10 Frontend Red Flags Every CTO Should Know
Quick diagnostic checks that reveal whether your frontend is an asset or a liability
You don't need to read code to know your frontend is in trouble. The symptoms are visible in sprint velocity, hiring interviews, and the look on your engineers' faces when you ask about the release timeline.
Red Flag 1: Builds Take More Than 30 Seconds
Modern tools like Vite produce builds in 5-15 seconds. If yours takes minutes, your tooling is outdated — and your feedback loops are broken.
Red Flag 2: No Shared Component Library
Search for "Button" or "Modal." If you find more than one implementation, you don't have a component library — you have one-off solutions.
Red Flag 3: Three or More State Management Approaches
Redux in one feature, Context in another, raw useState in a third. That's not flexibility — it's chaos from having no frontend owner.
Red Flag 4: New Hires Take More Than Two Weeks to Ship
If a competent engineer can't ship a small feature within two weeks, your codebase has an onboarding problem disguised as an architecture problem.
Red Flag 5: Fear of Touching Shared Code
When engineers say "don't touch that file" — that's a codebase held together by fear.
Red Flag 6: No TypeScript, or TypeScript with any Everywhere
If 30% of types are any, 30% of your codebase has no type checking at all.
Red Flag 7: No Automated Testing in CI
If your CI doesn't run tests, every deployment is a gamble.
Red Flag 8: Geological Layers of Architecture
Oldest features use class components. Middle-era uses hooks and Context. Newest uses a modern stack. Each layer has its own patterns.
Red Flag 9: Every Feature Requires a "Spike"
When the team needs research before building straightforward features, the architecture has no clear extension points.
Red Flag 10: You Can't Deploy on Friday
An unofficial "no deploys on Friday" rule means your testing, monitoring, and rollback capabilities are insufficient.
What to Do About It
If three or more resonate, your frontend is actively slowing your business. Each compounds the others. The encouraging part: these are diagnosable and fixable, usually without a rewrite. They require someone to make architectural decisions that should have been made months ago.
If you recognized your team in this list, you're not alone — and the earlier you address it, the cheaper the fix.