Dutch Tech Hiring Delays: the €720k Hidden Cost and Fix
The Hidden Cost of Hiring Delays: a €720,000 Problem
Most CTOs track salary cost. Few calculate the compound cost of empty chairs.
When do you actually start shipping?
In the Netherlands, a typical senior hire takes about 8 weeks to land, plus notice and ramp. Your January hire delivers Q2 value. Your February hire delivers Q3 value. Stagger six roles this way and you lose almost a full year of productive capacity to calendar lag.
Dutch scale-up reality
Scenario: you need 6 senior engineers this year to hit milestones. Traditional timeline: ~8 weeks per role. Total span: 6 × 8 weeks = 48 weeks of stagger. Result: nearly 12 months of engineering capacity idle while you interview.
Delays cascade. Each empty seat slows the rest of the team and pushes roadmap items right.
Revenue impact math
Assumptions, kept conservative:
- Senior base €100k.
- Fully loaded cost 1.4× = €140k.
- Break-even output per engineer = €140k in year one.
Capacity required: 6 × €140k = €840k.
Staggered contribution, year one:
- Eng 1, productive ~10 months → €116k
- Eng 2, ~8 months → €93k
- Eng 3, ~6 months → €70k
- Eng 4, ~4 months → €47k
- Eng 5, ~2 months → €23k
- Eng 6, 0 months → €0
Total produced: €349k Gap vs required: €491k lost capacity in year one.
That loss is before you count spillover effects on design, QA, product, and sales.
Talcom’s embedded nearshore alternative
- Time-to-hire: ~4 weeks per role.
- Span for 6 roles: 24 weeks instead of 48.
- Annual rate: €60k per senior (fully loaded in Serbia).
What changes:
- Timeline recovery: +24 weeks of productive capacity.
- Value recovered: 24 weeks × €60k annual = €240k equivalent.
- Cost efficiency: €140k vs €60k → €80k saving per engineer.
- Total salary savings: 6 × €80k = €480k.
Combined advantage: €240k (time) + €480k (cost) = €720k.
Beyond cost
- Competitive velocity: understaffed teams miss launch windows. Competitors ship.
- Technical debt: empty seats force shortcuts that compound interest.
- Team burnout: the core team carries load, attrition risk goes up.
- Market position: slipped sprints move you away from optimal timing.
Momentum lost is hard to buy back.
Assumptions and guardrails
- Output set at 1× cost. Many product teams target 2–3×.
- 2025 Amsterdam benchmarks.
- Ramp-up excluded, which understates the loss.
- Timelines reflect industry averages, not worst cases.
You can tweak inputs. The structure holds: faster hiring plus lower run-rate yields a compounding advantage.
The real question
It isn’t whether you can afford nearshore. It’s whether you can afford another year of eight-week cycles while your roadmap slips.
If hiring velocity is a constraint for 2026, fix it in 2025.
Quick scenario table
Next step: run your numbers with your salaries and start dates. If the gap is large, pilot with two engineers and measure output in weeks, not quarters.