Challenging the unwritten law of software engineering

Leading Developers

Analysis of 400+ companies and 3000+ engineers reveals that mandatory code reviews reduce bugs by 2.4x but slow output by 1.9x. Teams without reviews ship 59 expert hours per developer versus 31 with reviews, but produce 8.9 bugs versus 3.7. High-quality reviews (score >75) reduce bugs by 61% while slowing output by 38%. Fast PR turnaround (<3 hours) makes teams 2.1x more productive compared to 8+ hour reviews. Top-performing teams (90th percentile) achieve 2.7x faster output with 33% fewer bugs per feature than median teams. Review quality correlates strongly with company culture—engineers who give thorough reviews receive them in return.

The price of mandatory code reviews

In my current work environment we have the habit to make PRs towards end of day, and start the next day with reviews, thus we technically have ~16h between PR and first review, but it also feels effective to sleep ones own PR and revisit it freshly.

How to talk about Cost of Quality without mention it?

Learned something new, especially that turnaround time is important was new to me. Thank you!