---
aliases: ["Hire Editor (Sara)"]
Is A: Project
Belongs to: "[[24q2]]"
Advances: "[[responsibility-team-management]]"
Status: Done
Owner: "[[person-luca-rossi]]"
---
# Hire Editor (Sara)

## Overview

By mid-2024, writing the weekly newsletter, managing sponsorships, recording podcast episodes, and handling business operations was becoming unsustainable as a solo operation. The most impactful hire at this stage was an editor — someone who could elevate the writing quality, reduce revision cycles, and free up time for higher-leverage activities like strategy and guest relationships.

After a lightweight hiring process, [[person-sara-ricci]] joined as a part-time editor in May 2024. Sara had previous experience editing technical content for developer publications, which was critical — engineering leadership content requires an editor who understands the domain, not just grammar. This hire directly supported scaling [[responsibility-content-production]] and was a prerequisite for hitting [[2024-reach-50k-subscribers]].

## Goals

- Define the editor role: scope, hours, compensation, and working relationship
- Source and evaluate 5-10 candidates through network referrals and job boards
- Run a paid trial edit with top 3 candidates using a real newsletter draft
- Onboard the selected editor with style guide, editorial calendar, and tooling access
- Achieve a steady-state workflow where drafts go through one editorial pass before publish

## Key decisions

- **Part-time contractor, not full-time employee.** The workload did not justify a full-time hire yet, and contractor status keeps the arrangement flexible as the business scales. Sara works approximately 15 hours/week.
- **Paid trial before commitment.** Rather than hiring based on interviews alone, asked the top 3 candidates to edit the same newsletter draft. This revealed huge differences in editorial judgment that interviews could not surface. Sara's edits were the most substantive — she restructured sections and challenged weak arguments, not just fixed typos.
- **Editor has veto power on publish readiness.** Gave Sara explicit authority to push back on drafts that are not ready. This was uncomfortable at first but has significantly improved quality. If Sara says it needs another pass, it gets another pass.

## Notes

- The hiring process took about 4 weeks from posting to signed contract. Received ~30 applications, shortlisted 8, did calls with 5, trial edits with 3. The trial edit step was by far the most valuable signal.
- Biggest adjustment was learning to write "editor-friendly" first drafts — meaning rough structure and arguments are solid, but prose is intentionally unpolished. Trying to write perfectly on the first pass and then having an editor change it creates friction. Better to write fast and let Sara shape the prose.
- Sara also took on podcast show notes editing, which was not in the original scope but made sense as her familiarity with the content grew. This expanded into the workflow documented in [[procedure-podcast-editing]].
- [[person-matteo-cellini]] recommended Sara — they had worked together at a previous company. Network referrals continue to be the best hiring channel for roles that require domain expertise.
