Say yes to the Nikola Kolev hire only against a handshake that it starts a timer on Jason Rodriguez - and reject the three-or-four-more-people gate outright

Situation

Mariah reported that Nathan had told her he needs three or four more people in before anything moves on Jason Rodriguez, and would not be ready to start until October. Peter told Mariah flatly that is not going to be true, then took it to Nathan in their 1:1 the same afternoon. He drew the line precisely: he will shake hands on you can hire a Jason Rodriguez replacement before we do anything about Jason, but not on we filled every role that we could possibly fill before we are doing something. He then made Nikola conditional - if you want to move forward on Nick because you think it will allow you to remove Jason, then I will say yes, but I would like it to come with a handshake that you are getting super aggressive then with Jason. Nathan agreed to the handshake. In the roundtable an hour earlier Peter had held the same question open in front of the panel, saying the manager conversation had to happen separately.

Reasoning

Peter wants the substitution logic to be one-for-one, not cumulative. A backfill-then-act rule keeps the team improving; a fill-everything-first rule converts a departure into an indefinite hold, which is exactly what Nathan had communicated to HR. He also stated the governing priority out loud: bias on building the team more than managing any deliverable, and if something falls through the cracks that is going to be okay. He is willing to be more aggressive than Nathan and bet on the replacement being able to absorb the compliance work rather than wait for proof.

Additional Context

Peter said explicitly he did not care what got said to Mariah, only about the agreement between him and Nathan. He also declined to make the Nikola yes his own decision - he told the panel he would not stand in the way and let Nathan own it, but attached the condition privately.

Observed Evidence

Direct quotes across three Fathom recordings on 2026-08-21: the HR sync where Peter contradicted the three-or-four-people claim, the roundtable where he deferred the Nikola call to the 1:1, and the 1:1 where the handshake was made and accepted.

Matching Patterns

Confidence Breakdown

Reasoning Depth Analysis