I don't think there's anything actually "leaner" going on here. If anything, it's the reverse - much higher investment of effort up-front for supposedly avoidin

I don't think there's anything actually "leaner" going on here. If anything, it's the reverse - much higher investment of effort up-front for supposedly avoiding risk of bad hiring choices and effort replacing them later. I think the word they're looking for here is "internship". That's a longer duration and more expensive, but probably(?) less distrustful to the regular team.