Remarkable advances in qubit hardware have enabled landmark experiments demonstrating small-scale quantum simulations, quantum computational tasks, and error-correction protocols. Nonetheless, achieving scalable, fault-tolerant quantum error correction (FTQEC) necessary for building useful quantum technology remains a challenging task. While developing low-noise quantum hardware is important to ease the requirements for FTQEC, in this talk I will focus on a complementary strategy which is based on the observation that some type of errors are less contagious and easy to correct than others. I will show how the detailed noise properties of the underlying quantum hardware can be leveraged to design high-threshold and low-overhead protocols for FTQEC. I will also discuss the opportunities for practical applications in different hardware platforms, with specific focus on superconducting circuits.