I always judge of the quality of a unfamiliar development team by the level of technical debt they agree to let into the codebase. Every team does that to some

I always judge of the quality of a unfamiliar development team by the level of technical debt they agree to let into the codebase. Every team does that to some extent, but if one looks into all sorts of code frequently, at some point one works out a feeling for the "threshold" below which no-one should go. It takes a good deal of ego to not cave to the pressure, and a growing ego feeds on accomplishments (ok, mostly ;-).