The #1 Principle To Remember When Authoring A Code Review

In this video, we discuss the most important mindset shift for code authors: writing code with empathy for reviewers. Code review is a collaborative act, and how we prepare and present our diffs directly impacts team productivity, trust, and code quality.

Key Takeaways:

• We write diffs with empathy: The most valuable thing we can do as authors is consider how to make the review experience smoother for others. Clear, concise diffs help teammates help us faster and more effectively.
• We respect reviewers’ time: Reviewers choose to help us—they’re not obligated. Reviewing interrupts their own deep work and requires mental context-switching, so we express appreciation by submitting clean, readable diffs.
• We build trust and social capital through quality: Writing thoughtful diffs with summaries and test plans helps us gain faster approvals and earns the trust of teammates and tech leads.
• We know we’ll be reviewers too: As we grow in our careers, we’ll spend more time reviewing others’ code. We want our teammates to be just as thoughtful when submitting their diffs to us.
• We lead by example: High-quality, empathetic diffs set the cultural tone for our team. We improve the entire engineering environment by holding ourselves to the same standards we hope to receive.