Engineering Impacts of Anonymous Author Code Review: A Field Experiment

Code review is a powerful technique to ensure high quality software and spread knowledge of best coding practices between engineers. Unfortunately, code reviewers may have biases about authors the they are reviewing, which can lead inequitable experiences outcomes. In principle, anonymous author reduce impact such by withholding an author's identity from reviewer. this paper, understand engineering effects using in practical setting, we applied 5217 reviews performed 300 engineers at Google. Our results suggest that during review, frequently guess authors’ identities; focus reduced on reviewer-author power dynamics; practice poses barrier offline, high-bandwidth conversations. Based our findings, recommend those who choose implement should reveal time zone default, break-the-glass option for revealing identity, directly after review.