Because, as mentioned, it’s a fantasy that someone can step in and understand the peculiarities of a new company(’s technology) without ramp up time.
Edit: specified its specifically about the tech. The business side is a whole other thing.
Edit: specified its specifically about the tech. The business side is a whole other thing.
When I joined a kernel gfx driver team, the expected ramp time was ~6 months. My friend working on Mesa had a >1 year ramp time!
If I open the source for a Django or React app, I can get to fixing bugs in a few days or less. It just depends.
If they know the technology that’s one less thing to worry about.
“what the hell were they thinking using X like Y!”
“Why didn’t they use Y here”
“Oh man, this looks like monkey patched code from 2 full versions ago, the right way to handle this now would be 1/3 the code, but oh they can’t update it because they’re mutating the data structure in order to Z… Fuck…”
Edit: Eventually, you'll come to an understanding of why it's that way, but it takes time and often experimentation.
With maturity, you realize whatever they did worked well enough to get the company to a position where they were able to hire you.
As Corey Quinn (a well known “cloud economist”) says, “legacy software is software that generates revenue”.
My point was exactly the opposite and parallel to what you said. But even with experience it takes time to decode those decisions.
The point is that it takes time to understand the whys of code that is counterintuitive at first.
Even if you are a 100% match for the technology.