Indeed. A more nuanced interpretation of the question might be: “Can the most junior (or least tenured) engineer on my team understand the code in time to deliv

Indeed. A more nuanced interpretation of the question might be: “Can the most junior (or least tenured) engineer on my team understand the code in time to deliver the feature they’re working on?” To be fair, OP’s original phrasing is still a good rule of thumb. And nowhere does the OP imply it’s an absolute.