Perfection need not be the enemy of good enough. Usually, whether the documentation is out of date or not, _some_ documentation is better than none. I've rarely come across an instance where documentation was actively harmful -- not to say those cases don't exist on the margins.

> And I do not even know what 'code labs' even means.

Code labs are self-guided lessons, like a tutorial, about the systems and technologies that your company is built on. They're called code labs because producing code/artifacts as part of your learning is one of the goals. For example, your company may have a custom enterprise installation process that's built upon Ansible, Terraform, AWS tooling, and a little proprietary work sprinkled on top. Some code labs may take you step-by-step through how to add a new service; configure, migrate, and wire up databases; etc. such that you'd have working code at the end of the code lab and new knowledge around the company's best practices.

Similarly you can do this for the standard language at your company. Most companies accumulate some amount of proprietary helpers, libraries, or frameworks in their standard language. A code lab can walk you through how to write code in the way your company expects using the helpers, libraries, and frameworks that are common across your teams.

> My experience is fairly typical SV stuff, so I am wondering where these companies that still do all these things are.

I have over a decade of similar experience across startups and large companies in NYC, Seattle, and SV. In the last 5 companies I've been at, all of them have had some combination of the above.