Comment by YZF

I think that's fair. I have noticed people going out of the way in the time immediately preceding peer reviews to be nice and avoid confrontation to a point where it feels very artificial. There's definitely added stress around those times as well. Where I am we do two reviews a year. In a previous company we did one peer review a year. Both places are very peer review centric and I generally prefer doing this once a year. The process overall is fairly lightweight- you don't spend more than a few hours on it unless you're a manager.