> Code reviews. There's good reason for them to exist, but in practice at best they're a waste of time, and at worst an exercise in narcissism. People nitpickin

> Code reviews. There's good reason for them to exist, but in practice at best they're a waste of time, and at worst an exercise in narcissism. People nitpicking the way a statement is written because they feel like their subjective preference is objectively better. Perfectionists who block forward progress in attempts to pick out every possible detail that doesn't matter in the big picture, instead of moving forward with 80% good. Choosing a worse solution that a reviewer suggests because you know they're always the last to back down. And code reviews rarely catch the bugs that actually matter. I found that code reviews without a design review or at least a description of the proposed design in the PR itself, is nothing but a waste of time the way you just described. Imagine a Civil Engineer being walked through a construction site and making comments right about work, while even though he knows the fellas are building a bridge, he has no idea how that bridge ought to look like etc. This becomes a waste of time because I have to read the diff and build a mental model, which is at best a guess, of what the author wanted to build/change based on just the diff. This is even worse with code bases I'm barely familiar with (which is increasing since we have a bunch of "micro services").