Comment by pclmulqdq
1 day ago
There's a culture of "I won't approve this unless it does something for me" at Google. So now changing the text on a button comes with 2 minor refactors, 10 obvious-but-ignored bugfixes, and 5 experiments that it is actually better.
While this sounds pretty frustrating, there is at least a small upside: at least you get to the obvious-but-ignored bugfixes.
Most smaller places don’t have the bandwidth and many larger ones don’t have the desire.
I’m not sure if that makes up for bugs potentially introduced in the refactors, though.
Well, when the owner asks for a whole test suite that didn't exist to get a fix in, what most likely happens is that you just wasted your time in a draft CL that will get lost.
Do you mean the relevant code area(s) didn't have (sufficient) tests? You're being asked to backfill those missing tests in addition to your fix?
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They aren't asking for you to write tests because 'it benefits them', they are asking you to write tests because as a professional engineer, you should write tests, and not just yolo it.
Look, sometimes you may have good reasons for why a test is impractical. You are allowed to push back, or look for a different reviewer. There's a hundred thousand people in the firm, you should be able to find one or two that will let you submit literally anything that compiles.
But most of the time, the reviewer is giving you advice that you should take.
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