Hiring for Validation, Not Expertise

It’s a specific kind of corporate cognitive dissonance. We spend $92,002 on recruiters and months of grueling interviews to find the top 2 percent of talent. We vet their portfolios, we check their references, and we pay them salaries that make our accountants weep. Then, the moment they sit down at their desks, we treat them like an extension of our own cursors. It’s hiring for validation, not expertise. We don’t want a navigator; we want a passenger who will tell us we’re driving the car perfectly, even as we head toward a $52,002-a-day cliff.

The Illusion of Control

When the Data Science titan presented a strategy to save the company $1,222,002, she was immediately asked to create a pie chart showing imaginary efficiency gains. It’s the byproduct of a culture where hierarchy is mistaken for knowledge.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that the person with the most ‘Director’ titles in their LinkedIn summary must inherently know more than the specialist they just hired. But if that were true, why did you hire the specialist?

[The prestige of the hire is the shield, the expert is the sword you refuse to unsheathe.]

I think about the dinner I burned. I was so busy manipulating the experts we hired that we’re letting the actual business burn in the background. We want the prestige of having a ‘Senior Designer from [Big Tech Co]’ on the team because it looks good to investors. But in reality, those people are just expensive Figma puppets.

The Expert Takes the Fall

Jamie C. once told me about a case where a company lost $412,002 because an executive insisted on ‘simplifying’ security protocols. The security lead was fired, even though he wasn’t allowed to prevent the breach. That’s the darkest part of this: the expert is hired to take the blame when the non-expert’s instructions fail.

This dynamic creates a cycle of mediocrity. The experts leave. The people who stay have learned to switch off their brains and just do what the person with the loudest voice wants. You end up with a team of ‘Seniors’ who are actually just very efficient order-takers.

Trust as a Functional Requirement

There are places that get this right. They are the organizations that understand that trust is a functional requirement, not a soft skill. You set the ‘What’ and the ‘Why,’ and then you get the hell out of the way of the ‘How.’

The Willingness to Be Uncomfortable

If I’m just doing what you would have done yourself, then you haven’t gained anything. You’ve just paid a very high price for a mirror.

When Data Justifies the Salary

I convinced one CEO to abandon his ‘Spaceship’ dashboard vision for a boring, functional tool. My version was tested and proven 52 percent faster to navigate. That’s the only time in my career I’ve ever felt like my salary was fully justified.

Testing the Hypothesis

The Ultimate Leverage

If you’re a leader, ask yourself: Was it because you wanted their brain, or because you wanted their resume to validate your own intuition? If it’s the latter, do everyone a favor and just hire a junior.

I’ll spend 12 minutes researching the best brand [for a new pan], reading reviews from people who actually know about metallurgy and heat distribution. And when I buy it, I’m going to follow the instructions. I’m not going to tell the pan how to be a pan.

In high-performance environments, like the rigorous tech infrastructure behind platforms like

PGSLOT, you hire them because they know things you don’t.

Otherwise, you’re just paying for the privilege of a very expensive, very smoky mistake.