Clearly it's not practical advice. It's simply a reminder that just because the person can code does not mean they are worth hiring. For a lot of founders, they

Clearly it's not practical advice. It's simply a reminder that just because the person can code does not mean they are worth hiring. For a lot of founders, they are under such pressure to produce output, the mere indication that a person wants to help them do that makes them not want to pass up the opportunity. Startups have a hard time hiring because the benefits are not as solid as a large company, there is almost always not enough bandwidth to weed out the ridiculous number of bad candidates, and there are rarely hiring processes in place. However, for a smallish startup, hiring a bad person can literally ruin the company. There are a lot more variables when hiring a person for a startup. For example, is there a strong cultural fit, is the person financially stable enough, is the person technically competent in the areas that need competence and able to learn new things, is he/she willing to spend what many regard to be extreme hours working and sacrifice normal aspects of their life, can he/she work quickly and also not cause friction, etc. Nobody is perfect and a lot of people simply don't prioritize their job or life this way, which is totally fine, but it's much harder for a startup to absorb those differences in the same way that a large company can. Therefore, there needs to be an emphasis on hiring the absolute best candidate you can find. To translate this into practical advice: take a long time to hire a person (don't rush), only do so if you are absolutely sure that you want to hire a person, and even then hire them on a contract-to-hire basis, and be quick to let them go if things are not going smoothly.