I don't mean refactor everything or spend six months until everything is perfect. I've just found it's a pretty reliable way to find low hanging fruit and get a

I don't mean refactor everything or spend six months until everything is perfect. I've just found it's a pretty reliable way to find low hanging fruit and get an easy first commit in. "Get your feet wet" I believe is the English expression. You have to get familiar with the build process anyway, you might as well improve it while your attention is on it. If you have a curated onboarding experience that's great, but then you'll probably have good documentation and nice setups, then my suggestion obviously doesn't apply. I wish that was common but in my experience that has been a rarity, not the common case.