I fully stat any NPCs that will be around for a while, and usually let the players control them, provided they aren't having them do things that they wouldn't normally do. For ujust a hireling I would probably just give them a stat block, selecting a couple of skill highlights reflecting what the PCs are hiring for.
And off topic
In my D&D set I have the red basic, blue expert, greenish companion, black masters and gold immortal sets. And a full set of 1st ed AD&D, a good portion of the non-setting 2nd ed, most of the non-setting 3rd/3.5, and none of the 4th. I did a demo game for 4th at a convention, and after 45 minutes I had to get up and walk away it was so bad. And I wasn't the first player to do so.
Pathfinder as mentioned above is 3.5 mended. I'm not overly enamoured of the way they keep on loading specific special abilities with new effects (e.g. the paladin's lay on hands getting additional effects so one LoH application might heal damage, cure disease, remove fatigue, remove paralysis... etc with no way to just select one ability), but a lot of the rule tweaks make a lot of sense and are very playable. I particularly like the fighter bonuses for weapons and armour, and also the wizard school bonus abilities (e.g. an evocation specialist can shoot an energy missile that does somthing like 1d6+ half level daamge) & the option to have a bonded item rather than a familiar.
My favourite mechanism from all the D&D series though is second edition character kits - lots of interesting new templates to play, completely opened out the game from it's linear character pathways. Unfortunately they went back to the linear for v.3