"This candidate is out of our price range." Fair enough. Then they told me what
By George Barnett Reid 👀 · October 2, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
"This candidate is out of our price range."
Fair enough.
Then they told me what they pay their agency.
What a retainer buys you:
a slice of an account manager
a weekly call
a monthly deck
What the same money buys you direct:
all of one person
your Slack
your standups
I watched a $50M brand do this maths in front of me back in the agency days. They took the person full-time at $3.2k instead of my $6k retainer.
Cost me the retainer. I let them do it anyway.
Still there 18 months on.
The strange bit is nobody ever calls the retainer expensive. It's a line item. The salary is a decision, and decisions get argued about.
"Out of our price range" is almost never about the price 🙃