Look, if you spend five years with a girl, you’ve gotta marry her. Clearly, you didn’t find anything wrong with her enough to break up and she can’t wait around forever. Are there better women out there? Almost definitely. They didn’t just commit five years to your chubby ass though.
Likewise, once you make someone put 4+ hours into tech work and it’s good work, you’d better hire them or apologize profusely for wasting their time.