> I’m sorry you had such bad experience but you were working with the wrong people (feels like toxic even).
It's the tool itself and it's imposed workflow of blocking work and gaining absolute power in demanding changes, that causes the working environment to become toxic. Nobody would ever do that in a meeting "I'm blocking this work now until my demands have been met". That would be incredibly hostile, but with this tool it becomes normal.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Even when I was CTO, I’d submit my code in a PR and my team would pull me up on mistakes and inconsistencies. It was really annoying! And also great.
PRs are a great way for the whole team to learn about how the organisation cuts code, and can reduce the number of errors, but of course with poor leadership they can be used for evil.
Same here! I would have one of the more senior people review my code, and I would review his. It was a small organization and we didn't have time to do the most thorough reviews, but it was good that someone else knew something about what was going on.
"Code reviews", in general, are a good thing for knowledge transfer. If they are done for nit picking and stylistic complaints, they are not terribly valuable.
> It doesn’t have to be like this. Even when I was CTO, I’d submit my code in a PR and my team would pull me up on mistakes and inconsistencies. It was really annoying! And also great.
I can imagine that you had fun mingling with the commoners for a day, now try it on all of your actual work, and with the whole C-level team gang up on you for each review.
> about how the organisation cuts code
You don't have any guidelines for how the organisation cuts code, and that's why you like the review process, because it covers up for that.
Why the hate? You’ve obviously had some shitty experiences but I’ve never done anything to deserve your attitude.
> I can imagine that you had fun mingling with the commoners for a day, now try it on all of your actual work, and with the whole C-level team gang up on you for each review.
You literally know nothing about me, my experiences or how I conduct my life, and rather than listen to people with a different experience to yours, you choose borderline abuse.
This is the comments section of HN. Take a break and get some perspective.
I agree with the others commenting here and can't relate to your experience at all. Review is a huge positive and while it does "slow things down" it usually is preventing people from slamming into walls at high speed, so that's a positive too.
Maybe your work experience is mostly in a high stress, prototype-heavy environment where it's more important to launch something than it is to have a maintainable, incrementally improving codebase? I worked at a consultancy like that and it was very different from "big product" long term work.
As for the social dynamics, it sounds like your workplace culture just blows.
It's the tool itself and it's imposed workflow of blocking work and gaining absolute power in demanding changes, that causes the working environment to become toxic. Nobody would ever do that in a meeting "I'm blocking this work now until my demands have been met". That would be incredibly hostile, but with this tool it becomes normal.