Comment by foolfoolz
2 years ago
> But now it's significantly more effort to pull that change apart or start from scratch and experiment with a new approach, then write this all up on the pull request with the caveat "but what you've written works, so in the interest of time we can merge this"
this is your issue. you’re approving prs due to perceived time constraints that you wish you could say no to. are these time constraints real? even for significant prs of 1-2k lines responding to a comment of rewrite another way only takes 1-2 days. code review isn’t about finding the best solution. it’s the best solution given the current trade offs. things to ask yourself are
- are the time constraints real?
- does the team agree on the “right” way?
if there’s time constraints sure i get it. these are external commitments. public deadlines. it’s hard to ask for additional work like this. but in my experience these are rare. usually management is smart enough to avoid external deadlines
does the team agree this is the right way? are you pushing your own narrative? if it’s a team strategy, it’s very easy to tell people to rewrite an entire pr for. if it’s your opinion but you can defend it, make your case, and if it’s strong you can still get someone to write it. is this so bad it’s going to be rewritten soon?
> the more senior members of the team are off delivering important projects and not having the capacity to imbue their knowledge onto the less experienced members of the team
i thought you were saying you are this senior engineer?
i don’t get this. you want to spend more time helping people but think it’s uncomfortable to be on a call with someone for 2 hours getting through a problem. you want to pair program and feel this way about a shared coding session? i’ve spent literally 7 hours on zoom screen shares. if you’re actually helping people they appreciate it
you say the culture isn’t there to support this but then list examples of good places you could create this culture and choose not to
if you truly are this smarter, better engineer that should spend all your time helping your team, why aren’t you doing these things on your own?
I think you're viewing this in a very idealistic way and not a way many companies actually operate.
You can me ask "why don't you do X". And the answer is that the culture does not support it. I have work to do, work I've been given because as senior members of the team we are pushed into bigger and more important projects. The less experienced members of the team just have more time to do things.
For me to spend 7 hours a day sitting in a call with someone would mean 7 hours of not delivering work that my manager and project managers expect to be delivered. No person in the business is going to want to spend 7 hours on a call because the culture does not encourage it. This is why I said it is uncomfortable for both parties. Taking hours of someone's time isn't seen as a good thing, it's seen negatively. Of course the person you're helping appreciates it. But the culture makes them feel guilty for asking.
Should that be the case? No. Is that the case? Yes. Am I working toward that not being the case? Yes.
I don't know why you think I'm not trying to change the culture. I've literally listed all the issues and ways to fix it. It's not an overnight switch.