When I stopped seeing code reviews as gate keepers and started seeing them as collaboration and communication points it finally made sense to me. But reviews on

When I stopped seeing code reviews as gate keepers and started seeing them as collaboration and communication points it finally made sense to me. But reviews only work well if your team shares a common goal, like maintainability or knowledge transfer. I've worked in a place where code reviews where treated to just a box to have checked off. There was no shared responsibility for the codebase. And most people had a mentality of "if you approve mine, I'll approve yours". Still it was kept as a "safeguard" by management because for them it was also a checkbox they could mark on their process checklist. I'm happy I left, there is only so much culture a single person can change in a team/company.