Wow. I don't think I would have lasted even the first month there.
Sounds not healthy.
The article came off as if the company is run by designers, not engineers. While the engineers I know generally appreciate some feedback, they don't need much of it on engineering questions. UX and design, however - bring it on! So "eng crits" sound like... learning exercises for juniors? If it works for them, that's good, but I don't see myself sending my CV over, at least not based on this article.
Seems wildly counter-productive, as I'm guessing there will be a ton of merge conflicts.
6.5.1 is probably where the CRF form came from.
Everybody then gets what they want.
Because the CTO only does the code reviews, people create the PR and the CRF. Issue is because it takes so long, the CTO wants merge conflicts resolved before it's reviewed. Problem with that is, no one remembers the context a month (or longer later).
I have A LOT of spare time so I will often help out with doing reviews but because I'm not allowed to merge or deploy code, it's more of helping junior engineers write better code.