That&#x27;s a failure of your team lead.  Tough code reviews are important, but I don&#x27;t tolerate people being petty or nasty.  We actually train new employees on how we like to do reviews.<p>If I see people being given the benefit of the doubt, I call out other senior engineers.  If I see people ganging up on a new person, I do the same.<p>A quote I&#x27;ve always heard, is generally when someone talks about how &quot;brutally honest&quot; they are, they enjoy the brutality more than the honesty.  I filter for the latter, and come down hard on the former.