I spent 3 years as a founding engineer making a huge mistake in my code review process

Over a three-year period as a founding engineer, the author discovered that their practice of conducting code reviews only once a day significantly hindered team productivity. Initially believing that batching reviews would preserve deep focus time, the author realized that this approach led to cumulative delays as engineers juggled multiple tasks while awaiting feedback. This resulted in frequent context switching, which consumed mental energy and complicated the task of recalling details about past work. Insights from Google's research revealed that faster code reviews improve perceptions of the review process, transforming potentially obstructive feedback into constructive guidance. To address this, the author suggests integrating code review requests as priority interrupts between focused work sessions, instead of batching them, to enhance team velocity and collaboration. This approach is particularly crucial in distributed work environments and with the increasing use of AI-generated code, where timely human oversight is essential for maintaining quality. By prioritizing code review as a collective responsibility, teams can achieve greater productivity and code quality, as demonstrated by the author's experience and the influence of a former coworker, Tom McIntyre.

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