Everyone (rightfully so!) wants high standards. We admire craftsmanship, discipline, and excellence. In fact, we encourage others to push harder and aim higher. In the early days of my first real startup, our code base was a mess, and every single pull request was a disaster. A total dumpster fire, honestly. We all wanted high standards, but we were absolutely drowning in not even having a floor. We had to learn the hard way - before you can aim for excellence, you have to define the bare minimum ruthlessly.

Okay, listen. ‘bare minimum’ is a terrible name. It’s not about slacking off. They are about providing the minimum level of effort and responsibility that allows growth. They are the foundation we build high performance on. Without them, even the most supportive mentor eventually throws up their hands.

Thinking it through, these are the reasons it matters:

  1. They create fairness: If two people are working together and one is consistently putting in effort while the other doesn’t meet basic expectations, the relationship immediately collapses. Bare minimum standards protect the time, energy, and goodwill of everyone else involved.

  2. They reduce noise: Teams drown when people force others to read their mind or constantly mop up after them. On the other hand, when a minimum standard exists, real problems rise above the noise, which makes helping easier and much, much faster.

  3. They make learning scalable: Mentoring requires bandwidth, a finite resource, right? If mentors have to drag people to the starting line, they’ll never have the capacity to guide them toward advanced skills. The basics must be covered. Bare minimum effort from the learner frees up space for the mentor to teach.

Seeing the “Floor” in the Wild#

These are some of the most obvious examples of how the floor enables growth in practices:

  • Stack Overflow: A pretty well-known fact that on platforms like Stack Overflow, there is only one rule: you must show your work. You need a clear description, a code sample, the exact steps you’ve already tried, etc. You don’t earn the right to get help until you show your work first. When the minimum is met, the community becomes incredibly supportive.

  • Open Source: Every large open source project relies on contribution guidelines. Contributors must follow formatting rules, include tests when needed, and explain the reasoning behind changes. If someone cannot meet these basic requirements, maintainers cannot review the code or teach best practices. Bare minimum rules keep the door open, but they also keep the project healthy.

  • Wikipedia: Editors on Wikipedia must provide citations and maintain a neutral tone. These are simple requirements, but without them, volunteer editors would spend all their time cleaning up junk claims instead of guiding new contributors.

  • Engineering Teams: Go to Google, Intercom (we’re hiring!), or any place with a high-functioning engineering team, and the floor is simple: PRs are small, tests pass, and you explain the problem up front. That’s it. No excuses. My absolute favourite explanation of this, and apologies if it’s overquoted, comes from No Rules Rules. It describes how Netflix built high talent density first, before it could go for anything else. High-performance environments aren’t just built on exceptional people. They’re built on removing the friction created when someone does not meet even the basic expectations of the group.

Bare Minimum Standards Are Not Low Standards#

Bare minimum standards are not about encouraging mediocrity. They are about making sure the learner is engaged enough that others can invest in them. When people meet the baseline, the focus can shift to real improvement. Only once everyone has done the basic work, the team can spend energy on excellence, depth, and mastery.

The environments that actually work understand this simple, painful, liberating truth: high standards simply cannot exist without bare minimum standards. One creates aspiration. The other creates structure. I’ve watched teams that look effortless from the outside, but underneath there’s a simple pact - everyone shows up ready to do the basics. When that happens, mentors can give sharper feedback, people trust each other quicker, and you see the bar rise automatically. Honestly. For years, I actually thought high standards were the floor. I was wrong.