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Comment by jatins | Hacker News Reader

> "Peer reviews actually improve things" is about the biggest crock of shit that people in tech still believe in.

God that hits home

I learned years ago to either give constructive mutually agreed upon ahead of time peer reviews or not give any. I always run this type of stuff by the recipient to make sure that it isn't a surprise. Not too long ago I had one cartoonishly insecure coworker recruit another colleague to their cause of poo-pooing me. The latter wrote something like "they care more about doing things right than delivering quickly" because I surfaced too many obvious architectural issues in my PR comments (actual ones where they departed from our mutually agreed spec, not trite OO pedant nonsense). Thankfully my manager told me of it and dismissed it in much the same manner I did but I didn't feel great about being thrust back to junior high school social behavior.

There's being polite and then there's this. You're throwing the baby with the bathwater. Don't do this. Claim this as an achievement and proof of your integrity instead.

> "they care more about doing things right than delivering quickly"

Is it actually supposed to be a negative review...

> Thankfully my manager told me of it and dismissed it in much the same manner I did but I didn't feel great about being thrust back to junior high school social behavior.

I had an interesting interaction years ago where an engineer in my team shared his fear that a negative peer review would shape his performance review. I made a similar point to him: as the manager, I read all feedback but it’s my judgement as the manager that determines the review.

If I’m just parroting the comments of others and treating the review as just taking the average then I’m no better than Metacritic!

In my experience it's not just the judgement of the manager but the judgement of their whole reporting chain. All of which can read the reviews and may be the ultimate decision makers on promotions/ratings.

Yes, it does depend on the organisation. I do expect my manager to read and have input on my reports, as my team’s outputs indirectly affect my manager’s outputs.

I question the value of this the higher up the chain it goes, as managers get more and more removed from the people doing the work. That said, it does happen and it’s not always a good thing.

In those situations, you can address the comments directly in the review, or summary, but you can’t directly control what other people take out of the reviews.

What you are experiencing, and what is being described is not peer review.

The skill of giving feedback was lost a few days after the skill of recieving feedback was lost. Actual peer review no longer exists.

Does the author mean peer review in the performance review context? Or code review?

Performance review, as per the linked post of theirs: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2021/02/19/perf/

Thank you

Ahh that makes a lot more sense. Peer review was probably some of the best thing's I'd do at workplaces. Helping to point out thorns in my eyes and vice versa. There could be a bit too many LGTM comments, but I always welcomed having a second set of eyes.

It can also help me scope commits. I definitely had a habit early on to bundle maybe 4-5 commits worth of code into one review; I figured it would waste their time a lot less. Fortunately I was taught early how that was a bad practice for multiple reasons.

I took it to mean in the performance review context.

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