The hidden cost of hiring engineers
The salary is the number everyone focuses on. It's also the smallest part of the real cost. Before your first hire writes a single line of code, you've spent $35K+ in recruiting fees, waited 62 days for them to start, and lost another month to onboarding. That's 3 months of burn with zero output. For a seed-stage startup burning $50K a month, that's $150K spent before you ship anything.
Why the timeline matters more than the price tag
Two startups raise the same seed round on the same day. One spends 3 months hiring, 1 month onboarding, then starts shipping. The other starts shipping in week one. Six months later, the first startup has 2-3 months of productive engineering. The second has 6. Same budget. Same runway. One is raising their Series A with a product in market. The other is still catching up.
The cost difference matters. But the time difference is what kills you.
What the assumptions include
The default numbers in this calculator are based on industry benchmarks for early-stage startups. Recruiting fees are set at 20% of first-year salary. Onboarding ramp assumes 25% productivity in month one, 60% in month two, full output from month three. Payroll overhead includes tax, benefits, and tooling at 30% on top of base salary. All of these are editable if your situation is different — hit "Edit assumptions" to adjust.
The Webhouse column assumes full output from week one, because that's how it works. We deploy agents into your repo within 48 hours. There's no recruiting, no onboarding, and no ramp period.
The number your board actually cares about
Your investors aren't just tracking how much you spend. They're tracking cost per feature shipped. A startup that spent $300K and has 8 features live is a better bet than one that spent $200K and has 2. The hiring path looks cheaper on a headcount spreadsheet. The Webhouse path looks cheaper on a shipped product spreadsheet. Show your board the second spreadsheet.
What happens when someone quits
The calculator doesn't model this by default but it should be in the back of your mind. Average engineer tenure at early-stage startups is 14 months. Replacement cost is 1.5x salary when you factor in recruiting again, lost context, and the ramp for their replacement. One departure resets your timeline by 3-4 months. With Webhouse there's no single point of failure. Agents don't quit, don't negotiate raises, and don't take your institutional knowledge to a competitor.
This isn't hiring vs not hiring
If you have senior engineers who own your architecture and make critical design decisions, keep them. Webhouse isn't a replacement for engineering leadership. It's a replacement for the 3-6 months you'd spend building out a team underneath them. Your senior engineers focus on the hard problems. Our agents handle the volume. Most clients start by offloading their backlog and expand from there.