Devs are bad at code review, in that devs are bad at being fair, thorough, appreciative, clear. All too frequently code is "reviewed", when really it's just "ma

Devs are bad at code review, in that devs are bad at being fair, thorough, appreciative, clear. All too frequently code is "reviewed", when really it's just "marked as okay or not". Also, all too frequently a reviewer leaves a comment without concise actionable feedback - "You could do this this way" or "Sometimes I do ____ this way." Style comments are almost always a huge pain. Style shouldn't be up to the dev most of the time - it should be an automated step as part of either dev or build. If it's not, don't comment on it within the review. Make a task to automate code styling instead. If the author of the code doesn't immediately know what has to happen to get their code merged, the reviewer has failed. If the outcome of the code review requires changes to the fundamental approach that the author took, that is also a conversation that should not happen within the confines of the code review (because devs are bad at being concise, fair, clear). If there is a culture where leaving positive feedback ("Looks great!", "Smart decision doing ____", etc) is strange, and PRs are used to overly scrutinize peers to appear greater than, find a new job. Don't even bother trying to help.