Rory Sutherland calls this the "doorman fallacy".<p>We look at a doorman and might naively think their function is to open doors so if we can replace their function, we can replace the person. Then we build an automation, fire the doorman and subsequently discover the doorman was responsible for a multitude of social tasks, like taking in the mail, co-ordinating services, providing small tasks for the residents etc. and that physically opening and closing doors was actually the least important part of their job.<p>Similarly, we think the purpose of code review must obviously be for reviewing code until we look deeper and understand the sociological purposes of code review.<p>Technologists have a bad habit of entering into a field they don't know, observing but not talking to any of the people they're trying to automate and assuming only the most legible parts of anyone's job are important to grok. It's important to understand that the value any job or function brings can often be totally opaque to an outsider and it requires actually talking to people and understanding total value chains to fully understand where technology can be used to improve things.