Nobody warned me I'd spend most of my time reading code, not writing it

School and courses train you to produce code from a blank page. The actual job is 70% understanding what someone else already built — often years ago, often with zero comments.

I got way more effective the month I started treating "read the surrounding code first" as the real work instead of an annoying prerequisite to the "real" work. Anyone else feel like this is the most under-taught skill?