Scenario: plan · 2026-01 to
2027-06 · fully-loaded costing · synthetic data
Ending FTE
106
from 51
Approved headcount
139
reqs opened to date
Productive FTE
100
39 below approved
Plan cost (18 mo)
$31.0M
fully loaded
Understated by salary-only
$7.9M
+34%
Approved headcount and productive headcount are
different numbers. A req approved in January produces a start in
March or April, and that person is not fully productive for another one to
six months depending on the role. Budget the cost from approval and you
overstate cash; assume the capacity from approval and you overstate output.
Both errors get made in the same spreadsheet, in opposite directions, and
they do not cancel.
Approved vs actual vs productive headcount
The shaded band is capacity the plan assumes and the company
does not have — 39
of 139 approved heads
(28%).
It is structural, from req-to-start lag plus ramp, and it does not close by
recruiting harder. Hiring faster widens it, though by less than you would
expect — the already-ramped team dilutes the effect.
Salary-only budget vs fully-loaded cash
The gap is +34% —
$7.9M over this plan. Employer tax and
benefits are 23.2% of base, equipment and software run
$620/head/month, and external hires carry a
20% recruiting fee on first-year base. A hiring plan
presented in base salary is not a budget.
By department
Department
FTE
Productive
Req→start
Ramp
Base
Fully loaded /yr
Research
24.0
23.0
4 mo
3 mo
$265,000
$333,788
Engineering
41.0
39.3
3 mo
2 mo
$210,000
$266,055
Deployment
18.0
16.3
2 mo
2 mo
$165,000
$210,638
Go-to-market
15.0
13.0
2 mo
6 mo
$155,000
$198,322
G&A
8.0
8.0
2 mo
1 mo
$140,000
$179,850
Go-to-market has the longest ramp (six months to full quota)
and the highest attrition — which is why GTM hiring converts to capacity far
more slowly than an engineering plan of the same size, and why the two
should never be modelled with one blended assumption.
Monthly detail
Month
Approved
FTE
Productive
Starts
Leavers
Salary
Fully loaded
2026-10
102
76
71.0
3
2
$1.26M
$1.70M
2026-11
106
80
74.6
4
0
$1.33M
$1.80M
2026-12
112
85
78.8
5
0
$1.42M
$1.93M
2027-01
116
91
82.5
8
2
$1.52M
$2.08M
2027-02
120
92
86.0
4
3
$1.54M
$2.11M
2027-03
125
95
90.4
3
0
$1.59M
$2.17M
2027-04
129
101
94.5
6
0
$1.70M
$2.32M
2027-05
134
102
95.7
4
3
$1.72M
$2.35M
2027-06
139
106
99.7
4
0
$1.78M
$2.42M
Attrition consumed 19 of 74 gross hires
(26%) over the window. A plan that treats gross
hires as net adds under-staffs every quarter and then reports the shortfall
as a recruiting problem.