And it isn't just the first "baby". What if you decide to pivot your animal production pipeline from horses to cows? In software development, unfinished work set aside to start from scratch is worthless and it doesn't even allow you to recover some capital by selling replaced animals.

I said 'an established' pipeline. I don't believe the analogy is ever used in the 'you want the first one in a month' way, because there's myriad other ways to say it's idiotic to just go out hiring if you need something done stat.

(Primarily: short-term, hires will reduce productivity, because established colleagues see an increase in the amount of support & knowledge-sharing they need to do, reducing their output by more than the new hire can yet offer.)