Sorry, WHAT?
>>pportunity cost of other team members (could be coding but are instead spinning up the new engineer)
Hey I've got news for you. Developers don't just waltz in and start coding from day 1, they need to be brought up to speed on the systems. Your business-nosed attitude needs a reality check. Developers are human capital, not robots.
You're being unnecessarily defensive. Just because people are people does not change the fact that it costs companies money to onboard them. This whole subthread is "why is it expensive to hire people?" and one part of the answer is "because you have to pay them money while you train them, and pay their colleagues while they do it". It's not a reflection of any unrealistic expectations--it's the opposite.
> Sorry, WHAT?
Computer, desk, office space: $5k
Job ads: $500-3k per hire is not unrealistic
Time spent sifting through applications: Easily 5 hours per week. If the posting is up for a month, that's 20 hours. That translates to about $1.5k in fully loaded costs for an employee with a $100k salary.
Time spent conducting phone screens: Assume 50 phones screens for one position. 30 min per person (20 minute conversation, 10 minute notes/break). 25 hours. Approximately $1.8k for the same $100k employee.
Further interview rounds: Assume about 10 candidates per position. Assume at least 4 person-hours per candidate, plus at least 8 hours devising evaluations (programming tests or what-not). 48 hours = ~$3.6k. Add in $1k of travel costs per candidate = $10k.
Draw up an employment offer. Assume you've got a stock one, but the new hire would like to make an amendment. Run it by a lawyer. $500.
We're at about $25k. It's not $40k, but it's not free, either. It would be easy to spend more time on any of those steps. If you use a recruiter, it will be higher. If you calculate based on SV salaries and costs, it will be higher.
If that's the figure, then maybe bad hires really aren't that bad. Presumably the company won't have gotten zero or negative value from a bad hire, and even if it was $0, $25k isn't going to make or break any but the scrappiest bootstrapper.