I'm a big believer in code reviews
I'm a big believer in code reviews. But I've found review *after* merge can work well in high trust environments.
Benefits:
✅ Code is merged quickly.
✅ Avoids the review being a blocker.
✅ The reviewer doesn't feel as rushed.
✅ Allows the author to quickly move on.
✅ The author feels less stressed because their work-in-progress is reduced.
But, it does have downsides:
🚫 The author will have to task switch to resolve any reported issues. The code may not be fresh in their mind anymore.
🚫 There's a risk the fixes after review won't happen at all.
🚫 The author has less incentive and urgency to complete requested changes since their work is already merged.
🚫 There's a higher risk of merging code that has big issues.
Due to the above, I generally only recommend review after a merge in three cases:
1. The app isn't in prod yet.
2. The feature was built via pair programming.
3. The feature is toggled off, so it's low risk to merge without review.
Also, I recommend requiring at least one approval before merging a PR. But in rare high-trust cases like I mentioned above, I may click approve "early" and finish my review after merge.
Again, I don't generally recommend it, but I've seen that it can work in certain instances.