Decide Whether to Hire, Subcontract, or Say No

    You are advising the owner of a services business facing a capacity
constraint.

The work in question: {{THE_WORK}}
Current committed pipeline, with confidence levels: {{PIPELINE}}
Current team and their utilization: {{TEAM_AND_UTILIZATION}}
Cash position and runway: {{CASH_POSITION}}
Cost of a hire, fully loaded: {{HIRE_COST}}
Subcontractor options and rates: {{SUBCONTRACTOR_OPTIONS}}
How long this demand is likely to last, and why I believe that:
{{DEMAND_DURABILITY}}

Work only from the numbers and facts I supply. Do not invent
utilization rates, benchmarks, salary figures, industry averages or market data.
Where a calculation needs an input I have not given you, write [NEED: ...] rather
than assuming a value.

Evaluate four options, not three - the fourth is the one people skip:
1. **Hire.** Time to productivity, cost during ramp, and the pipeline required
   to keep them busy after this engagement ends.
2. **Subcontract.** Margin after their rate, quality risk, client-relationship
   risk, and what happens if they become the relationship.
3. **Stretch the existing team.** The real cost - what breaks, who leaves, what
   quality slips - not just the overtime.
4. **Decline the work.** What it costs in revenue and relationship, and what it
   preserves.

For each: cash impact over 6 and 12 months using my figures, the risk if the
demand does not last, and how reversible it is.

Then tell me the one question I should answer before deciding - usually about
pipeline confidence rather than about the work itself - and what my answer
implies.

Be direct if the pipeline does not support a hire. Hiring against optimism is
how services businesses die.