90% of people are fine and code review has tons of benefits.. but the format is an enabler for 'that guy', as you're asking them for approval rather than running it by them as an FYI.

I've seen a few different motivated hard workers get to hard work on demanding as many changes as possible whenever they are on a CR.

There is also the flip side too where a block of code might just have a lot of problems and I’m trying to evaluate if it’s too hard in a public forum to flag all of them at once. If possible I try to flag a couple and to sit down and offer to do a one on one for more.

+1 to taking it offline when it's more than a couple minor style fixes.

I think it all comes down to judgement and there are definitely ways people can write code in their individual style without hurting maintainability.

That said, maintaining a codebase where there is a lot of variation in idioms, style and formatting can be a big headache.

It adds cognitive overhead and if you're changing files you constantly have to balance preserving the local style with other factors. E.g. if someone likes aligning their equal signs, and you add a new line where the LHS is one character longer, do you reformat the whole block?

I can't fathom to be honest to be back in a place where something like that is even a question.

We use spotless. We use prettier. Nothing passes the build if you don't adhere to the style rules. You may disagree with some stuff. Make a case! Change the rule definition, apply them and show the PR to a representative cut of the developer community. You might get it through. We've done a few like that in my time here. Or you might realize what that rule change really means in some cases and the PR is ultimately declined. Has also happened. Ruled looked good for the place that triggered the want. Sucked in most other places, so we decided not to do it.

If you have a guy that can't live with not getting his will 100% of the time my advice is to try and get rid of him as soon as you can. Or run yourself. Not healthy in the long run and frankly "I'm too old for that shit. Now get off my lawn"