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In Serguey Shinder’s account, the organization could fund infrastructure work but could not approve a permanent engineer within its headcount rules. A contractor was hired instead—and the arrangement later exposed a risk the project budget had not solved: critical knowledge sat with one person.
How a hiring problem became a budget problem
Shinder says the organization advertised for an infrastructure engineer three times over five months. It received nine applications, of which two candidates were worth interviewing. One candidate declined an offer for a job paying £8,000 more elsewhere.
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The salary band had been set in 2023, and, according to Shinder, its benchmark was refreshed every two years. He presents that slow-moving band and the limit on permanent headcount as part of the reason the organization struggled to hire. Yet the work still needed doing, and a project budget could pay for a contractor.
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That distinction is the essay’s central point: approval to spend on project work did not mean approval to add a permanent employee. In Shinder’s interpretation of his own organization, the obstacle was not simply a lack of money; it was that money for the work and authorization for a role followed different governance routes. His account does not establish how common this pattern is elsewhere.
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What the contractor cost—and what that figure does not show
Shinder says the organization engaged a contractor at £550 per day for fourteen months. He describes that rate as roughly £130,000 a year. That annualization is his rough comparison, not a verified total cost for the engagement.
The figures do not provide a like-for-like comparison with an employee’s salary or fully loaded employment cost. They do not establish benefits, agency fees, downtime, productivity, or other costs for either route. A meaningful comparison would need to cover the same scope and time horizon, and account for vacancy and overtime costs as well as onboarding and transition work.
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The operational cost of concentrated knowledge
After the contractor left, Shinder says key knowledge about storage, backup design, and automation was concentrated in that person. The organization’s handover took three weeks and relied on screen sharing and a wiki.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →He also reports that overtime remained high and that a permanent engineer left partly because of the gap they had been covering. These details make the trade-off broader than contractor invoice versus salary: continuity, workload, and the ability to retain operational knowledge also matter. The account does not quantify those costs, but it shows why a lower-friction project approval can carry risks that do not appear in the initial budget.
Controls Shinder says the organization adopted
Shinder says later proposals compared employee and contractor routes over three years and included an estimate for the cost of leaving a role vacant. He also says the organization converted two contractors to employees and required an employee counterpart and a handover deliverable for engagements longer than six months.
Together, these measures address distinct weaknesses: comparing routes over the same horizon, making the cost of an unfilled role visible, and reducing dependence on knowledge held by a contractor alone. They are the author’s reported organizational responses, not a universal costing formula or legal requirement.
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What this account can—and cannot—tell a reader
The numbers and events are Shinder’s account of one organization. They are not independent labor-market statistics, and the article does not establish the employer’s jurisdiction, contractor classification, or whether the experience is representative. The story is most useful as a governance question for employers: are the approval rules making it easier to fund temporary delivery than the ongoing role and knowledge continuity the work requires?
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesShinder closes with the line: “A hiring problem that dissolves the moment you rename the money was never a market problem. It was a governance shape.” The quote captures his interpretation of what happened at his organization, rather than a general finding about hiring.
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