> 100% mob(!) programming everyday

I've been in a team that does this. I did appreciate the knowledge share from the expert the first month despite the fact it completely drained me. After awhile, I hated the whole thing and dreaded going to work. I get it works for some people, but I know it is not for me.

> on a zoom call

This would make this about 10 times worse. I wouldn't last a week.

what better way to ensure you get CS degreed ppl for positions that legally can't require one than to reproduce the "group project" model as an organizational principle?

CS group projects are biting like pair programming. Most CS group projects I've been on were a game of chicken where everyone would wait for others to do the work. If you don't pull your weight on pair programming it's quickly obvious and you'll get feedback.

At this point I suspect that the "group projects" often done in CS degrees are actually intended to give the student experience in a failed project and learning from their mistakes, and understanding that not every project is a success or failure due to their actions alone.

Kind of backfired for me, because only very rarely were professors able to assign projects that were big enough that I couldn't do them entirely by myself, and I was outright incentivized to do so because even working at that speed I could still produce the whole project at A-grade quality when my teammates would have been satisfied with a B or a C.

Another cynical take would be that you were given perfect training for a software team in industry. Every team tends to have a small number of individuals trying to get that A, while their colleagues are not only satisfied with a B or a C but spend most of their days in meetings trying to ensure they drag down the software to their target.

Same here, I knew I was being exploited, but didn't care.

Those grades and work experience were quite valuable to myself.

In what situations (and jurisdictions) would an employee be legally prevented from requiring a CS degree?

Most, as far as I'm aware, since it's not required to do the work in almost all cases.

I can only speak for the U.S., but "required to actually do the work" has nothing to do with whether or not I'm legally allowed to set a requirement for a job.

There are protected classes/categories that can't be part of the employment decision, but outside of those, the employer is free to set whatever criteria they want for the position.

If I run a plumbing company, I could say "all of our plumbers must have a computer science degree," and I can't imagine there's any legal reason I couldn't do that. I'd certainly have a recruiting problem, but not a legal problem as far as I'm aware.

If the requirement has a disparate impact on one of those protected classes, you can run into problems in the US.

So in the case of plumbers, if a plaintiff can show that you are hiring fewer women because women are less likely to have CS degree—then you would need to show a “demonstrable relationship to the requirements of the job” for a CS degree.

However, this isn’t an issue for software developer positions. A CS degree doesn’t have to be absolutely necessary to be able to perform the job, it just needs a demonstrable relationship to the job requirement. There is also already precedent that a degree in a related field does meet that requirement.

That’s not how that works at all. There’s clear precedent that employers are allowed to require specific degrees.

In fact, depending on regulations, it can happen that you end up with somewhat junior team member having to sign off on all materials because they are the only one with necessary accredited title...

For certain (or certain kinds of) positions, yes. That's the "almost all" part.

There’s no problem with requiring a CS degree for every single software developer, software engineer, programmer, or coder job. Since those are the kinds of jobs that were obviously being discussed it’s not “almost all”, it’s essentially none.

The worst group project I did in course of my studies didn't have the same level of forced interaction as pair/mob programming. In fact, I'd say it tended to have less than normal work from the office.

Very bluntly put: full-time pair and/or mob programming is for and by neurotypical extroverts. People for who their job is a social activity, for who deep work and deep focus on their own are mostly foreign concepts.

I mean to each their own, but companies - and fellow developers - need to stop forcing others into their way of working. Having One True Way of doing things is always bad. But yes, this may mean there will be a divide in your company / teams, where one part prefers solo work while others prefer group work. Deal with it. Compromise. Let the extroverts work on their own for a while, and the introverts do some pair programming, but don't go all in on one or the other.

I'm not sure why a company needs to work in a certain way just because some people don't like to work in that way. It is like saying a java shop needs to use c# as well just because some people are more comfortable with c#. No. They don't. It is just fine for developers that want to write in c# to find a company that is invested in a culture around doing c#.

This isn't just true with programming. If you like to do things solo, then don't become an airline pilot since they always work in pairs. There are plenty of other places you can work as a solo pilot. Airline pilots work in pairs because, for that type of work, there are advantages to doing so. If a company wants to "go all in" on pair or mob programming, there may be very good reasons for doing so and trying to have a split culture doesn't always work.

I resonate with your comment and the comment before. Every time I've had to pair program it has completely drained me. It's impossible to both do the deep logistic work component in my head and communicate clearly with someone else. It's like too many tasks working at the same time. I've never tried to itemize how my brain works in that regards though.

Thanks for both of your comments. The mob programming sounds like I would be depleted way to fast.

Doing this in person sounds bad, doing this over Zoom would be monstrous. Back at a previous job I had to do pairing for many hours of the day over Zoom with less experienced developers, and it was unpleasant to say the least!

I went to that interview a few years ago. I got to experience the mob live programming interview. It sounded bad going in but things often turn out better. It felt like I was live streaming on twitch with a small disinterested following. Hard to imagine 6 hours a day in that state. It feels like one of those places that will make you rethink if you want to remain in the industry.

That kind of context switching sounds like it's horrible for just about everyone (including the business).

Honestly, it's sounds kinda insane. Mob programming certainly is a tool with its good use cases, like maybe tracking a bug, onboarding a new team member or making critical changes to core stuff. However, I just can't imagine having three engineers making 100k+ sitted together everyday on a single laptop to write yet another REST api or whatever.

Does Zoom have a "Mutex" button for obtaining keyboard access?

I lol'd at this... was thinking the same thing. "Who's driving!"

Compare that to 3 engineers struggling through solving problems in isolation because they lack information that is in each other's head.

Culturally traditional management is biased to create the 3 struggling engineers scenario because most management strongly believes that people working on many tasks in parallel is peak efficiency. You see this manifest in places that run the Jira + PR feature mill. Staff that complete lots of jiras and have lots of green dots PRs in their GitHub profile are considered "peak performers"

The fortune 500 is littered with companies full of this anti-pattern. Less so each year though, because if amazing execution on digital transformation matters to the business, to the extent those 3 struggling engineers execute poorly, the competition slowly eats the incumbent's market share.

There's a big difference between "free flow of information" between engineers and enforced mob programming. The former often works quite well with just regular unstructured meetings, whether face to face or online.

We use "mob programming" once a week for 30 minutes, in a way that you described - a "Sentry Smackdown". In zoom, we find 3 of the most "interesting" sentry errors, split up into 3 break out rooms, each group sees what they can find, then 5 minutes at the end to give our update and next steps.

I love it and it's helped get momentum on things which would typically just sit there. BUT, 30 minutes is definitely my maximum for something like this.... even if we did something minor like make this meeting 1 hour long - I would dread it.

Context: we do have an engineer on-call (on a weekly basis) and they will respond to urgent sentry errors, but the above helps sentry errors with less urgency get moving without being a total buzkill for the on-call engineer to look at ALL of them.

Perhaps some psychologist at Yale has embezzled $50 million and is using it to fund a startup for psychology research purposes.

I'd love it if it was that! :D

It's great at keeping both programmers 100% focused on the work, instead of on commenting on HN.

But it does quickly lead to exhaustion.

I love pair programming !!!for specific tasks!!! Just like TDD, i think its pragmatic and should be based on your needs. But all or nothing, naaa, thats just coolaid or micromanagement.

Wow. I recommend everyone read through that page. Some may love it. Obviously the bosses at SOCi do. For me it is a dystopian nightmare.

To summarize: there are three roles, Typist, Navigator, and Support.

The Typist is not allowed to think. They are explicitly described as a "smart input device". For the most part, only the Navigator is allowed to think. They tell the Typist exactly what to type, and the Typist must follow everything the Navigator speaks, to the letter.

The Support only looks over both their shoulders and sets a 10 minute timer after which the roles rotate. Yes, every 10 minutes everyone switches roles.

When working in person, one thing this selects for is people with perfect vision. Elderly programmers need not apply!

Why do I say that? Well, I have computer glasses that let me see my screen perfectly even at my age. This applies to anyone over 40-50: if you don't have them already, I strongly recommend getting a pair of single vision prescription lenses tuned for your normal distance from the screen. Since I use a laptop, these glasses are set for a 20" focus distance. I have two external monitors (one landscape above the laptop, the other in portrait mode to one side), and I keep those at the same 20" distance from my eyes. It is glorious! Everything is in focus, all the time.

If we're sitting around a desk, it's almost certain that I won't be able to read what's on your screen, for the simple reason that it won't be at a distance that brings it into focus (probably much too far away).

Oh, and you may like dark themes and tiny fonts like all the young people use these days. So even if it were at the right distance I wouldn't be able to read what's on the screen.

Mobbing on a Zoom call mitigates the focus distance, but the dark theme and tiny fonts would still mean I can't see your code.

And webcams are supposed to be on all the time so your fellow mobsters can see your face. A nice sentiment, but two problems:

1. I can't work sitting. If I do, I fall asleep after a while.

2. I can work standing, but not standing still! (I'm no John Carmack, who can give an hour long talk without moving a muscle.) I have to move around in order to think and stay alive. So I would constantly be walking in and out of camera range, or stretching, or wiggling around on my Fluidstance balance board, or just looking out the window for a vision break.

A more delicate problem: Sometimes older people need to take more frequent bathroom breaks, and the timing may be unpredictable, especially for someone like me who eats a lot of fiber for intestinal health. Sorry, I may not be able to just "hold it" until the next scheduled mob break. (Apologies for the TMI.)

This whole thing is an ADA compliance lawsuit just waiting to happen. (And no, I'm not going to be the test case; I have no interest in working for a company with these practices.)

Thank you for your insights! While the idea is interesting, the images on top of the SOCi article support your sceptism: Three programmers gathered around a tiny laptop screen is awful. You can always increase the font size though - I regularly work with a fairly large font as it is not as straining for long periods, but how do you persuade your coworkers to that? It takes quite some getting used to the diminished screen space.

That said, I would never want to join a company that has phrases like

> The mob disbands, either to sleep, or to their individual work

and

> [...] full 8 hours of programming [...] minimum expectations [...] additional time is expected to be put in

in what is basically their job description. Also, six to eight hours of non-stop webcam is horrible! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24718640

20+ year developer here. Worked at a FAANG. This seems fucking awful.

That is literly a description of programming hell for me (20+yrs also here). My fingers are so much better at streaming my thoughts them my mouth which often struggles to keep up.

Yep, same here. And people are also not very good at listening; even if you are focusing only to type, people miss stuff and I have to repeat or explain in another way while I could have typed things 100x myself in that time. I think I’ll give this weirdness a miss.

Christ almighty, that sounds more similar to one of those inane "team building" exercises that they make you do on corporate retreats rather than actual work.

> When working in person, one thing this selects for is people with perfect vision. Elderly programmers need not apply! ... prescription for 20" focus ...

I went the other way. 42in 4K TV placed further back. Big font. Zero eyestrain.

The main trick is that you have to set up the TV in "Game Mode" to turn off input processing, and also turn off stuff like overscan.

Obviously this setup may not work in a office cubicle or other space-constrained space.

Works fine for in-person reviews in the time of Covid, the other person isn't hovering over my shoulder either. They can stay way back and still see what's going on.

Provigil solves the sleep issue. But I’m a bit younger and I also cannot read dark themes. It’s especially infuriating that half the default font colors appear to be dark shades as well, so it’s dark on dark.

> Provigil solves the sleep issue.

Drug your employees so they appear to be working the desired hours. I can see ethical problems with that idea. The employer should at least be dispensing the drugs for free as a "benefit".

a vs code live share would solve a lot of those vision issues.

That sounds like torture

Seems a bit draconian to force mob programming onto every programmer everyday, but I also find the idea appealing if I was selecting the team & when to do it -- there are definitely teams & topics where I would find this flow productive & helpful! For example, we had a similar arrangement back when we were doing ACM programming competitions.

In similar conditions, like Capture the Flag competitions, we regularly used short-term arrangements that might seem like mob programming, often by just deciding to go to whiteboard and try to figure out the problem and thus implicitly inviting others to join if they have spare cycles.

Wildly different experience compared to mob/pair programming all the time.

tangential question: I'm 37 and think I have ADHD. My partner thinks I do, and when I read posts like this I deeply identify with them. What should I do? Get a diagnosis? My ignorance thinks the only course after that is drugs which doesn't sound that appealing..

I got diagnosed at 35. Definitely do it -- it's been life changing for me.

But don't stop with a diagnosis, get some coaching from an ADHD specialist. There's so much more to it than just attention -- emotional dysregulation, time-blindess, executive function impairment.

It's a whole thing. But with support you can cope with most of it. And most importantly learn to separate the condition from.your character.

You have lots of options. Meds always sound unappealing but they can be a huge boon for some. CBT can be very useful pretty quickly without any sort of drug, but it’s not for everyone. Executive Functioning coaches (not “executive coaches!”) can be useful for practical work/life organization strategies. Date around with EF coaches because many people with vastly different qualification levels work under that name.

Diagnosis can be emotionally helpful— they’re often done by neuropsych evaluation specialists but you should talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist first because evaluation is a few grand, most insurances won’t cover it if you don’t seem very likely to be diagnosed including DSM-V criteria like having significant life changing symptoms before age 12. The testing itself is a few hours of tests designed to push you to your limits for things like working memory, impulsivity, and reaction time. (I was waiting for the tester to say “Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention.”) Parts got frustrating but not like Megaman frustrating.

Depression and/or anxiety are commodities in 80% of those afflicted, so that’s worth paying attention to also.

Getting a diagnosis does not mean having to medicate. If it’s not for you, you can get non-medical forms of help. Not help as in you need help but rather help to make your life easier.

If you think you may have ADHD, definitely worth it to understand more about ADHD and a diagnosis will help those close to you to understand your behavior.

I highly recommend talking to a psychiatrist or psychologist that can see if you fit the criteria. However, if you’re willing to do your own research, you may be able to find a family doctor willing to let you try a few mediations before referring you to a specialist. (I did.)

ADHD medication is excellent from a patient’s perspective. The first-line ones are almost immediately effective. If you don’t like what they do, you can just stop taking them and try another one. In less than a year, you can try most of the known-working medications.

Even if nothing comes of it, at least you know. Knowing is half the battle. :)

I’d suggest trying the meds before you form an option on them. I take my ADHD meds every day just the same as somebody else takes heart medicine or wears glasses. It just is what it is.

And note: it does sometimes make you feel like cheating or something… you will have to arrive at your own conclusions. Suggest a good therapist to help deal with it.

This is the one; one diagnosis for ADHD is to take the medication and see how you feel. I've heard a colleague, also in his 30's, describe it as his head finally going quiet. I've tried my girlfriend's medication (also a mid-30's diagnosis) and it didn't have that effect, I just noticed I was a lot more deliberate in focusing on and switching between tasks.

Why so scared of meds? From what I hear ADHD meds do work for a lot.

Why would you report yourself as a health & safety risk? You're all good :)

Your partner is worried. So shift the work/life balance to have more life with your partner. Trust the team at work to understand.

Diagnosis from other people does lead to prescription drugs being offered. If someone reading is using chemicals, please pay close attention. Some doctors attempt to prescribe drugs in increasing quantities. That is not the path to sustainable balance. Medications are useful in an ambulance or hospital, they do help in emergencies! But they're not intended to be used routinely for a healthy life.

Peer support is best. Finding humble, open-minded peers can be challenging. The CouchSurfing (now BeWelcome) community is very open-minded and humble. Many church friends are humble. Teaching from the Bible is a reminder of how none of us are perfect, yet God forgives, and shows grace, mercy, and peace.

Some companies try to force concepts like pair programming, mob programming, etc upon their "human resources". It works well for people who like talking & body language, but not for people who prefer reading, typing & listening to music. Personally I prefer reading & typing, and that's why I use Hacker News.

You're not alone, you're welcome here. Interruptions are OK despite the cost of context switching. Diagnosis is not needed, you've already found help. I pray that God will bless you with peace in your personal and professional life, and they'll all catch up to your high-frequency genius ideas soon :)

As someone in his forties I wouldn´t be able to pull this off either. It will drain me. With age it takes longer to focus.