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Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

I guess if you have a big enough runway, this could work out. For most startups, letting your employees fail means letting your company fail when you run out of money. Nobody is going to give you more money when the stuff your employees were working on failed. Especially when they're trusting your resume to get the job done and you should have known better.

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If those are your options, you shouldn't have employees, you should outsource the work.

And I'm not one usually in favor of outsourcing, but having employees is a whole different ballgame. If you can't let them fail, you're not building a team that will add value over outsourcing, so you're better off not taking on all of the complications that come with having employees.

I've spent most of my career as a full time employee, and recently I've become a 'consultant', which is a fancy term for contractor who works for a middle man. I've really become interested lately in the strategies behind using full time employees, when to outsource, why companies use contractors/consultants, etc.

Are there any good books/blogs on the subject matter that anyone knows about?

You can't usually outsource work for share options, and most startups can't afford pure cash compensation for all work. And they can't afford to have their employees fail as all work in a brand new startup is usually critical.

EDIT: Just to make it clear: obviously employees and everyone else are going to fail sometimes, and you need to try have as much in place to survive that. However, failing on purpose for learning experiences is never the correct approach. You will have more than enough chance to fail in areas you don't have solutions for. Make sure you never fail in an area that you had the information to prevent.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Letting them fail is going to be expensive.

Not letting them fail when the fallout can be contained and managed will increase the risk that they fail in a way that you can't contain or manage further down the road.

I think both points of view are reasonable. You would have to evaluate each situation individually whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

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