The fun thing to do in these situations is to add yourself as reviewer to all PRs by the person giving such feedback and return the favor. They learn pretty fast.
That seems like it risks creating conflict out of what's often just a misunderstanding.
Assuming it's a corporate environment (it's fuzzier in the open source bazaar):
If it's the first time or I don't really know the reviewer, I ask them to hop on a call to discuss (usually to walk me through) their feedback and I go in with an open mind. That gives me the opportunity to find out if I'm missing some context, can see how reasonable they are, and can get clarification of what they actually care about versus FYIs/suggestions. As they go, if it isn't clear, I just ask them if something is a soft opinion or hard opinion.
If everything is a hard opinion and they don't seem reasonable, I reach out to someone else (ideally a team lead or peer on their team) over a private channel for a 2nd opinion. If they also think it's unimportant stuff, I ask them to add their own comments to the PR. Give it a reasonable amount of time and they'll either have reached a consensus or you can roll the side you agree with.
If it's an issue again later and they seem reasonable, respectfully push back. If they seem unreasonable, skip right to DMing their lead for a 2nd opinion.
If it keeps being in issue, then some frank conversations need to happen. Something I've noticed about folks who steadfastly focus on minor stylistic nits in CRs is they (1) tend to be cargo culting them without understanding the why behind them and (2) they're usually missing the forest (actual bugs in logic) for the trees.
Most people are pretty reasonable when they don't feel like they're under attack, so in my experience it's usually possible to resolve these things without dragging it out. Of course, if you're at a company with a lot of disfunction, well... I can understand why what I've written above won't work.
If it's the first time - yeah, reach out to the person and talk to them.
But if the person is consistently leaving such comments under the guise of mentorship, 'raising the bar', or some other bullshit which boils down to them attempting to demonstrate their own seniority at the expense of other people's time and stress - then showing them how it feels is a great approach.
Bringing in other people and managers is not very effective I've found - it takes additional time, other people have their own stuff to focus on, and managers often don't have the technical expertise or confidence to push back against subjective comments which claim to be 'raising the bar' or whatever. It also doesn't look great when you have to bring other people in to help you address PR comments.
And, of course, you do this without ostensibly creating any conflict - if they complain simply respond along the lines of 'I totally love the care and attention to detail you bring when reviewing my PRs, I've learned from you and thought it would be appropriate to keep the same high standards and not lower the bar... etc'.
> As they go, if it isn't clear, I just ask them if something is a soft opinion or hard opinion.
Nah, if they don't explicitly state that's a soft opinion via 'nit', approving with comment or some other means, they are disrespecting the person who's PR they are reviewing. I shouldn't have to chase them down to see how strong their opinions are.
> If it keeps being in issue, then some frank conversations need to happen. Something I've noticed about folks who steadfastly focus on minor stylistic nits in CRs is they (1) tend to be cargo culting them without understanding the why behind them and (2) they're usually missing the forest (actual bugs in logic) for the trees.
What do you do if the comments are purely subjective and all backed up by internal/corporate dogmaspeak? 'Raising the bar' ... 'keeping the standards high' ... 'mentoring', etc. , or open ended comments asking to explain how stuff works, and whether 'this approach is the best'? There is no shortage of rhetorical bullshit that can be used to justify subjective PR comments.
> Most people are pretty reasonable when they don't feel like they're under attack, so in my experience it's usually possible to resolve these things without dragging it out.
The above will generally not work in a company that emphasizes PR comment count as a good metric for promotions/performance, and has a lot of internal rhetorical dogma. You WILL get people who leave these types of comments because they view it as a way of promoting their career, these people often cannot be reasoned with logically because they aren't actually all that smart, and they view any pushback against their comments as an attack against them.
Other people's feedback against the bullshit comments definitely help, but can look bad if you keep reaching out to other people to help address PR comments - I made sure to go through other people's PRs, on my own initiative, and refute bullshit comments when I realized how some people were behaving.
Assuming it's a corporate environment (it's fuzzier in the open source bazaar):
If it's the first time or I don't really know the reviewer, I ask them to hop on a call to discuss (usually to walk me through) their feedback and I go in with an open mind. That gives me the opportunity to find out if I'm missing some context, can see how reasonable they are, and can get clarification of what they actually care about versus FYIs/suggestions. As they go, if it isn't clear, I just ask them if something is a soft opinion or hard opinion.
If everything is a hard opinion and they don't seem reasonable, I reach out to someone else (ideally a team lead or peer on their team) over a private channel for a 2nd opinion. If they also think it's unimportant stuff, I ask them to add their own comments to the PR. Give it a reasonable amount of time and they'll either have reached a consensus or you can roll the side you agree with.
If it's an issue again later and they seem reasonable, respectfully push back. If they seem unreasonable, skip right to DMing their lead for a 2nd opinion.
If it keeps being in issue, then some frank conversations need to happen. Something I've noticed about folks who steadfastly focus on minor stylistic nits in CRs is they (1) tend to be cargo culting them without understanding the why behind them and (2) they're usually missing the forest (actual bugs in logic) for the trees.
Most people are pretty reasonable when they don't feel like they're under attack, so in my experience it's usually possible to resolve these things without dragging it out. Of course, if you're at a company with a lot of disfunction, well... I can understand why what I've written above won't work.