.

And what you need isn’t just “more hands.”
You need a partner in judgment—someone who can dive deep with you and own decisions.

Hiring is not about offloading tasks.
It’s about protecting your judgment.

3. Stop Using Yourself as the Benchmark

One of the most common hiring mistakes:

“I can still do it in 3 hours, so we don’t need anyone else.”

But sustainability > speed. Always.

Ask yourself:

• - Would I hire someone who could do this job faster and better than I can right now?

• - If I’m still doing this task three months from now, who’s handling the bigger stuff?

• - Is there a system that lets someone else take this over—without me losing control?

If these questions keep recurring, you already have the answer.

4. Where Should You Hire First?

There’s no universal answer. But here’s how to prioritize:

• - Where you’ve lost your depth: If you used to lead marketing but now rely on gut feels and vague approval, that’s a hiring signal.

• - Where decisions are foggy: If your team is waiting on your input, but you don’t feel confident providing it—get someone who can.

• - Where things keep getting postponed: If you keep pushing something back, it’s probably not laziness—it’s overload.

When Not to Hire

Growth ≠ hiring.

There are clear situations where adding people makes things worse, not better.

1. 1. When You're Hiring to Avoid Making a Decision

It’s easy to think, “Let’s hire an expert and let them figure it out.”
But that’s deflection, not leadership.

Examples:

• - Struggling with marketing strategy? You don’t hire to escape clarity—you hire to execute it.

• - Having no clear product direction? A “senior dev” won’t solve that for you.

Hiring won’t fix confusion.
It just distributes it.

2. When Time and Resources Are Still On Your Side

Sometimes, you have the bandwidth—you’re just being impatient.

Examples:

• - You’re tempted to split a team when better cross-functional rituals would solve the issue

• - You want someone to own a task that still takes less than 2 hours a day

• - You’re considering hiring a PM when tighter planning or documentation would do

In these cases, invest your focus—not your headcount.

Fix before you hire.

3. Fix Before You Hire: Alternatives to Scaling Headcount

• - Prioritization: Know what really matters. Cut the rest.

• - Workflow Optimization: Create clarity. Remove ambiguity.

• - Automation: Systemize repetitive tasks. AI is your friend.

• - Cross-skilling: Empower current team members with new tools or ownership.

Final Thought: Hiring Is Not a Trophy—It’s a Tradeoff

Hiring isn’t a sign of success.

It’s a sign of necessity.

And when done for the wrong reasons, it kills momentum instead of creating it.

So before you post that job listing, ask:

Am I hiring to grow the company—or to avoid something I should be fixing first?

Scaling a team is about recovering your ability to think, decide, and build.
Do it only when you can’t do that anymore.