This developer has become so frustrated with their code review process that they are now escalating the matter to their manager and HR. Their complaints are that their reviewers are under qualified and are often asking the same questions over and over again, even questioning decisions that were made in prior meetings. They seem to be having an unusually emotional response to this, even describing mild panic attacks.
I know a lot of people dislike code reviews and sometimes take criticism personally, but I've never heard of something this extreme.
Ideas I've had:
- Discipline them and give them very clear feedback that this is part of their job and the expectations are that they will help other, less experienced, developers understand their code. (I don't think this will change their behavior based on how remarkably strong their feelings are)
- Give them some sort of preferential treatment by either having them only get code reviews from someone who is willing to deal with this behavior. (I think this will cause huge problems in the culture of the development team in that others will resent this and it will only encourage the behavior)
- Fire them. (I hate this option. It doesn't really solve the problem, it just gives it to their next team.)
I'm not going to build a team of all senior engineers to satisfy one person's complaints, there are several mundane tasks that can be handled by less experienced developers; I'm not willing to pay someone six figures to handle those simple tasks (even if I could afford it, I'm not sure I could find that many of them). Part of our code review process is to improve their skills and let them understand what's going on around them, so abandoning code reviews isn't going to happen either.