I just read
this post, of someone who tried the hirelings systems (I haven't played the game, so I'm relying on what I read).
It looks as if, sadly, the Hirelings system is as disappointing as I feared it would be.
If can't change the Race, Background, name and appearance of Hirelings, then we can't really use Hirelings to make a fully custom party (e.g. four Githyankis).
Also, we apparently cannot create a party of four Player Characters without using the fake Multi-Player trick.
All in all, we can't use Hirelings to achieve anything that we couldn't achieve by simply respecialising the Companions. Unless the goal is to have a party without Companions if we can't stand any of them.
