Code Quality

At Level 3, you raise the bar for code quality—not only in your own work, but across your team. You think in systems, not just scripts. Your code is intentional, idiomatic, and clearly communicates what it’s doing and why. You mentor others by example and bring a quality mindset into every stage of development—from design to deployment.

Key Behaviors

  • Establishes patterns that improve consistency and readability
  • Proactively refactors for clarity and maintainability
  • Teaches and documents clean coding practices
  • Designs code with testability, extensibility, and future change in mind
  • Balances engineering standards with delivery goals

Common Struggles

  • May hold back delivery with excessive focus on polish
  • Might struggle to adapt standards to new situations
  • Can become frustrated when others don’t share the same bar

Success Indicators

You know you're successful when you:

  • Write code that’s easy to reason about, modify, and reuse
  • Guide others toward cleaner, more maintainable solutions
  • Improve the overall quality of your team’s codebase
  • Share tools, patterns, and techniques that raise the bar

Mindset Shift

From:

I help my team write clean code.

To:

I make high-quality code easier to write across teams.

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • Where do messy patterns emerge and why?
  • How can we shift from cleanup to prevention?
  • Are our standards clear, current, and easy to follow?

Build These Habits

  • 1
    Audit shared libraries and modules for code quality
  • 2
    Participate in or lead discussions on evolving standards
  • 3
    Offer review mentorship, not just review comments

Seek Feedback

  • Does my code set a clear example for others?
  • Are there common pitfalls I could help prevent?
  • Where could our team’s quality practices be more effective?

Signals You're Ready to Level Up

  • Others mimic your structure, naming, and habits
  • You influence code quality beyond your own work
  • Standards evolve through your input and example

Focus Summary

  • Teach by example
  • Think in systems
  • Build the codebase you want to inherit

At Level 3, you make quality scalable. You teach through doing. And you model what it looks like to care not just about code—but about the people who read and maintain it.