5 ms·

> To do that you write 10 changes, each about 50 lines and trivial to review since everything is super clean, otherwise you can't get through code reviews fast

> To do that you write 10 changes, each about 50 lines and trivial to review since everything is super clean, otherwise you can't get through code reviews fast enough No matter how small or clean the PRs were, I'm pretty sure I couldn't get reviews for 10 in one day.

Jensson 5y ago
Maybe the review tooling you use aren't good enough? At google it shows all test runs related to the change, it shows linter information inline in the file diffs, you automatically associate it with tasks it is meant to solve and you write a 100 word description to explain what it is doing and why. If the change adds tests, has proper naming, solves the issue it says it is solving in a reasonable way, doesn't solve anything it doesn't say it is solving, and none of the tools complains then you just accept it after looking at the tests being reasonable and the code not looking strange. It takes a while to get new engineers where they do this consistently before review, and then review takes time, but once you know how to write changes that are easy to review then reviews are very quick. Edit: Btw, optimizing the code you write to reduce review time is also another aspect of productivity. It isn't productive to give a lot of extra work to others, so you practice until everything is as obvious as possible. And as people get used to your changes being easy to review it gets even quicker.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  It's less about setting up for the review and more about getting teammates to review the PRs promptly. I work remotely, so my (Small) team mostly works async even though we're in similar time zones. I doubt trying to ping them for 10 PR reviews in a single day would go well. Async + people trying to do their own stuff + 10 interruptions is not a great combo. Comments/discussion on a PR can grind things to a halt as well. I completely agree everything you're saying about making PRs easy to review though. My team already tend to do those things thanks to our manager.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Could be about incentives then. At Google the code reviews you do are tracked so doing many looks good for your performance reviews, so some people try to be fast with reviews to get more reviews. If you don't get any credit for doing code reviews then I can see it being very hard to get people to do them though. Also as long as you have a pending review sent to you it shows up as a "you have stuff to do" icon in the google tools until you respond to it, just like if you got a message, I guess that helps as well.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      Interesting. We don't track code reviews as far as I'm aware, and we use GitHub so you just get an email if you're tagged as a reviewer. I would say it's not uncommon to have to wait a day for reviews.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        The the first thing to do if you want to improve that is to ensure you track code reviews. Meaning, you can see what changes each person reviewed and not just submitted, and then you can use that data to talk about performance etc. If one person does all the reviews then he should get a ton of credit since that is hard important work. Typically lead programmers do more reviews and juniors writes more changes, so a person doing a lot of reviews is associated with seniority and something to strive for rather than avoid. Also I bet your manager would be interested in that information as well, so maybe you just need to suggest it to them.
        tharkun__ 5y ago
        There's a huge problem with this. The incentive you are describing isn't to do good code reviews. The incentive there is to do a lot of code reviews. Those two are not the same and while they are not mutually exclusive, just by tracking this metric and rating people on it, you are not giving an incentive for good code review. Only for fast review. But you really want both. You want fast and you want good and thorough. I completely agree that senior and lead people should be doing more reviews and thus help everyone else, ultimately benefiting other programmers and the whole organization overall.

Jensson 5y ago

Maybe the review tooling you use aren't good enough? At google it shows all test runs related to the change, it shows linter information inline in the file diffs, you automatically associate it with tasks it is meant to solve and you write a 100 word description to explain what it is doing and why. If the change adds tests, has proper naming, solves the issue it says it is solving in a reasonable way, doesn't solve anything it doesn't say it is solving, and none of the tools complains then you just accept it after looking at the tests being reasonable and the code not looking strange. It takes a while to get new engineers where they do this consistently before review, and then review takes time, but once you know how to write changes that are easy to review then reviews are very quick. Edit: Btw, optimizing the code you write to reduce review time is also another aspect of productivity. It isn't productive to give a lot of extra work to others, so you practice until everything is as obvious as possible. And as people get used to your changes being easy to review it gets even quicker.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
It's less about setting up for the review and more about getting teammates to review the PRs promptly. I work remotely, so my (Small) team mostly works async even though we're in similar time zones. I doubt trying to ping them for 10 PR reviews in a single day would go well. Async + people trying to do their own stuff + 10 interruptions is not a great combo. Comments/discussion on a PR can grind things to a halt as well. I completely agree everything you're saying about making PRs easy to review though. My team already tend to do those things thanks to our manager.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Could be about incentives then. At Google the code reviews you do are tracked so doing many looks good for your performance reviews, so some people try to be fast with reviews to get more reviews. If you don't get any credit for doing code reviews then I can see it being very hard to get people to do them though. Also as long as you have a pending review sent to you it shows up as a "you have stuff to do" icon in the google tools until you respond to it, just like if you got a message, I guess that helps as well.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    Interesting. We don't track code reviews as far as I'm aware, and we use GitHub so you just get an email if you're tagged as a reviewer. I would say it's not uncommon to have to wait a day for reviews.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      The the first thing to do if you want to improve that is to ensure you track code reviews. Meaning, you can see what changes each person reviewed and not just submitted, and then you can use that data to talk about performance etc. If one person does all the reviews then he should get a ton of credit since that is hard important work. Typically lead programmers do more reviews and juniors writes more changes, so a person doing a lot of reviews is associated with seniority and something to strive for rather than avoid. Also I bet your manager would be interested in that information as well, so maybe you just need to suggest it to them.
      - tharkun__ 5y ago
        There's a huge problem with this. The incentive you are describing isn't to do good code reviews. The incentive there is to do a lot of code reviews. Those two are not the same and while they are not mutually exclusive, just by tracking this metric and rating people on it, you are not giving an incentive for good code review. Only for fast review. But you really want both. You want fast and you want good and thorough. I completely agree that senior and lead people should be doing more reviews and thus help everyone else, ultimately benefiting other programmers and the whole organization overall.