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- Before you hire, read this.
Before you hire, read this.
+ how to know whether your next hire will actually solve the problem, or just add cost to a broken process.
👋 Welcome back to All Things Remote: weekly tips for building a better remote team.
Hiring feels like progress, but it can also feel like the most expensive way to avoid fixing something that was already broken…
🤔 This week's riddle: I have keys but no locks. I have space but no room. You can enter, but you can’t go outside. What am I?
In today's send:
✅ How to tell the difference between a capacity problem and a process problem
✅ When hiring is the right call and when it isn't
✅ The question to ask before you commit
But first…
When did you last make a hire you regretted? |
Top reads this week
Is recognition actually a leadership skill?
Stop wasting your mid-year check-ins
The conversations nobody wants to have at work (but needs to)
Making AI decisions for the team right now?
Stop making AI decisions in the dark.
Leadership is asking: are we getting value from AI? Which tools are worth the spend? Where are we exposed? Right now, most teams have no idea.
Harmonic Security Usage Explorer changes that.
You get a complete picture of how your organization uses AI, automatically categorized into custom tasks and use cases.
You’ll see the projects being worked on, who’s using what tools, where AI investments are driving value, and where employees are engaging in risky behavior.
CIOs can rationalize spending and cut wasted licenses. CISOs can pinpoint where risk exists and neutralize it. AI committees can show exactly how their efforts are paying off.
The question to ask first
Before every hire, make sure you’re asking yourself + your team…
Is this a capacity problem or a process problem?
A capacity problem will often mean that the problem is your processes are working, but there genuinely aren't enough people to do it, so in that case, hiring may make sense.
A process problem means work is taking longer than it should, the same things keep falling through the cracks, or nobody's quite sure who owns what. Adding a new hire to the mix won't fix it; they'll just inherit the same friction everyone else is dealing with.
The answer isn't always obvious….
But asking the question forces you to look more carefully before you commit.
It's probably a process problem if:

