Or, it’s the kind of place or situation where it’s not about the job/role as some abstract commodity “function,” it’s about specialist > internal generalist > external non-specialist.

“We’re making do, but we’re kind of figuring out X as we go. That’s working for now, but the problems keep getting knottier as we grow and change—it works, but it’s expensive in terms of avoidable mistakes.

Nothing’s on fire, but if we ever got the chance, we’d value authentic expertise in this niche. But if it’s just ‘I could probably figure that out,’ we’ve already got plenty of that internally.”

Where a good hire ends up helping those internal people as they develop experience and expertise, and one that’s not right is worse than none at all.