The Triangle – Balancing People, Customers, and Profits

Hiring is often reduced to a transactional process—find candidates, negotiate salaries, and onboard them. But in reality, hiring is the foundation of company culture, customer success, and long-term profitability.

 If you think about it, hiring is a three-way balancing act:

• People—The talent that drives innovation and execution.

• Customers—The businesses we serve, ensuring their trust and satisfaction.

• Profits—The financial health needed to sustain and grow operations.

It's obvious to make trade-offs—optimizing for one or two areas while sacrificing the third. We chose a harder path: to balance all three without compromising our values. It wasn’t easy, but it turned out to be the only truly sustainable way forward. 

This article explores how we structured our hiring philosophy, hiring processes, and compensation models in a way that ensured we built a strong team, kept customers happy, and still made business sense.

1. Hiring for Culture Fit First, Skills Second

The Challenge

 • Prioritizing just technical skills over cultural alignment, leading to long-term misfits.

 • Candidates with impressive resumes often lack the collaborative mindset or passion for continuous learning.

 • Startups often struggle to attract top talent when competing against big brands. 

How We Solved It

1. We looked beyond resumes—hiring for mindset and alignment.

• Instead of screening purely for technical ability, we focused on:

• Problem-solving approach.

• Growth mindset.

• Willingness to mentor and be mentored.

• Passion for learning and community contribution.

• Many of our best hires weren’t the ones with the most certifications, but the ones who asked great questions, challenged the status quo, and were eager to build something bigger than themselves.  

2. We made discussions, not interviews, the hiring norm.

• Our hiring process felt more like brainstorming with future teammates rather than an interrogation.

• Candidates got a chance to share ideas, collaborate on real-world problems, and even meet potential team members before joining.

• This approach led to higher retention rates—people joined not just for the role but for the people they’d be working with.

3. We openly shared our values during the hiring process.

• Instead of just us evaluating candidates, we allowed them to evaluate us.

• We were transparent about our culture, values, and expectations, so candidates could self-select whether they resonated with our approach.

• This drastically reduced hiring mismatches and early attrition.

 Reminder: Hire for cultural fit first—because technical skills can always be taught, but values are much harder to change. And it’s crucial to understand that a cultural misfit is not about differences in opinion but rather a lack of the right intent, motives, or ethics behind a decision or viewpoint.

2. The Profit-People Trade-Off: Paying Fairly While Staying Financially Sustainable

 The Challenge

• Startups often feel pressure to undercut salaries to maintain profit margins, leading to low morale.

• Overpaying for talent can strain business cash flow, especially in early stages.

• Compensation isn’t just about salary—it’s about fairness, transparency, and recognition.

 How We Solved It

1. We were radically transparent about financial trade-offs.

• Candidates knew exactly where we stood financially and how our salary structures were designed.

• If we couldn’t match a candidate’s previous salary, we provided meaningful growth opportunities—including mentorship through a council of mentors, brand-building by rewarding community contribution, public speaking opportunities at reputed community events, and hands-on experience in cutting-edge innovation by contributing to product development using the latest technologies.

• This built trust early on—people knew they weren’t being shortchanged but rather investing in long-term success.

2. We structured compensation beyond just salaries.

• In addition to base pay, we offered:

• A gamified rewards program (Other Contributions)—recognizing contributions like blogging, mentorship, community involvement, technical innovations etc.

• Performance-based increments, with clearly defined criteria for performance ratings and transparency around the decision of % hike. e.g. delivering project on time with quality is meeting expectation and adding value, innovation and growth calls for exceeding expectation.

• Flexible benefits, allowing people to choose perks that mattered most to them.

3. We considered contracting as an alternative hiring model.

• If we found a technically strong candidate who didn’t fit within our salary structure, we transparently discussed a contracting approach.

• Contractors received higher salaries compared to permanent employees, but their work was project-specific, and contracts ended when projects did.

• This model worked well for specialized technical experts while ensuring long-term employees had stability.

 Reminder: Profits and people aren’t opposites—when you treat people well, they create value that ultimately drives profitability.

3. Customer-Centric Hiring: Matching the Right People to the Right Work

The Challenge

• Hiring is often done without considering customer needs and project fit.

• Businesses face talent shortages when large deals come in, leading to rushed hiring.

• Employees want career growth and variety, but customers prefer long-term stability in teams.

How We Solved It

1. We hired proactively, not reactively.

• Instead of scrambling to hire when a new project arrived, we always kept an active pipeline of potential hires.

• We stayed engaged with passive candidates—people who weren’t actively looking but resonated with our values.

2. We respected employee aspirations while maintaining customer relationships.

• When employees spent several years on the same project or customer, they often wanted new challenges and career growth.

• Instead of waiting for abrupt resignations, we had open conversations with both the employee and customer.

• This allowed us to plan transitions 6-9 months in advance, where:

• Customers were kept informed, avoiding last-minute surprises.

• A phase-wise transition allowed employees to hand over responsibilities gradually.

• This approach strengthened long-term relationships with customers and ensured employees felt heard and valued.

3. We kept hiring decisions flexible, based on evolving business needs.

• If a project demanded deep expertise in a particular tech stack, we upskilled existing employees before making an external hire.

• If customer expectations changed, we adjusted team structures dynamically instead of rigidly sticking to initial plans.

Key Takeaways from Our Hiring Philosophy:

Value First, Always.

• Hire for culture and alignment — skills can be taught, but values can’t.

 Salaries Must Be Fair and Transparent.

• Compensation should be structured, rewarding contributions beyond just billable work.

 Customers and hiring must be aligned.

• Hiring isn’t just about filling open roles — it’s about ensuring the right people work on the right projects for long-term success.

Final Thoughts: Hiring Is a Long-Term Strategy, Not a Short-Term Fix

Companies that treat hiring as a short-term transactional process often struggle with high attrition, dissatisfied customers, and unpredictable financials.

But companies that invest in hiring the right way—balancing people, customers, and profits—create a foundation for long-term success.

In the next article, we’ll explore career growth and organizational structure—building a sustainable progression model. We’ll discuss how Joel Spolsky’s Ladder Model, SFIA Framework, and mentorship-based decision-making helped us create a transparent, non-hierarchical growth model that benefited individuals and the organization alike.

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