Hi Mark,
thank you for the comment.
Let me clarify a few things: First, the code review is not pre-commit. The developer commits probably several times to the private development branch. But many teams have the policy to require a code review before the code is merged with and checked-in to the common code-base, i.e., shared team branches and Master branch for example. If I understand your comment correctly, this is similar to what you explain. Using Git, this would mean to do a code review for the pull request.
But, at Microsoft, there isn't one code repository system. There are several different in use, depending on teams and products. So, I explained it more high-level to cover all different scenarios. I'll update this passage to clarify it better. Also, as you can imagine, the branch structure for teams with several thousand engineers working on one product can be quite evolved.
There are some teams that allow code reviews after committing to the shared development code base. So, they allow developers to check-in their code in the shared development branch before and review it later. If this is allowed depends on the team and the kind of change.
About the other points. Yes, CodeFlow, and also other code review tools used at Microsoft are advanced and it guides and helps with many activities. There is also no need to manually attach test results. That is all done for you.
Obviously, with so many developers around, things get automated. So, if there are different steps involved, you can be assured they are conveniently designed to ease the job of the developer. As there are so many teams what exactly, and how it exactly is done differs. I cannot go into too much detail here. But, it is definitely not 2005 ;-)
I hope this clarified your questions and thanks a lot for your comment. Sometimes it is hard to describe processes I am so familiar with. So, your questions and comments help me to better describe the process.
I'm kind of surprised that pre-commit reviews are apparently the default at Microsoft.
In my experience having done both, it's so much easier to just review pull requests (so after commits).
It's such a big company and they apparently analyzed the review process in quite some detail. I wonder if I am missing something, or Microsoft is.
Despite my disagreement with this aspect, this is a useful series with useful information! Made that bold to emphasize it as the tone of this comment is quite negative despite me liking the series :-)