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Heard the debunked (http://www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21/that-five-monkeys-and-a-banana-story-is-rubbish/) five monkeys analogy today, and was thinking it would be an apt analogy for onboarding software developers. The monkeys are the developers, management is spraying the water, and the banana is the legacy code, which slowly rots over time. Management is spraying the water, because the banana is "working code".
Of course, the original experiment is also closely aligned with legacy code treatment; once management stops vigorously defending the legacy code, the new devs will play with it or replace it; the old devs will see improvements and also jump in (or leave).