Cheap has a hidden fee. It just bills you later.
The table looked great. The price looked better. Six months in, the joints wobble and the finish peels, and now you’re shopping again. Except this time you’re buying the table you should have bought the first time. So you didn’t save money. You bought two tables and called the first one a discount.
Hiring works the same way.
The candidate is fine. Not great, fine. The salary is low, the timeline is fast, the box gets checked. Then the work doesn’t land. The team compensates. Six months pass, then ten, then you’re paying a recruiter and paying the low salary and paying for the mediocre output, all at once. The “affordable” hire turns out to be the most expensive one you made all year.
Fast and cheap isn’t a strategy. It’s a deferral.
The real question was never “what does this cost now.” It’s “how many times will I pay for this?”
Do it once. Do it right. Everything else is a loan you didn’t know you took out.
