Having a ticket system like this and forcing reviews through the chokepoint of busiest person in the company is pretty stupid, and it's probably putting a lot o

Having a ticket system like this and forcing reviews through the chokepoint of busiest person in the company is pretty stupid, and it's probably putting a lot of pressure on the CTO. If the CTO is under pressure, he will probably be more critical of things than he otherwise would be (even though it makes more work for him). It's not abnormal to be better at working on tasks with a bit of leeway than on very specific tickets. That said, if you frequently solve problems in a way different from the CTO's preference, moreso than your coworkers, then it's possible that there are some patterns that the CTO prefers that your coworkers have picked up and started using; you might get less hassle if you're doing things in that way, even when that way is objectively worse, because it puts less cognitive load on the CTO. That said, it's very possible that the company has just gotten into a bad state and everybody's being nasty and over-critical about everybody else. Structuring commits in such a strange and broken way is indicative of other problems, since nobody would make the CTO approve every commit outside of a real emergency situation with tons of broken code being pushed into the critical path. It may just be that the company is going in a downward spiral and you're an arbitrary target for blame for everybody who's feeling the pressure.