# Google used readability reviews to spread coding norms

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/google-used-readability-reviews-to-spread-coding-norms/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Titus Winters](https://realalpha.app/people/titus-winters/) · Titus Winters is a Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe. · Built Google’s Abseil C++ libraries, led its readability program, and co-authored Software Engineering at Google.
- Host: [Gergely Orosz](https://realalpha.app/people/gergely-orosz/) · Host, The Pragmatic Engineer · Spent four years at Uber heading mobile, web and backend teams; shipped part of its payments system.
- Show: The Pragmatic Engineer
- Episode: [Software engineering at Google & CS education with Titus Winters](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/), Oct 28, 2026
- Moment: 43:03 to 47:42 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/google-used-readability-reviews-to-spread-coding-norms/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2583

## Quote

> “It was a huge, subtle, below-the-waterline **information-sharing program**.”
> — [Titus Winters](https://realalpha.app/people/titus-winters/) at [47:02](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2822) · The Pragmatic Engineer

## Takeaways

1. Changes needed file ownership and language-style approval.
2. Reviews shifted from one-time sign-off to mentor-guided feedback.
3. The process spread norms and knowledge across teams.

## About this segment

Google required code ownership and language-style approval for changes. Readability reviews evolved into mentoring that taught norms and spread knowledge across teams.

From “Software engineering at Google & CS education with Titus Winters”, Oct 28, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/)

## Transcript

From the transcript The Pragmatic Engineer publishes with the episode.

[43:15](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2595) So for any change that's going in, Someone that is involved, either the author or the reviewer or author or a reviewer, has to have two different permission bits. First is that ownership thing. So someone has to be in the list of people that is authorized to change these files. And the second is someone has to actually be certified in, we believe you understand how to write idiomatic code in this code base in that language.

[43:43](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2623) And this is a step towards trying to make sure that everything is relatively consistent. And that there's common patterns that you're not like reinventing the wheel because the strategic value of consistency is incredible. And so the readability process is someone has to be certified for that. How do you get certified for that? And initially that came as employee number three sat down with every new employee and walked them through their first change.

[44:12](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2652) That stopped scaling. So they got a bunch of other people to try to proxy Bing Craig. And they walk you through your first big substantive change. And over time, it got to the point where most change was not like I am writing a new component from scratch. It's an existing product, like you're making little edits here and there, you're adding a feature or whatever. So finding something that was meaty enough to like demonstrate in one go that you knew everything was kind of hard.

[44:41](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2681) And the whole thing felt a little bit more like a hazing ritual. And so over the years, I think the people in Java started it. It moved from that sort of one shot to being explicitly kind of a mentoring program of you do your normal work. And after your team has signed off on it, then we will round robin assign someone from the pool of like Java mentors to go through and see like. Is there anything like substantively like interesting worth commenting on here to kind of up the quality of the code and make sure that it matches the rest of the norms?

[45:15](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2715) And you might notice that means if you're on a team that already has great standards, there's probably very little to comment on. Right. And you'll probably graduate pretty quick. And if you're not and you choose not to learn any of the lessons, you will probably graduate very slowly, if at all. And so the whole thing kind of grew into that. And we extended that sort of mentorship approach into all the other readability languages.

[45:42](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2742) And that's been the norm for a bunch of years. I haven't checked up on it since,

[45:46](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2746) you know, for at least a couple of years. But it's very interesting because it feels to me like this turns code review into... Into just education in the depth of a programming language. Yep.

[45:56](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2756) Was this by design or was it just a byproduct? I think it's absolutely by design. Certainly at the parts of it where I was pulling any of the strings was definitely by design. But yeah, when I left Google, you know, almost three years ago, readability was like I was kind of the overarching owner for the readability program. I would argue that might be the largest educational program in tech or maybe in the world because there were Tens of thousands of people participating in that, like at any given moment.

[46:25](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2785) And then you just participated by joining Google and then you had no choice. It wasn't like voluntary. Right.

[46:31](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2791) And so certainly some people were super pissy about it. But I guess there was also a goal where it wasn't just about like, OK, so step one is you need to address the comments that a feasibility expert puts on your. Step two, you probably say like, I'd like to get fewer comments on them if you have any sense of pride, because it's kind of embarrassing. And then step three is like, you know what? Okay, I now get zero comments.

[46:53](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2813) I actually want to become a readability expert myself. And then that's a different level. And then step four is now You are giving feedback, and I guess due to this feedback, maybe you meet people, maybe you start to form some, I don't know, mentorship, friendships, who knows.

[47:08](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2828) Yeah, and you see other parts of the code base, you see stuff that other people are doing, you learn about other tech that might be happening. It was a huge, subtle, below-the-waterline information-sharing program.

[47:21](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2841) In the book, you write about the importance of a team, and I'll quote you. In the realm of programming, lone craftspeople are extremely rare, and even when they do exist, they don't perform superhuman achievements in a vacuum.