Your codebase is one of the team’s primary teachers.
New people don’t learn from manuals, they learn by reading the existing code and copying its habits. If the code is messy, newcomers adopt those same messy habits. And adding heads only multiplies the problem: more people results in more copies of the same bad patterns, and so productivity keeps sliding.
I’ve seen managers repeat the same fix — hire more — and expect different results. But that rarely works. The real solution is to change what the code teaches: make it readability, testable, and make refactoring a norm.
When the code models good practice, new developers learn the right way and the team regains stability.
Discussions for your team
- What does our code tell newcomers about “how we do things”?
- How do we ensure new builders learn good patterns?
- Are we prioritizing fixing the code, before we scale the team?
- What are some additional rules, processes, and habits we can establish to make our code teach well?