Episode number:
15
Don’t hire your friends!
Hiring friends seems like an easy win, doesn’t it? You trust their skills, you know their character, and you’ve shared experiences that have built mutual respect.
Hiring friends seems like an easy win, doesn’t it? You trust their skills, you know their character, and you’ve shared experiences that have built mutual respect.
As our podcast guest reveals, this can be one of the most expensive mistakes a leader can make.
In this candid conversation, we explore the nuanced dynamics of hiring friends and the hidden challenges that come with it. Our guest, Narayan Prasad, has been at the forefront of tech innovation for decades—running a space-tech company, investing in startups, and leading teams across multiple continents. His insights are a masterclass in leadership and the complexity of balancing personal relationships with professional responsibilities.
• Blurring Lines Between Friend and Boss: Friends often struggle to see you as their leader. This can lead to pushback on decisions, creating a drain on your time and energy as you explain and justify your choices.
• Double Standards: Hiring friends can create unintentional double standards, where policies or hierarchies are harder to enforce.
• Economic Dependence: Transitioning from equals to a boss-employee relationship often strains friendships, especially when tough decisions need to be made.
• Sacrifice Dynamics: Friends might feel they’re making personal sacrifices for the company, creating an unspoken sense of entitlement.
Running a largely remote company in a high-tech, fast-paced environment adds another layer of complexity. When skills become obsolete within a few years, and top-down decisions need to be made quickly, the dynamics of hiring friends can hinder agility and collaboration.
Our guest also shares how losing employees isn’t always a setback—it can sometimes be a blessing. For example, when employees with outdated skills choose to leave, it spares the company from difficult layoff decisions.
One of the most compelling parts of this episode is the reflection on maintaining relationships after friends leave the company. The transition is often painful—comparable to a “divorce,” where both sides carry residual unhappiness. Setting boundaries between “friend-mode” and “work-mode” is essential but challenging.
• Be transparent—but balance it. Over-sharing about the company’s struggles can demoralize teams, even when intended as honesty.
• Build a remote culture thoughtfully. Create policies like face-time opportunities to encourage collaboration, but expect pushback when these policies challenge personal dynamics.
• Don’t compromise on hierarchy and work ethics, even when dealing with friends. Consistency is key to maintaining fairness.
A Takeaway for Aspiring Leaders With Friends:
This episode is a must-listen for leaders navigating personal relationships in professional spaces. Whether you’ve faced these challenges or want to avoid them, the lessons shared in this episode will leave you rethinking your approach to hiring, culture-building, and leadership.
Tune in to hear why our guest, Narayan Prasad, says, “Don’t hire your friends,” and learn how to lead with integrity, even in the toughest situations. Catch the episode now!
is Narayan Prasad.
Narayan is a co-founder and COO at satsearch, the world’s largest marketplace for the space industry that streamlines procurement for team building space missions and suppliers. satsearch has helped engineers to procure for over 400 space missions passing on procurement opportunities worth over $1 billion to suppliers in the space industry.
