How Should Senior Engineers Oversee Code Reviews?

We've previously covered Why Code Review Matters and How to Conduct One and How to Establish Better Code Review Guidelines and Standards for Your Team. Both articles examine code review from different perspectives.

The first article primarily targets junior and mid-level engineers, as they're naturally participants in code review processes. The second focuses on senior engineers, since they influence team standards and practices. In this piece, we continue with the senior engineer perspective, exploring how they can elevate team code review quality through institutional and cultural means. In other words, it's not enough to conduct quality reviews yourself—you must ensure the entire team maintains high review standards.

If you're preparing for a senior engineer or higher-level interview, pay close attention to the perspectives shared here. (Note: If you're a junior or mid-level engineer, we recommend the online course on Writing Maintainable Code (Part 1) — Classic Programming Concepts, which builds the technical foundations for effective code review.)

How Senior and Senior+ Engineers Should View Code Review

We've received questions from readers whose teams lack formal code review processes. From a senior engineer's perspective, this isn't a problem—it's an opportunity. If your team hasn't established code review practices, taking initiative to implement them demonstrates your senior-level value. Even if your current title isn't "senior engineer," successfully introducing code review mechanisms positions you as someone capable of senior-level responsibilities, which strengthens your profile for future opportunities.

Beyond that, senior engineers use code review to reduce the bus factor on their teams. The bus factor measures team resilience by asking: "If the most critical person became unavailable, could the team continue operating effectively?" If a key person's absence paralyzes the team, you have a single-point-of-failure problem. A healthy team operates independently of any individual—work continues regardless of who's temporarily unavailable.

While code review appears to be about quality control, its deeper responsibility is knowledge transfer. New and less experienced team members learn how to maintain the codebase, adopt the team's coding standards, and write maintainable code through code review. Treating code review as a mentorship process is a core responsibility for senior engineers.

Beyond technical knowledge, code review shapes team culture. It's fundamentally a communication process, and communication patterns become embedded in team dynamics. Unchecked friction, inappropriate language, or passive responses gradually become normalized. Senior engineers must intervene immediately when behaviors threaten team culture, preventing degradation before it takes root.

What Should Senior Engineers Oversee in Code Review?

The previous section outlined cultural oversight from a senior perspective. Below are five key areas where senior engineers should actively guard standards. If you recognize these problems in your team, take initiative to address them.

In behavioral interviews for senior engineer positions, discussing these culture-protecting actions demonstrates the signals interviewers expect at that level.

Prevent Low-Bar Review Culture

In many teams, lenient reviewers compromise codebase quality. Despite having senior oversight, substandard code merges into the main branch and accumulates as technical debt. This happens when "low-bar" reviewers use minimal standards, approving code that falls short. (The humorous video below depicts what actually happens in some teams.)

Once team members identify these lenient reviewers, they naturally route PRs to them for quick approval. The result: inconsistent code quality across the codebase. This reality led to the industry saying: "Your code is only as good as your weakest reviewer."

As a senior engineer, if you notice a substandard PR passing review, raise it in team discussions and ensure everyone understands it shouldn't happen. Go further by setting explicit standards. Google publishes coding style guides with clear language-specific standards. Similarly, principles covered in the online course on Writing Maintainable Code (Part 1) can be formalized in team guidelines.

Prevent Emotional Attack Culture

Code review is communication, and communication style affects team dynamics and morale. Poor communication can drive team members away.

In software development, you've likely heard comments like "What garbage code is this?" or "Don't add this crap to our codebase" in reviews. As a senior engineer, immediately address such comments. Stopping them before they normalize is a key oversight responsibility, as they burden team members emotionally.

Constructively critical feedback differs from emotionally charged criticism. Constructive feedback is "bitter medicine"—helpful despite being hard to hear. Pure emotional language is both bitter and useless. Healthy teams maintain high standards while using respectful language. These aren't mutually exclusive: you can objectively and kindly point out code issues.

Actually, healthy teams do the opposite. They eliminate all emotional attacks in code review and actively cultivate appreciation. When someone writes good code, praise them: "This is really well written—the readability is excellent" or "I love this test case; I never thought of that edge case." Create a culture of encouragement.

Prevent Unconstructive Communication Culture

Some reviewers avoid extreme emotional language but leave unhelpful comments. For example: "This doesn't match our style guide" or "This violates our standards." These statements vaguely criticize without clear guidance.

This approach wastes time. Others must guess what's wrong and speculate about correct solutions, making the comment's cost exceed its value.

As the team's quality guardian, insist on specific, constructive feedback. Explain why the code is problematic and show the better approach. If something violates standards, cite the specific standard and explain why the code fails it.

Alternatively, ask clarifying questions: "If we extend this in the future, would this approach require significant rewrites? What's your thought on that?" Help others see the issue, then guide discussion toward better solutions.

Read More

Beyond these three areas, senior engineers must oversee additional code review aspects. We dive deeper in E+ member articles. Interested readers are welcome to join (link).