Covers the approach to conducting effective code reviews, including what reviewers look for and how reviewers provide constructive feedback. Topics include evaluating correctness, design and architecture, complexity, test coverage and quality, performance, security considerations, readability and maintainability, and consistency with style and team conventions. Includes techniques for balancing thoroughness and development velocity, using checklists and automation to reduce repetitive comments, unblocking reviewees, preserving morale and psychological safety, resolving disagreements, and using code reviews as opportunities for mentoring and knowledge transfer. Candidates may also discuss tooling, review workflow, time boxing, and metrics for measuring review effectiveness such as review turnaround time and post review defect rates.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
You are reviewing a new REST endpoint PR. Describe a complete test strategy to validate behavior, including unit tests, integration tests, contract tests, load tests, and edge case tests. For each test type give a concrete example case that must be covered and what the reviewer should verify in the test code.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
You find this Python function in a PR: def append_to_list(item, lst=[]): lst.append(item); return lst. As a reviewer, explain the bug, why it occurs, how you would phrase the review comment, propose a corrected implementation, and write one unit test that would have caught the bug.
HardBehavioral
0 practiced
A reviewer used harsh language in comments and the author felt publicly humiliated. As the engineering manager, describe a stepwise plan to de-escalate the situation, repair relationships, update code review guidelines, and prevent similar incidents, including any coaching, documentation changes, and follow-up measurements.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
When reviewing test code, what distinguishes a high-quality test from a brittle or misleading test? Provide a list of checks you would perform on tests in a PR, including test coverage, assertions scope, mocking strategy, test data management, and determinism, with a one-sentence rationale for each.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
When reviewing code that touches user data storage and retrieval, what privacy and data-protection checks should you perform? Cover areas like PII classification, encryption-at-rest and in-transit, logging, audit trails, data retention, and data minimization with concrete verification steps for each.
Unlock Full Question Bank
Get access to hundreds of Code Review Philosophy and Practice interview questions and detailed answers.
