Should I take on more clients with inexperienced staff?
Taking on your own book of clients offers career progression, but relying on green staff requires constant babysitting to fix basic mistakes. Because you cannot effectively delegate tasks, your workload drastically increases, pushing you into weekend work and severe burnout.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
Should I take on more clients with inexperienced staff?
- 1leaving public accounting for an industry positionDid this help you?
- 2looking for a new job and putting in noticeDid this help you?
- 3planning to mix junior staff with AI to get things doneDid this help you?
- 4Providing extensive notes and step-by-step guidanceDid this help you?
- 5Putting the employee on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)Did this help you?
- 6Hiring recent graduates who might be blank slates and more teachableDid this help you?
- 7Accepting that the work won't be delegated and doing it yourselfDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“now that's she's here I realize I'm not going to be able to build her up and give her a lot of stuff. Which means I can't move on to bigger issues months down the road.”source ↗
“She will enter stuff in without a job. I told her if it's associated with a job put it but now she's just putting invoices and credit card expenses to random jobs so it has one.”source ↗
“The one Ibhave right now cant seem to understand that the point of doing a reconciliation is not to DO the reconciliation, but for it to TIE. Also the sheer number of times I have had to say "dont sign off on a thing until it is complete" is plumb insane.”source ↗
“I work with new grad interns and they are fucking clueless”source ↗
“Having your own book can be great for control but doubling hours with green staff who need constant babysitting is a recipe for disaster, especially if you're already fried”source ↗
“It was 70-90 hours a week for 2 years before i crashed and burned.”source ↗
“My biggest hesitation is staffing. We’ve struggled to retain strong staff, and there has been a lot of turnover recently.”source ↗
“I’m leaning toward yes because it would be a good challenge, give me more control over my work, and help me progress in my career. But I’m already pretty burned out, and don’t want working weekends to become the norm.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2How to delegate responsibilities to a small team
- 27How to handle too much work without project engineers or coordinators
- 13Is it normal to have no training or supervision on a new job?
- 6Why do employees lack initiative and need constant hand-holding?
- 6What are the real work hours like for a new HVAC tech?
- 7What to do when half your team quits and isn't replaced