The shift from “Change this” to “What made you choose this approach?” is more than clever phrasing. It’s a fundamental change in how code reviews work.
I’ve been digging into why this shift is so difficult in practice. Code review problems are rarely about code review itself. They’re symptoms of deeper organizational issues: reviewers lacking context, missing ownership, or constantly context-switching. Even the best intentions around empathy fall apart under these conditions. I wrote about this here: https://blog.pragmaticdx.com/p/code-reviews-are-slow-because-everything
Your point about psychological safety is the key insight. It’s the foundation that makes everything else work. Without it, process improvements don’t stick. With it, even imperfect processes work because people actually want to engage.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Marcel! I really appreciate it.
You’re absolutely right, psychological safety is at the core of it all. But beyond that, there are also those hidden organizational factors that silently make code reviews harder: lack of shared context, unclear ownership, and constant context-switching - exactly as you mentioned in your article.
The lessons in scalability you mentioned, Stefania, are exactly the kind of valuable insight that only comes from a healthy review process. Thanks for emphasizing the human side of engineering!
The shift from “Change this” to “What made you choose this approach?” is more than clever phrasing. It’s a fundamental change in how code reviews work.
I’ve been digging into why this shift is so difficult in practice. Code review problems are rarely about code review itself. They’re symptoms of deeper organizational issues: reviewers lacking context, missing ownership, or constantly context-switching. Even the best intentions around empathy fall apart under these conditions. I wrote about this here: https://blog.pragmaticdx.com/p/code-reviews-are-slow-because-everything
Your point about psychological safety is the key insight. It’s the foundation that makes everything else work. Without it, process improvements don’t stick. With it, even imperfect processes work because people actually want to engage.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Marcel! I really appreciate it.
You’re absolutely right, psychological safety is at the core of it all. But beyond that, there are also those hidden organizational factors that silently make code reviews harder: lack of shared context, unclear ownership, and constant context-switching - exactly as you mentioned in your article.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-175706795
Even when empathy is there, these structural issues can easily undermine it. That’s what makes improving code reviews such a complex challenge.
The lessons in scalability you mentioned, Stefania, are exactly the kind of valuable insight that only comes from a healthy review process. Thanks for emphasizing the human side of engineering!
Exactly! Thank you so much for your thoughts, Doina! 🙏