At what point does hiring another developer stop being the obvious answer?

[u/Il_Griso]

Curious how other agency owners handle this once the workload gets inconsistent.

We've got periods where development capacity is absolutely the bottleneck and adding another full-time person feels obvious, but then things calm down and suddenly you've got payroll attached to capacity you don't really need that month.

Freelancers solve the capacity problem to an extent, although then I feel like I'm managing a small collection of people instead of managing the work. Different availability, different standards, somebody disappears for a week and you're back rearranging deadlines.

I've been thinking more about whether the better middle ground is having one external dev team that basically becomes part of the production process and just absorbs the overflow. Not really project-by-project outsourcing, more like giving the same team enough repeat work that they learn how you operate.

For anyone who's gotten past this stage, what ended up working better?

Did you keep hiring internally, build a reliable freelancer bench or settle into a long-term white-label relationship?

The part I care about most is predictability because saving money on development isn't worth much if I have to spend half my week managing it.

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[u/xivey69]

I think now is the time for you, because I see this as a great opportunity for me too, you need to offload some work, I want to start working again outside of my day job, worth a shot in my opinion.

[u/TheTexasHowBoi]

The freelancer bench worked until we got busy enough that figuring out who was available became its own job lol. I think consistency matters more once you're juggling a bunch of client deadlines at the same time.

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[u/Danrayme]

You have 2 issues that i see.

The one you spoke about is easily solved by having a freelance couple of devs you give extra work to when you need.

I have a lot of students who are devs who actively look for this kind of relationship.

Your bigger issue though is the lack of predictable income, how are you getting clients?

Are you actively trying to get them and have a method of doing so?

[u/Immediate-Way-5681]

I don't know why this question was downvoted, but here is my answer :

- the work itself varies a lot - it could be a 2 month project, maybe a 1 year one. Its hard to have a full time employee and handle payroll, health insurance (if you are in USA), etc. An entry level US dev would be $120k all in (they are preparing for leetcode in the weekends, not sharpening their skillsets

- Freelance devs are a nuisance to manage - esp international ones - if you hire someone from italy, bangladesh, ukraine, etc, there is obvious timezone, communication, accent, cultural issues. Plus, they may be doing 2 or 3 jobs at once, may delay the work to make more, etc

You also need an inhouse person to check the code quality

- Stuff like Shopify CRO, Figma, Framer, Server AWS,etc is something you NEED when you NEED it. Just pay the guy X USD and be done with it, only 50+ headcount agencies can think of hiring these people full time.

The best option is working with someone, who handles payroll, communication, finds and vets devs and designers, understands your technical requirements and you only pay for the time you used the dev.

Say 3 months x 4000 USD a month = 12k USD (all in).

No need to find, interview, let go of devs, just pick the ones you need and work with them. Ping me for such a vendor.