Should you wait to hire your first engineer even when you have the work?

Yes, waiting can be the right call, even when the work is there. In 2020 I had enough work to support a full-time engineer, and I still waited a year. I lacked the cash reserves and I was not ready to give up control. The extra year let me refine my workflows and systems, and the eventual hire went better for it.

Why would you wait when the work is already there?

Because work is only one of the things a hire needs. In my view, a signed project tells you demand exists. It tells you nothing about whether the firm can carry a person.

In 2020 I had the work. I did not have the cash reserves, and I was not ready to give up control. Those were two real gaps, and more projects would not have closed either one.

What was missing besides the work?

Two things, and I will be plain about both.

• Cash. The book asks whether you have a financial cushion before you branch out. It names savings, a working spouse or steady current income that covers six or more months of expenses. That test is about the owner's living costs, but the idea carries over. Once people are on payroll, cash flow stops being a personal matter. The book asks whether you know how cash flow works when there are ten people on payroll. At one hire you are early in that lesson, and I did not want to learn it without a reserve.
• Willingness to let go. I was not ready to give up control. That is my own admission, not a rule. A new engineer needs room to make decisions, and I was not there yet.

The second is the harder one to say out loud. It is easier to tell people you lack cash than to say you are not ready to let go.

How did I start in 2017, and why does it matter here?

When I walked out of that office in 2017, I was not rolling in cash or connections. I had financial breathing room, lifestyle flexibility and a partner who could hold the fort. My wife worked full-time and could cover our basic expenses. We had about $15,000 saved.

We also moved into a cheap trailer where we could live, operate and eat for under $1,000 a month. That lean start shaped how I built the business.

When your overhead is minimal, you can be picky about clients. You can turn down projects that do not fit. You can spend time building systems instead of scrambling for the next paycheck. Waiting a year in 2020 was the same instinct: protect the runway, and use the time on the system.

What did the extra year give me?

The extra year let me refine my workflows and my systems. That is what the material says, and it is what I would point to. By the time I hired, the way we worked was in better shape than it had been when the work first showed up.

The eventual hire went better. Beyond that I will not dress it up. I cannot prove it would have failed a year earlier.

My view is that a system living only in your head cannot be handed to anyone. A hire made before the system is sound means fixing the system and training a person at the same time.

Is this Grandfather Engineering or modern delivery?

Here is how I see the two approaches.

• Grandfather Engineering: hire because there are hours to bill. The founder stays the bottleneck, and every new person adds more of the founder's time to the load. Burnout is treated as the price of growth.
• Modern delivery: build the system first, so the person you hire is multiplied by it instead of leaning on you. Value beats hours, and the owner works toward being free of the work.

Hiring the moment the work shows up is the first path. Waiting until the system and the cash are ready is the second. That is my view, not a law. But it is why a year of patience did not feel like lost growth to me.

You do not have to move a million miles an hour.

What does the cautionary tale in the book say about rushing?

The book tells the story of a colleague I call Phil. He jumped at the chance to buy into an established firm with a small ownership stake, around 2 percent. He did not research what the business was worth. He had never seen behind the curtain of running it.

He spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on a business that was instantly upside down and over-leveraged. In his own words, getting the business right took time away from his reputation.

Desperation forced him to rush work that needed care, chase payments aggressively and take low-quality projects at low rates. It also meant turning away better clients because he was buried.

His case is a purchase, not a hire, and I would not stretch the comparison far. The lesson I take from it is that a major commitment made without runway and without understanding the business basics can force bad choices later. Phil knew how to be an engineer in that firm. He did not know how to run one.

How do you test whether you are ready to hire?

The book gives a method for trying its suggestions: change one variable at a time, give changes enough time to show results, and track what works. I would apply that to hiring. A hire is a big variable, and I would want the others steady first.

These are my questions, not the book's checklist:

1. If the work slowed down, how many months of this person's cost could I cover? The book's cushion is six or more months of living expenses. As a rule of thumb, I would want a cushion I could name for payroll too.
2. Is my process written down well enough that someone else could run a project from it?
3. Can I let someone else make decisions on a project and live with the result?
4. Am I hiring to fix a system problem that a person cannot fix?

If any answer is no, that is the gap to close first.

What to do next week

Pick the one workflow you would hand to a new engineer first. Write it down step by step, as if someone else were taking it over. Then run your next project through the written version and note where it breaks.

Then work out what the hire would cost you each month. Decide how many months of that you would want in reserve, and write the number down. If it is bigger than you expected, that tells you something about timing.

Do both before you write a job post. In my view, that gives a new engineer a better chance of joining something steady, though no preparation guarantees how a hire turns out.