Onboarding Experiment
How long does it take a competent engineer to safely modify this subsystem? A sensor of knowledge concentration measured in onboarding time.
The onboarding experiment is the most direct sensor of epistemic accessibility: give a competent engineer a task in an unfamiliar area and measure how long it takes them to complete it safely. Long onboarding times indicate implicit knowledge, missing documentation, or excessive coupling.
Sensor properties
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Oracle strength | Low — onboarding time correlates with complexity |
| Independence | High — measured from external engineers |
| Scope | Module-level |
| Feedback latency | Weeks |
| Actionability | Exploratory — shows where onboarding is slow |
| Type | Retrospective |
What it cannot detect
Onboarding time conflates code complexity with many other factors: tooling, build process, test infrastructure, team availability. A slow onboarding may not reflect code quality at all.