If you’re waiting for the perfect moment to hire… you’re probably already late.
Most growing tech teams don’t fail because they don’t hire. They fail because they wait too long. They wait until they’re buried in backlog, losing sleep over delivery deadlines, or burning out their top people.
It’s understandable; budget constraints, investor timing, and product launches can all make hiring feel like something to “get to later.” But the truth is, the best time to hire is when the workload starts tipping, not when it’s already collapsed.
Why hiring early beats hiring late (every time)
1. You avoid reactive hiring
When you hire in crisis mode, you make rushed decisions. You lower your bar, settle for “close enough,” or grab whoever can start fastest. That’s expensive.
Better: Hire before you feel the pinch, and you’ll have room to choose right, not just right now.
According to Lever, companies that hire proactively experience 35% lower turnover within the first 12 months.
2. You get the talent everyone else is about to fight for
Great developers rarely apply when you’re ready. They appear when they’re looking, and if your hiring process isn’t already moving, you miss the window.
Better: Build relationships early. When someone good shows up, you’ll already be in the game.
3. You build sustainable velocity
Relying on your “core team” to carry every sprint until you finally get help? That’s how velocity dies, and burnout begins.
Better: Hiring ahead means ramping up new hires while protecting momentum. Not rebuilding from exhaustion.
How do I know when to start hiring?
There’s no calendar event that pops up saying “Time to grow the team!” but there are signals. You just need to know what to look for.
Here are the four most reliable (and often ignored) indicators that it’s time to hire before things break:
1. Cycle time is creeping up
If your dev cycle time (from first commit to deploy) is getting longer, it’s not just about code quality, t’s often a bandwidth issue.
Watch for:
- More PRs sitting unreviewed
- Stale branches
- Build/test bottlenecks
- Too many “hotfix” merges or skipped QA steps
When cycle time grows 20–30% over baseline and stays there for more than two sprints, it’s a red flag. That’s your cue to start hiring.
2. Your best engineers are context-switching too much
Are your senior developers coding, reviewing, debugging, planning architecture, and jumping into customer calls all in the same day?
That’s not versatility, it’s technical debt waiting to happen.
Watch for:
- High volume of interruptions (Slack, Jira tags, urgent PRs)
- Incomplete docs or retro notes
- Rising number of bugs or rework tied to complex tickets
Prevent burnout before it hits your highest-value contributors.
3. Sprints are technically “complete”, but business value is lagging
You’re shipping features, but stakeholders still aren’t satisfied. Why? Because the features aren’t hitting impact goals, or they’re slipping in usability, QA, or edge case coverage.
Translation: The team is doing their best, but they’re over-capacity. There’s no room for iteration or polish.
4. Team members are hesitant to raise concerns
This one’s subtle, but deadly. If engineers stop speaking up about bottlenecks, it’s often because they believe nothing will change. They’re managing too much and don’t want to rock the boat.
Watch for:
- Shorter standups with fewer flags raised
- Quiet DMs instead of public threads
- Reduced participation in retros
A team that’s quiet isn’t necessarily happy. They might just be tired, and dangerously close to churn.
When you spot these signals, don’t just plan to hire, start.
Final takeaway
You don’t need to feel 100% “ready” to hire. You need to be strategic.
The best time to hire is when growth is picking up, not when you’re already stretched thin. When you act early, you hire better and keep your team healthy in the long run.
➡️ Ready to stay ahead of the hiring curve? Talk to us
➡️ Read next: Hiring for potential vs perfection: The risk of over‑reliance on ‘hard data’
Key Takeaways
When is the best time to hire?
The best time to hire is before your team is overwhelmed, not after. Proactive hiring leads to better talent, lower churn, and smoother onboarding.
Why is it bad to wait until you’re ready to hire?
Delaying hiring leads to rushed decisions, burnout, and missed opportunities with high-quality candidates.
Leave a Comment