Hiring.co vs in-house hiring
Get a developer in your repo this month, not after the next hiring cycle
A full-time hire is the right call for a team you are building for years. For the work in front of you this quarter, it is slow to start and expensive to undo. We match developers who already passed a live technical review and a paid trial week, usually within a week of the intro call. From $500/week, month-to-month.
Side by side
Same seat to fill. Very different time to the first commit, and a different exit if it goes wrong.
| Hiring.co | Full-time in-house hire | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to a working hire | Most matches within a week of the intro call. | Sourcing, interview rounds, offers, and notice periods before the first commit. |
| Who vets the person | We do. Live technical review, references, then a paid trial week in your repo. | Your team, on top of their day jobs, or a recruiter charging a fee. |
| What you pay | From $500/week. Month-to-month. No placement fee on top of the rate. | Salary plus benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, and recruiting costs. |
| Commitment | Month-to-month. Scale up, pause, or stop when the sprint ends. | Employment. Reducing headcount is slow, costly, and hard on the team. |
| If they do not perform | We replace them at no extra cost under the nonperformance guarantee. | Performance plans, possibly severance, then a new search from zero. |
| Management and support | Team management and technical support included. Chloe Reynolds checks in on output. | All on you: onboarding, management, reviews, and escalation. |
| Code and IP | Yours. Lives in your repo. Assignment language in the agreement. Handover within one working day. | Yours, under your employment agreements. |
| Building long-term culture | Placed developers join your standups and Slack, and many stay month-to-month for years. | The stronger choice when you are building a permanent team and leadership layer. |
When a full-time hire is the right move
If the role is permanent, central to the company, and you can afford the time to search, hire in-house. Your first engineering leader should usually be an employee. Come to us for the seats you need filled now, the specialist you need for six months, or the gap while your full-time search runs.
Teams that skipped the internal build-out
MedMatch Network went from fax-era referrals to 15-second scheduling without hiring a full internal team first. The Rig Hut has kept a placed full-stack team month-to-month for years, and treats them like in-house engineers.
See case studies or how matching works.
Questions from teams planning a full-time hire
- Is this cheaper than a full-time hire?
- Often, once you count benefits, payroll taxes, recruiting, and the months a seat sits empty. It depends on your numbers. Our cost guide has a worksheet to compare both with your own figures.
- Will a placed developer feel like part of the team?
- They work in your repo, your Slack, and your meetings. The Rig Hut has kept its placed team for years and treats them like in-house engineers.
- Can we use you while our full-time search runs?
- Yes. Billing is month-to-month, so you can stop when your hire starts. Documentation, the knowledge base, and deployment details transfer within one working day.
- What about time zones?
- We place talent that overlaps with your working hours. US-based clients typically get 4–6 hours of direct overlap at minimum.
From a team that did not build an internal org first
“Referral workflows touch EMRs, patient apps, and provider dashboards at once. Hiring.co matched us with engineers who had shipped in healthcare before. MedMatch went from fax-era referrals to 15-second scheduling without us hiring a full internal team first.”
Tell us the role you were about to post
Stack, seniority, and how soon you need someone. We will say plainly whether a placed developer or a full-time hire makes more sense for you.