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This happens if your superior doesn't critically evaluate anybody's work, and there are no code reviews. So if there's no feedback culture. At my company, my superior sometimes writes emails regarding commits, but since he doesn't write that down (waiting-for list in GTD) I figured that I can simply ignore the emails, and nothing happens. The result is cowboy coding.

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My experience with code review is that code reviewer is the one holding the power and refuses to accept code until it does what customer did not wanted.

If you have position without checks, including code reviewing, it will be abused.

This is an unfortunate experience. The best environments I've seen have a core value of respect for others, and code reviews exist to benefit not just the customer but also future programmers (which also ultimately benefits the customer but in more indirect ways, such as reducing cost of change). The absolute best are the ones where the reviewer is giving advice, but can't hold back integration. Much less threatening circumstance. More collaborative.

The best reviews that I have experienced are side-by-side reviews with the author walking the reviewer through the code. The author finds most of the bugs; the role of the reviewer is to force the author to cover all the ground; asking questions where he does not understand something.

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