It sounds to me like you're uncertain about whether to hire this guy or not. It's my own personal rule to only hire people when I am 100% certain. Now I could

It sounds to me like you're uncertain about whether to hire this guy or not. It's my own personal rule to only hire people when I am 100% certain. Now I could give you all sorts of reasons why this guy will be an excellent hire. My personal gut feeling is that some people deliver more value in 3 days than others deliver in 3 years, so "bum in seat time" can be misleading in terms of the contribution someone will make. Engineers with side projects are often more goal-focused, because they purge their need to over-engineer and try new things outside your core production project. You hire employees for their talent, not their passion. But these are _my_ gut feelings, not _yours_, and you need to pay attention to _your_ gut feelings when you make such a critical hire because it's _your_ startup. Presumably, your gut feelings are pretty good which is how you're in a position to be running a startup in the first place. Over the next few months, you will inevitably have problems. Things will be harder and take longer than you think. Then you'll be saying "it's because they're not committed enough, I should have listened to my gut feeling when we hired them". I would express my thoughts fully and transparently to this guy. Perhaps you can explore a middle-ground - here's some ideas: 1. More hours with more pay in the short-term to help you scaffold things, scaling back once you're up and running. 2. Work part-time as an engineer, still be available for operational stuff outside those hours (with pay). 3. Help you hire somebody else ASAP, so you don't need the original guy full time.