Any developer who has ever written code outside of their personal projects is familiar with the tingling sensation in their stomach that comes after submitting their changeset or pull request for review. We immediately start to imagine the horrors of feedback and how it can crush your self-image as a meticulous programmer. As authors of code, we feel anxious about code reviews.
But what about the reviewers of your code?
They sometimes also experience anxiety, albeit of a different kind, when asked to review someone’s code. That’s the interesting insight I picked from the Stackoverflow podcast episode What can devs do about code review anxiety? Code reviews can often be stressful for the reviewers.
When someone on the team is frequently asked to review PRs owing to their expertise or reviewing powers, they may experience pressure to be the gatekeepers. The pressure to know all the answers.
One other anxiety-inducing thing is the thought of being responsible for merging buggy code. Reviewers may be running on tight schedules and be cautious about code reviewers because along with the code author they would be held responsible for any misses if their approved code changes eventually turn out to be buggy for customers.
In the above podcast, Carol Lee (principal research scientist) provides hints about overcoming code review anxiety for both authors and reviewers.