The fully loaded cost of a hire
Salary is the number people compare. It’s rarely more than two thirds of the real cost.
1.25–1.4x
Salary multiplier, fully loaded
8–14 wks
Typical time to hire a senior designer
1
Specialisms a single hire covers
On top of base salary you’re carrying employer taxes, benefits, equipment, software licences, recruiter fees, and the management time of whoever runs the hiring process and then the person. And that’s before the two to three month gap between deciding to hire and someone starting.
Head to head
| Oxeni | In-house hire | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to productive output | 1 week | 3–5 months incl. hiring |
| Cost predictability | ||
| Skills covered | Brand, product, motion, 3D | One specialism |
| Cover for holiday and sickness | ||
| Scales down without redundancy | ||
| Deep institutional knowledge | ||
| In your standups and planning | ||
| Recruitment risk | None | Real — bad hires are expensive |
When you should absolutely hire
We are not going to argue you out of a hire that’s obviously right:
- Design decisions happen daily and depend on context only someone inside the company has.
- You already have three or more designers. At that size, an in-house team with its own culture beats external capacity.
- Your product is the design. If the interface is the differentiator, own that capability.
The coverage argument
One designer cannot be excellent at brand identity, product UI, motion, and 3D. Nobody is. Hiring one person means choosing which of those you’ll be good at and outsourcing the rest anyway — which quietly reintroduces the freelancer management cost you were trying to avoid.
Frequently asked questions
That's one of the most common uses. Keep shipping while you recruit, then either stop or keep a reduced subscription for overflow.
Not on week one. It takes a few cycles. That's a genuine cost of going external and we'd rather you plan for it than be surprised.
You own it. It lives in your files and your repository from the start, documented as we go.