I did it for three decades (3.5?) and the only code reviews were with friends of mine who worked at multiple companies together. The whole point of the review was to find outright errors, not to optimize. Scarcely any ego involvement.
It worked out fine I think and, mind you, it used to be a lot harder to push out a fix. A lot harder.
Yeah, maybe I should add, we would hang out in the hall and whiteboard our ideas, workflows before we went back into our respective cubicles/offices and started coding.
It worked out fine I think and, mind you, it used to be a lot harder to push out a fix. A lot harder.