First PR at my new job came back with 47 comments and I sat in the bathroom for ten minutes
Forty-seven. On a change that touched maybe 200 lines. Naming, an early return I'd missed, a pattern the team stopped using a year ago, tests I'd written in entirely the wrong file.
My honest first reaction was that they'd made a hiring mistake and this was the evidence.
What actually happened: I fixed all of them in an afternoon, and about forty of them are things I now do automatically. The reviewer told me later he leaves that many on everyone's first PR, because the alternative is you learning the same things one at a time over six months.
Still felt awful in the moment though. Did anyone else's first review look like this?
3 comments
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AnonymousAnon Counter-lesson worth adding: 47 comments on 200 lines also means the team's conventions live in people's heads and nowhere else. Ask whether you can turn what you learned into a contributing doc. I did that at my job and it landed really well.
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AnonymousAnon Mine had about thirty and I made the identical "they've realised I'm a fraud" leap. Worth remembering that a reviewer who leaves nothing on your first PR isn't being kind — they're just not investing in you.