You make a perceptive point about the metaphor being wrong. Code reviewers should be more like advisors and less like gatekeepers. I've had to go through too ma

You make a perceptive point about the metaphor being wrong. Code reviewers should be more like advisors and less like gatekeepers. I've had to go through too many reviews where I end up having to bend backward to please the reviewer. Gatekeeping is occasionally needed, like in case of someone outside the team contributing a change, serious bugs, egregiously bad coding style like global variables and gotos, new team members/employees, people fresh out of college, etc. But I've seen reviewers going too far in the direction of gatekeeping. I tried to improve myself as a reviewer by asking if I can approve the change in the first round of review. I don't hold back from giving as many comments as I feel like, but I also try to approve in the first round, reminding myself that the other person is also a competent engineer who can make the right decisions even if I'm not looking over his shoulder every second.