I’ve seen this scale to 100 person companies, and I think it scales much further.
I would describe the problem as follows: to reliably hire people who are 90th percentile at a skill, you (or someone you trust) needs to be at least 75th percentile at that skill. To hire 99th percentile, you need to be at least 90th percentile. To avoid hiring total charlatans, you need to be 25th percentile. And so on.
25th percentile is a relatively small investment! 75th is more, but still often 1-2 weeks depending on the domain. It’s almost certainly worth it to make sure your team has at least one person you trust who’s 75th percentile at any task you repeatedly hire for, even if you’re hiring contractors. And if it’s a key competency for the company, it can be worth the work to get to 90th percentile so you can hire really outstanding people in that domain.
I’ve seen this scale to 100 person companies, and I think it scales much further.
I would describe the problem as follows: to reliably hire people who are 90th percentile at a skill, you (or someone you trust) needs to be at least 75th percentile at that skill. To hire 99th percentile, you need to be at least 90th percentile. To avoid hiring total charlatans, you need to be 25th percentile. And so on.
25th percentile is a relatively small investment! 75th is more, but still often 1-2 weeks depending on the domain. It’s almost certainly worth it to make sure your team has at least one person you trust who’s 75th percentile at any task you repeatedly hire for, even if you’re hiring contractors. And if it’s a key competency for the company, it can be worth the work to get to 90th percentile so you can hire really outstanding people in that domain.