alt Hacker NewsWhile one of the best things about PRs can be raising the floor on quality, I think the another powerful factor is forcing an opportunity to talk about the code. This article even pre-empts this confusion by acknowledging that commenting on a PR while approving it is "weird". This implies that many people don't understand the indirect benefits of the PR and think the process is all about approval and raising the quality floor.
I think raising the floor, gives diminishing returns once someone is used to the team and the code base, but the conversation always remains relevant. Sometimes teams that resist things like PRs (e.g. "they just slow us down") are actually teams that are having those conversions elsewhere (in-person, on slack, during standup or sprint planning, etc).
Totally agreed, but it always comes back to managing the average over the best. It is a lot more effective to enforce a culture of approvals than a culture of collaboration. Managers should be striving for the later, but not every team is built the same way and many in leadership just need assurance that the bare minimum is getting done.