[notyourwork]

Not everyone is the right person for a specific code review. Even on small teams someone may be more of a subject matter expert in one facet of your system or code. Therefore load balancing isn’t really the right way to look at it. The idea should be to seek feedback inclusively and welcomed from all teammates. As a submitter your job is to make sure you get the right feedback if there is someone more knowledgeable of a topic. This is why standup is a good place to discuss a code review where you can identify need for time and also identify right people.

[zhangela]

Agreed it shouldn’t be an even distribution of review requests across the board. That said, if a few people are getting all the reviews, it’s difficult for them to make progress on their project work, and for other engineers to learn code review best practices and get familiar with the codebase.

[notyourwork]

It’s a balance but you need to balance team priorities. If you aren’t shipping code because of your time on code reviews you need to better manage your time. Call it out during stand up (assuming your team has them) and make it clear you don’t have time or code reviews today because you need to focus on your deliverable. If the review is more important your team can identify this collectively. However, individuals should never feel you describe, if so it’s a lack of coordination across team.