&gt; What often goes unmentioned in praise for code review processes is their insanely exorbitant costs -- measured in engineer hours but perhaps more costly is all of the blocking and impedance [1].<p>I don&#x27;t get why you think code reviews are so expensive. An engineer should rarely be blocked by a code review. If waiting for a review - don&#x27;t. Pick up another task! A great thing about code reviews is they are done async.<p>If the cost is time spent doing the review - what&#x27;s the alternative? No code review at all? That&#x27;s like not testing - yes it&#x27;s faster now, but you&#x27;ll pay for it dearly later on. (Code review is well studied in academia &#x2F; industry, and has consistently shown to be very effective. Having at least one extra pair of eyeballs on any code goes a long way.)