I love working in environments like this. I can say hands down they were my most productive years as a programmer.
Quality code review is the single most important trait of a high performing senior programmer.
Quality code review is the single most important trait of a high performing senior programmer.
I've watched an "architect" from such a company write the most tangled spaghetti western of code for the simplest CRUD app that even his lower level colleagues were appalled. Of course, those same colleagues then advocated a complete re-write of the working codebase instead of incrementally fixing the code, causing about 6 months of new work for the company before they could start on hardening or new features...
No, experience doesn't automatically make you right, but it does increase the likelihood.
If you don't have senior staff then you are going to have a host of other problems as well.
The post comes off a little more abrasive than I'd like. I think writing it as an "email" to a hypothetical new team member makes it worse.
The point is: we take our code reviews seriously and we may point out things that seem silly or nitpicky, we may question your approach, we may make many suggestions for improvement, but at the end of the day it is nothing personal. It is for the common goal of high code quality.
I try not to ask arbitrary comp-sci questions, but instead provide the candidate with a block of code and ask them to provide a comprehensive code review (usually through a github pr).
Afterwards I perform a my review, and highlight any differences in style or methodologies. I'm not really looking for people that have the exact same outlook as me, I'm just looking for people that have some kind of standard they adhere to.
Having now worked at other places where code review is given low priority, I can say with confidence that I don't want to work anywhere that does not do serious code review.
Code review provides an important mentorship opportunity for junior programmers, and provides a simple way to keep code quality high and consistent. In addition, it provides a simple way to instruct new hires on internal style and conventions.