[ratww]

Ouch. I’ve had a few cases of developers on the verge of being fired because of bad code causing friction with the team.

Code reviews never help in those cases. There is always an underlying cause: the developer is trying to rush to prove something, or maybe over-engineering for the same reason. Maybe he has some issues at home, or isn’t sleeping well. Maybe it’s just lack of experience. Maybe it is a personality issue and the developer is trying to save face by sticking to his guns.

Either way, I find that it is much better to have private discussions with the developer to increase the code quality via mentoring, or pairing. It helps removing the defensiveness, doesn’t make them feel publicly humiliated and doesn’t spend the time of the team with the review-fix cycle.