> A good senior engineer is for the most part able to not write bad code from day one, just at a very low speed and with the need to ask other people frequenyly. Even if you do not know the code base or domain yet there are a lot of things you can do to avoid writing bad code. Yes, as someone new you will make mistakes and misunderstand things but a lot of the bad code I have personally seen has not been caused by that. Most bad code I have seen has been caused by people rushing and not having their fundamentals in order. Like not actually doing reviews, not spending a few extra hours to think about architecture, etc. Also a big issue is that people just let the complexity of systems explode for the gain of short term proje

You have a very charitable view of the competency of the typical engineer at big tech nowadays. Ten years ago, sure. But with the advent of people purely studying for coding interviews that's changed.