I had engaged a couple of university faculty/staff to do a job because the Unix-based boxes we were using back then were just like the ones at the school. After nearly three months on a job I gave them, which I estimated should take at most a week, I hired a 15-year-old from the local high-school electronics club who took on the job and completed it, including (somewhat rough) documentation, in a single weekend. There's a lesson in there, somewhere ...