text stringlengths 0 2.35k |
|---|
So it's just like those little tiny things that kind of add to your personality as a reviewer. You might be known as that person that calls out your grammar mistakes, which I feel like I used to be, and I'm not as much these days... But when I see it, I will sometimes call it out. |
**Natasha Dykes:** I think I've gotten that feedback on my review from you, so... \[laughter\] So I can attest. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** I'm intrigued - do you review differently depending on the level of the person that put in the PR? I.e. if you're going in and you're reviewing a staff engineer's PR, versus an associate engineer's PR - do you approach it differently? |
The reason I ask is that - maybe this is a leading question... Say you're a staff engineer, and you're reviewing the PR of someone you know is preferably new... Would you approach that slightly differently, in that you might add more comments, and maybe more detail as to why you've suggested it, because you know this p... |
**Natasha Dykes:** I think it could help. If I know that someone is new to the company or to the team, I usually kind of pepper my review comments with links, or context, or even ask if they want to jump on a call and we can talk through certain things, if they have more follow-up questions, just so it's a little bit m... |
**Jeff Hernandez:** Being the least senior person on the team, it's difficult not to feel intimidated by other engineers when they ask for reviews... Because you're like "Oh, I'm early in my career. What do I have to offer to someone else who's been working for 10-15 years?" But I try not to think of that as much anymo... |
**Natasha Dykes:** Definitely. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** It's a fresh pair of eyes, but also that might be some very, very senior engineer who's been doing the same thing for many, many years, and therefore has gotten into a habit of doing things a certain way... And you, fresh bunny rabbit that you are, coming in with all the new technological lingo... |
**Jeff Hernandez:** Exactly. Usually, when I do "Oh, you should try it this way", I usually have links to support what I'm saying, just to be like "See, these other people are doing it this way as well. It's not just me." |
**Sarah Duncan:** \[35:52\] Yeah, and I think the value of a fresh perspective also is in challenging assumptions. I'm a staff engineer, but there are definitely things that, to your point, Angelica, I've gotten used to, or I've gotten into the habit of, and sometimes that does lead me to make assumptions, and I work t... |
But I actually think when I'm approaching reviews and when I'm asking to be reviewed, I think of it more as like the subject matter expertise in a codebase, because I recently switched teams and I'm coming onto my new team and I have a lot of wealth of knowledge in terms of architecture, and some of the things that I'm... |
So I actually think this is an area where I would hope leveling doesn't matter. It's more about the subject matter expertise in a repo, and helping that person level up their expertise a little bit further. And anybody can help anybody else level up their expertise. |
**Angelica Hill:** It's interesting to hear for me all the answers. I guess you're all U.S-based, and you mostly work with American colleagues... Is my assumption correct, or would you say your teams are also -- or you get to work, let's say, with people who are not Americans? |
**Sarah Duncan:** Yeah, I've worked with non-native English speakers before. On my current team I'm working with mostly native English -- all the engineers are native English speakers, but one of my teammates even was recently working with some of our engineering teams that are working out of other countries as well. S... |
**Angelica Hill:** Would you say your experience of feeling comfortable to correct and to be corrected is the same as with people from the same background as you? Or is it different in any way when you review the code, or get reviewed by people, wherever they're based? Like, who just grew up in other places. |
**Sarah Duncan:** Yeah, that's a really great question. I definitely think that I have an easier time giving grace to somebody who's giving me a review if English isn't their first language... Because tone is a hard thing to pick up. I've worked with -- whether English is not their first language, or whether somebody h... |
So in those situations it's easier for me to give empathy to that person when they're giving me a review... Being like, "Oh, they didn't mean to hurt my feelings. They're just giving me feedback." But sometimes, because we are a big company, sometimes you are getting a review from somebody you don't know, so you don't ... |
I think it's easier when you're working with somebody you know. If English isn't their first language, I always have an easier time being like "Oh, they didn't mean it in a way that hurts my feelings." \[laughs\] Sometimes that's harder for me to get to that point; if it's somebody who isn't a native English speaker an... |
**Angelica Hill:** \[40:25\] It's also interesting to think of -- I mean, yes, English is not the native language, so that's a very good differentiator... And also, different cultures have different relationships with feedback, or even saying to somebody "You did something wrong." |
**Sarah Duncan:** Yeah. That was a good point. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Being the only person who is not in the U.S, I would actually love to hear your perception on this. I know you keep on saying "We need to hear from the guests", and I agree, these wonderful guests... But I would love to hear your experience. I mean, I got culture shock moving to the U.S, but I ... |
**Angelica Hill:** And you are a native speaker. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Yes, and I am a native speaker. So I have those two things which make it slightly easier coming in... But I would love to hear your perception, and kind of what you've heard from colleagues, friends, in your experience. |
**Angelica Hill:** Almost all the teams that I worked in are quite mixed, because Europe is a lot easier for work relocations. The Green Card and so on exists in the U.S, but it's quite harder than just the work visa in Germany or other European countries... So I don't remember the last time I worked in a team where ev... |
And I think in the beginning I used to have some kind of misunderstandings exactly, because what was said, understanding empathy, understanding they did not mean that, they meant this... Coming across myself sometimes as a bit more "Why don't you say that in a nicer way?" and so on. |
So definitely, there's all sorts of balance there to strike, and it's very interesting to hear how people cope with that, and it's obviously written is even less easy to understand, like written communication in comparison to spoken communication. And even in spoken you can easily get lost, and so on, and intonations m... |
The thing about the culture is let's say that sometimes it's kind of impolite either to correct, or even to just say no to someone. So I had to learn and actively practice that when I propose some idea, I have to start with something like "Feel free to reject that", or "There might be better alternatives, but..." And s... |
**Sarah Duncan:** Yeah, definitely. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** My comment is gonna be slightly less serious, but it came to mind and it sounded like something that I would love to do... Can you attach voice notes to PRs? |
**Angelica Hill:** You have Looms in Git pull requests... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Yeah. Because I feel like I would love it if someone made a suggestion and then I could have a little voice note where they could say "This is why..." Because then you'd hear their tone, and you'd hear them explaining it, and then you could do like a verbal readout of your very long PR... That ... |
Do emojis help with that? I find it really difficult to communicate through my words without emojis. I use emojis to help me more accurately portray the intention behind my comments. I.e. when I say something like "Oh, I'm not sure about this", I'll do like a thinking emoji, and like a funny, like a tongue emoji to sho... |
Is it appropriate to add many emojis to your PR? I know you can add the emoji reactions, but within it, is that a useful tool that in fact can be used to try and alleviate that risk of being misconstrued via just written word? |
**Angelica Hill:** \[44:37\] You mean the pull request description, or actually each commit? |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** I'm open to views on either. |
**Sarah Duncan:** Yeah, I recommend using emojis, and setting up norms around emojis in code review norms. It's one of the suggestions that some of the other staff engineers and I put together in the norms template that we shared out internally at the times... And I think the way that we use emojis in that template is ... |
One of the things that's really hard to tell based on just the written word in terms of tone is whether that piece of feedback is blocking or not. So is this just a stylistic thing that you think will help me level up my skills? Is this something that I actually need to do before merging in this code? That kind of comm... |
So I think it helps to categorize the intention, to your point, Angelica, around what the comment is supposed to be communicating. It adds a little bit of color, I think, to just the plain text otherwise. But I'm curious if others have different opinions on it. Maybe you find them annoying... \[laughs\] |
**Jeff Hernandez:** Follow-up to that... So I'm 100% pro emoji, as people on my team can attest to... I'm always using emojis in Slack, and sometimes in GitHub. But I guess if it's kind of meant to convey blocking versus non-blocking, as per your example - is that like a way to kind of not have to use the actual suppor... |
**Sarah Duncan:** I think in that scenario you still do request changes, and kind of formally block the pull request... But I know as a reviewer if I get -- like, a change is requested on my PR, and I go in and there are like 20 comments, it's hard for me to maybe initially sift through those comments to figure out whi... |
So I just think it's helpful, even if you are formally blocking the pull request, to communicate what things you expect to be changed before you think that it could be merged. |
**Jeff Hernandez:** Gotcha. I don't know if I was just projecting my own fears saying that... \[laughter\] Like the email where it says "Changes have been requested", and "Oh no, what did I do wrong?" I need to do it. |
**Sarah Duncan:** Don't worry, we all do stuff wrong in our pull requests all the time. It is part of being an engineer. \[laughs\] |
**Break:** \[48:49\] |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** So I just have one more question, because we are running out of time, regrettably... But my question is "Can you teach people how to do a good PR, how to review PRs?" Is there truly an art to reviewing a PR, or is it really just us all bumbling through, learning as we go, trying to do the best ... |
**Jeff Hernandez:** I think there is an art to it... You're kind of balancing the empathy of giving this person feedback, and acknowledging how much work they've put into it, but at the same time you have to -- it feels like a critical service; you're going to be the one that might be paged during the middle of the nig... |
But also, you kind of have to balance that with the time. You still have to get things done. It's a big balancing act of how much -- like, is this critical that this needs to get changed, even though it's like a stylistic thing that goes against our team norms, but it's imperative that this gets through?" Or maybe they... |
**Natasha Dykes:** \[54:14\] I think just experience goes a long way. Learn by doing. You can kind of experience a lot of things that you wanna emulate, or things that you're like "Wow, that didn't leave me feeling really good about myself, so I know not to do this in the future." But also, just getting more experience... |
**Sarah Duncan:** Yeah, and I think from the perspective of authoring a PR and asking for a review, that's also something that is like a skill that can be honed and taught and improved at any level... Because figuring out when a PR is done, how big it is, but also in some situations maybe you're introducing a change, a... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Well, thank you. Regrettably, we've babbled all our time away, so we are going to move into our Unpopular Opinion time. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.