A few questions: Are they new to the role or team? Any codebase can be challenging if it is badly written, even with 40 years of experience. Often senior devel

A few questions: Are they new to the role or team? Any codebase can be challenging if it is badly written, even with 40 years of experience. Often senior developers know the "right" way to write software and really struggle to deal with problematic codebases. New developers might not see an alternative to a poorly written codebase, but for a senior developer, thinking about how it could/should be written takes up mindspace that makes making changes to it even harder. That first question hopefully invites you to be empathetic. Can you do that? Consider this: you say there are bugs that make the team look bad, suggesting you aren't looking out for them but for you. Can you step into their life for a moment? Are they open to pairing and working together? What could you teach them? Are you willing to do that, being vulnerable in your own way?