In my career I did a few rescue operations when I as external expert was asked to come in and understand why project was failing. Random code review is amazing tool to understand quality of engineering talent and process maturity.
My process was to schedule 2h block and then start with pulling random diff. I checked if engineer can explain diff purpose from both technical and business perspective. Then dive in and assess understanding of code base by asking about random functions/lines. Follow up if I do not understand something. Why was it done this way? Did you consider other options? What are pro cons? How long did it take you to write this? Who reviews it? Any approvals were needed? What was process to ship it?
You will be surprised how often sr/principal engineers are clueless and dev process is full clusterfuck when people copy/paste without understanding what they are doing.
You very quickly understand what’s going on. You do not need to talk to every engineer - random representative sample is good enough. You do not need to have domain understanding too - though it’s obviously very helpful.
My process was to schedule 2h block and then start with pulling random diff. I checked if engineer can explain diff purpose from both technical and business perspective. Then dive in and assess understanding of code base by asking about random functions/lines. Follow up if I do not understand something. Why was it done this way? Did you consider other options? What are pro cons? How long did it take you to write this? Who reviews it? Any approvals were needed? What was process to ship it?
You will be surprised how often sr/principal engineers are clueless and dev process is full clusterfuck when people copy/paste without understanding what they are doing.
You very quickly understand what’s going on. You do not need to talk to every engineer - random representative sample is good enough. You do not need to have domain understanding too - though it’s obviously very helpful.