I’ve Submitted 1000 Pull Requests at Google. Here is What I’ve Learned

Code reviews are a learning experience.

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After 3 years at Google, I’ve finally made it into quadruple-digit territory with my code contribution stats. It’s been quite a journey since that first change that I merged in 2019. How I write code has changed significantly over this timeframe, and code reviews have been a major driver of this change. Now that I’ve hit this milestone, I want to reflect on my perspective of code reviews and how I approach them.

The more comments, the better

Everyone perceives code reviews differently. Some see them as a necessary evil, others see them as a roadblock. I used to despise them when I was a naïve new grad. I felt I was being judged harshly solely due to my lack of experience. It seemed like it took forever for me to get any code submitted. I was frustrated by the endless streams of comments I’d get on my changes. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was critical to my development as a software engineer.

The truth is that you don’t grow without constructive feedback. How else would you know you made a mistake if nobody tells you? Looking back at the comments I was getting all those years ago, it’s no surprise that I received so much criticism. Some of the decisions I was making were straight-up foolish. Of course, it’s silly to expect a new grad to start writing production-quality code on their first day. But the important thing is that I learned from my mistakes over time. Eventually, the number of comments I received went down, and the quality of my code improved tremendously.

The key takeaway is that code reviews should be treated as a form of constructive feedback. Yes, it can be hard to accept at times, but those comments rarely come from a place of malice. The reviewer’s goal is to ensure that the new code meets the production standards of the team. Don’t just resolve the comments blindly, spend some time thinking about why you are making these changes to your code so that you don’t make the same mistake next time.

It’s true that long code reviews will slow down your code submissions. This may seem counterintuitive, but learning how to write quality clean code earlier in your tenure will…