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Code Review as a Service

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Re: Code Review as a Service

#71

Post by akvadrako »

haggy102 wrote: post #64
vinceguidry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned this idea to a very knowledgeable enterprise architect. I was mentioning how much I'd enjoyed being able to use the code review process in this way. His reply: As good of an idea that is, it breaks Agile. So long as the code meets the biz-provided spec, it must be accepted, and if there are other concerns with the code, to make a tech debt ticket to address it at a later date. This, of course, horrified m…

Anyone with Architect in their title receives skepticism from me. I've turned down title changes that include it and I refuse to put it on my LinkedIn.

Even people designing buildings?

Re: Code Review as a Service

#72

Post by mgkimsal »

pelasaco wrote: post #30
Recursing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FAQ: > Reviewers earn anywhere between $50 and over $3,000/week. Earnings are based largely on the amount of time spent reviewing on the platform and the type of code being reviewed. PullRequest’s payment rates are comparable to those of a senior-level engineer based in the US. > PullRequest issues weekly payments based on review activity during the preceding week. The time that you spend reviewing is tracke…

> Reviewers earn anywhere between $50 and over $3,000/week. They are operating just like a freelancing platform, right? How many hours is a "week" for them? 40 hours? > PullRequest’s payment rates are comparable to those of a senior-level engineer based in the US. Like include life and health insurance, paid vacation, profit-sharing, a generous signing bonus, and more?

Quit perpetuating the tying of these basic things to the standard employment model. Get 'employers' out of the business of managing access to health care for employees.

Let people 'pay' for their own vacation.

You can provide 'profit sharing' to non-employees.

Give me $3k/week and let me manage this myself vs giving me $2.5k/week and telling me how awesome my 'health insurance' is. I want my access to health care impacted by as few third parties as possible - adding in employers to the mix is completely the wrong direction.

Re: Code Review as a Service

#73

Post by vinceguidry »

haggy102 wrote: post #64
vinceguidry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned this idea to a very knowledgeable enterprise architect. I was mentioning how much I'd enjoyed being able to use the code review process in this way. His reply: As good of an idea that is, it breaks Agile. So long as the code meets the biz-provided spec, it must be accepted, and if there are other concerns with the code, to make a tech debt ticket to address it at a later date. This, of course, horrified m…

Anyone with Architect in their title receives skepticism from me. I've turned down title changes that include it and I refuse to put it on my LinkedIn.

His world seemed completely and utterly divorced from mine. He was deeply connected with big enterprises and how they manage to meet business objectives regardless of not being software engineers themselves. In our world, we take for granted that our managers and leadership are technically proficient. In his, the "Engineering Manager" is a rarity, the people managing engineers are just ordinary managers.

Software architecture, in this world, is how you escape the rat race of soulless ticket punching without having to go into management. You use your skills and experience in an advisory role. Obviously there are better or worse architects, I've had the pleasure of working with really good ones. But it often feels like a title and field borne out of a need to retain top talent. (read, not push them away to competitors)

Re: Code Review as a Service

#74

Post by nerdjon »

cannonpalms wrote: post #27

This entirely misses the point of code review. Say it with me: Code review is a knowledge transfer exercise. Finding bugs, security vulnerabilities, and keeping the code maintainable are merely side effects that we appreciate along the way. The primary purpose of code review is increasing the bus factor of the given piece of code and facilitating organic knowledge transfer. That's it.

Personally I work on a 2 person team, the vast majority of my reviews either have no changes or "hey maybe this thing should be named something else so its more consistent".

For us the peer review is almost completely for knowledge transfer. Sure we know what each other is working on, but we still have to maintain each others code if something goes wrong and the other is not available.

So I agree with this 100%. Even in bigger organizations where the peer review was more formal, I feel like that is still the primary goal.

I do fail to see the benefit of this, especially looking at the price of it. Outside of maybe scripts? I can't really see how much they can actually help without the context of the larger application. Without that context can they really provide more benefit than AWS CodeGuru (or similar) could offer?

Re: Code Review as a Service

#75

Post by kevingibbon »

alkonaut wrote: post #44

I'm all for this if the person reviewing my code will know the context, history and all the details and conversations we had as a team. But in order for that to work, I'd probably be taking most of this reviewer's time. And obviously in order for them to get up to speed with our practices, conventions, architecture, code style and whatnot, they'd probably need to start by doing a whole lot of development on our proje…

My company has used them before. I thought the same before using them. However I was surprised the level of talent they have. For a super senior dev the context that you need for most projects isn’t as much as you think.

It was a net positive for us. Sped up our developer process given its so hard to hire senior devs right now.

They also have domain experts. So say you are using some tech your team isn’t as familiar in. Great to get some extra eyes of that code to check for security issues, potential computation issues etc.

Also they are much more broader than their company name suggests. Think of them as developers as a service. In this hiring environment it’s much needed.

Re: Code Review as a Service

#76

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

senko wrote: post #58
jermaustin1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But almost any good SA can catch all of those issues, a person doesn't need to look through the code for that.

This is very close to saying Halting problem is not, in fact, a problem: https://brilliant.org/wiki/halting-problem/

This isn't quite true because in most real world scenarios, one of the requirements for code to be correct is that it provably halts in a fairly limited amount of time.

Re: Code Review as a Service

#77

Post by napolux »

LOL. This will become in less than 1 month a "LGTM" feast. 3rd world countries developers (organizing themselves in groups to pass the intro test from the website) giving green lights to random people around the world for peanuts. This is a clever business model if you ask me.

Let's be clear for a second. Nobody, not event the legendary 10x developers can review properly code without context or everything mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29624787

If we want our code to be approved by random people doing it only for money, this will work for sure, but it's not how it works in the real world.

Re: Code Review as a Service

#78

Post by astrobe_ »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #33
cannonpalms wrote: post #27

This entirely misses the point of code review. Say it with me: Code review is a knowledge transfer exercise. Finding bugs, security vulnerabilities, and keeping the code maintainable are merely side effects that we appreciate along the way. The primary purpose of code review is increasing the bus factor of the given piece of code and facilitating organic knowledge transfer. That's it.

Maybe for you. For others it can have all or any of those other things as its primary purpose. One important thing for me is that it prevents or at least mitigates unilateral insider attacks by having two people required to change code.

Having a bus factor>1 is still a major prerequisite for doing that. Because if you have a junior developer review the changes of a senior developer, there are so many social engineering tricks to make the backdoor pass the review that it isn't even funny.

Re: Code Review as a Service

#80

Post by walkingriver »

booleandilemma wrote: post #45

And I’m guessing their reviewers work for free, like on Code Review Stack Exchange? Or are these people working for relative poverty wages overseas?

I am a reviewer on pullrequest.com and I can assure you I do not work for free. Many of us are Senior or Lead developers with day jobs, who do this as a side gig and to keep our skills sharp.

During my code reviews, which tend to revolve around Angular and Ionic (that's what I signed up for), I have found lots of outdated practices. I can often provide advice on how to make their code better, show them features that are deprecated and how to address them, and generally make their code better.

As another reviewer has pointed out, we can see the entire code base, not just the current diff. We tend to work with the same companies repeatedly and become familiar their project. Some of the engineering teams treat us as part of their team and ask for advice, which is really cool.

Doing code reviews for pullrequest.com has also made me a better reviewer in my day job and has changed the way I approach my coworkers. It's truly been a win-win.

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