5 ms·

Pivotal. I've had the pleasure of working with many Pivots, and Rob Mee has built a great XP culture.

by EngineerBetter 10y ago

sargun 10y ago
Is it true that pivots have to be in the office at a specific time?
- jacalata 10y ago
  Yes, because they do 100% pair programming. When you rely on someone else being there at the same time as you, you need predictable hours. It's possible they don't need to be as fixed as they are, but that's how they've chosen to do it.
  - fdsfsaa 10y ago
    > 100% pair programming I don't think there's a faster way to send me running away screaming. I'd actually take "100% Visual Basic" over "100% Pair Programming" if I had to choose one at gunpoint.
    - jacques_chester 10y ago
      I think most people self-select out of applying for this reason, usually because of a bad experience. I was skeptical. Now I greatly prefer it. It would take a ludicrous raise to shift me to a company that doesn't do it as a regular practice.
  - coldcode 10y ago
    Basically they hire 2 people to do 1 person's work. I guess its a nice employment policy. But I would never work there.
    - jacques_chester 10y ago
      > Basically they hire 2 people to do 1 person's work. Pivotal is a for-profit company. We pair program because we think it's more effective for most engineering activities (not all: most) than soloing. I'm vastly more productive in a pair. I don't take 3 hour "5 minute" Facebook breaks. If I get stuck, my pair usually has an idea, so rather than spending a day fighting I spend minutes. Usually the discussion with a pair comes to a better design, sooner, than nutting it out by myself. Working with a pair makes me accountable -- I am far less tempted to take shortcuts with tests, code, readability, design or other important properties. Many folk will say well gosh, they don't need a pair for these things. I envy you, brave superhuman. I have ADHD and the crippling disability of being merely mortal, so pairing is awesome for me.
      - mrswag 10y ago
        I'm genuinely wondering: is pair programming better, compared to doing the design in pair, going to work on your own, then reviewing each other's code? As an introvert I don't think I could handle the "pair all day" approach.
        sjg007 10y ago
        I guess it keeps you honest.... e.g focused and ontrak
        jacques_chester 10y ago
        > is pair programming better, compared to doing the design in pair, going to work on your own, then reviewing each other's code? The literature is, I believe, pretty thin and equivocal. However the suspicion is that pair programming is pretty much the core loop of bouncing back and forth, reduced to the smallest possible size. It also avoids some of the antipatterns I've seen with code reviews -- widely distributed patches, reviews getting stale because they were too hard for a Monday, then a Tuesday... then a Friday ... > As an introvert I don't think I could handle the "pair all day" approach. You can take a break if you need one. Lunchtime is fixed at an hour. I typically go and spend it alone with a book. There is sometimes a confusion between intro/extraversion and sociability. I'm quite sociable, I genuinely like talking to people, but it drains me because I lean towards introverted. So the lunchtime recharge is very helpful. Each pair finds their own balance.
    - omouse 10y ago
      That's not how pair programming works. At some point you're going to need more than one person to understand the code and they either go through that learning process months down the road or right now when they can be most useful in shaping that code. It's not simple mathematics.
knocte 10y ago
I might agree, but their product is horrible.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  Which product? We have a hand in quite a few these days, most notably Pivotal Cloud Foundry.
  - knocte 10y ago
    The Trello clone.
    - bshimmin 10y ago
      ...(Pivotal Tracker) which predates Trello by some years! That said, I never much enjoyed using Pivotal Tracker, and Trello seems to do more or less everything it does but in a nicer and more client-friendly way.
      - jacques_chester 10y ago
        Tracker is very, very opinionated and it's not necessarily immediately clear what that opinion is. Trello is a good tool. I've seen it used on several teams in roles that Tracker doesn't neatly fill.
nrjdhsbsid 10y ago
:'( I turned down a job at pivotal years ago because I thought it was just the usual consulting sweatshop with a prettier face.
jacques_chester 10y ago
Pivotal is the first company I've worked at where I genuinely felt like I was engineering. Most places you work have one or two people who really care. They care about people. They care about process. They care about technology, software design, about doing the right thing the right way. At Pivotal that's everyone. I've yet to meet a single example of the shrugging "eh, it's just a job" archetype I've previously found elsewhere. It's so incredibly hard to create this kind of a self-reflective, self-correcting culture. Pivotal's done it and under conditions of enormous growth. Really. It's the best job I've ever had, by a country mile. Edit: one more marker. People come back to Pivotal. It's the first company I've seen with reverse attrition. It's common for Pivots to head to other companies and then come back in less than a year. There's no bridge-burning: if you head out from Pivotal to do something new, you leave as a friend and you can return as one.
- pc86 10y ago
  I worked for a public healthcare company with a lot of red tape and new development in Visual Basic as recently as 2012, that also had developers leave and come back. Reverse attrition doesn't mean anything.
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    In that case, I'll just fall back on "it's awesome, and the people who come back say so too".
sporkenfang 10y ago
Pair programming all day, every day I thought I could handle. Turns out, I'm in no state to interface with any other human being, including my SO, at the end of a day of that. I think it's a good fit for a select group of folks who are both extroverted and technical. I also prefer having a tiny corner of my own space at work. It's comforting. At the office where I worked, everyone shared desks (you sit wherever your partner for that project is sitting at the moment) and nobody had their own space. It may be different at other Pivotal offices, but I didn't enjoy the short time I was there.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  In fairness, pairing is not for everybody. We fret about whether we select for extroverts. In my experience, no, but pairing certainly takes a lot out of me. On the flipside, we absolutely smash out the work here. I love being able to finish stuff every day, every week.
DerpyBaby123 10y ago
I got referred to Pivotal by an employee I used to work with. After passing the pairing interview it seems that I was denied further hiring progress because of a nonpoaching agreement with my current employer (a competing consultancy). I'd love to work there but dont know what I can do.

Pivotal. I've had the pleasure of working with many Pivots, and Rob Mee has built a great XP culture.

sargun 10y ago

Is it true that pivots have to be in the office at a specific time?

jacalata 10y ago
Yes, because they do 100% pair programming. When you rely on someone else being there at the same time as you, you need predictable hours. It's possible they don't need to be as fixed as they are, but that's how they've chosen to do it.
- fdsfsaa 10y ago
  > 100% pair programming I don't think there's a faster way to send me running away screaming. I'd actually take "100% Visual Basic" over "100% Pair Programming" if I had to choose one at gunpoint.
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    I think most people self-select out of applying for this reason, usually because of a bad experience. I was skeptical. Now I greatly prefer it. It would take a ludicrous raise to shift me to a company that doesn't do it as a regular practice.
- coldcode 10y ago
  Basically they hire 2 people to do 1 person's work. I guess its a nice employment policy. But I would never work there.
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    > Basically they hire 2 people to do 1 person's work. Pivotal is a for-profit company. We pair program because we think it's more effective for most engineering activities (not all: most) than soloing. I'm vastly more productive in a pair. I don't take 3 hour "5 minute" Facebook breaks. If I get stuck, my pair usually has an idea, so rather than spending a day fighting I spend minutes. Usually the discussion with a pair comes to a better design, sooner, than nutting it out by myself. Working with a pair makes me accountable -- I am far less tempted to take shortcuts with tests, code, readability, design or other important properties. Many folk will say well gosh, they don't need a pair for these things. I envy you, brave superhuman. I have ADHD and the crippling disability of being merely mortal, so pairing is awesome for me.
    - mrswag 10y ago
      I'm genuinely wondering: is pair programming better, compared to doing the design in pair, going to work on your own, then reviewing each other's code? As an introvert I don't think I could handle the "pair all day" approach.
      - sjg007 10y ago
        I guess it keeps you honest.... e.g focused and ontrak
      - jacques_chester 10y ago
        > is pair programming better, compared to doing the design in pair, going to work on your own, then reviewing each other's code? The literature is, I believe, pretty thin and equivocal. However the suspicion is that pair programming is pretty much the core loop of bouncing back and forth, reduced to the smallest possible size. It also avoids some of the antipatterns I've seen with code reviews -- widely distributed patches, reviews getting stale because they were too hard for a Monday, then a Tuesday... then a Friday ... > As an introvert I don't think I could handle the "pair all day" approach. You can take a break if you need one. Lunchtime is fixed at an hour. I typically go and spend it alone with a book. There is sometimes a confusion between intro/extraversion and sociability. I'm quite sociable, I genuinely like talking to people, but it drains me because I lean towards introverted. So the lunchtime recharge is very helpful. Each pair finds their own balance.
  - omouse 10y ago
    That's not how pair programming works. At some point you're going to need more than one person to understand the code and they either go through that learning process months down the road or right now when they can be most useful in shaping that code. It's not simple mathematics.

knocte 10y ago

I might agree, but their product is horrible.

jacques_chester 10y ago
Which product? We have a hand in quite a few these days, most notably Pivotal Cloud Foundry.
- knocte 10y ago
  The Trello clone.
  - bshimmin 10y ago
    ...(Pivotal Tracker) which predates Trello by some years! That said, I never much enjoyed using Pivotal Tracker, and Trello seems to do more or less everything it does but in a nicer and more client-friendly way.
    - jacques_chester 10y ago
      Tracker is very, very opinionated and it's not necessarily immediately clear what that opinion is. Trello is a good tool. I've seen it used on several teams in roles that Tracker doesn't neatly fill.

nrjdhsbsid 10y ago

:'( I turned down a job at pivotal years ago because I thought it was just the usual consulting sweatshop with a prettier face.

jacques_chester 10y ago

Pivotal is the first company I've worked at where I genuinely felt like I was engineering. Most places you work have one or two people who really care. They care about people. They care about process. They care about technology, software design, about doing the right thing the right way. At Pivotal that's everyone. I've yet to meet a single example of the shrugging "eh, it's just a job" archetype I've previously found elsewhere. It's so incredibly hard to create this kind of a self-reflective, self-correcting culture. Pivotal's done it and under conditions of enormous growth. Really. It's the best job I've ever had, by a country mile. Edit: one more marker. People come back to Pivotal. It's the first company I've seen with reverse attrition. It's common for Pivots to head to other companies and then come back in less than a year. There's no bridge-burning: if you head out from Pivotal to do something new, you leave as a friend and you can return as one.

pc86 10y ago
I worked for a public healthcare company with a lot of red tape and new development in Visual Basic as recently as 2012, that also had developers leave and come back. Reverse attrition doesn't mean anything.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  In that case, I'll just fall back on "it's awesome, and the people who come back say so too".

sporkenfang 10y ago

Pair programming all day, every day I thought I could handle. Turns out, I'm in no state to interface with any other human being, including my SO, at the end of a day of that. I think it's a good fit for a select group of folks who are both extroverted and technical. I also prefer having a tiny corner of my own space at work. It's comforting. At the office where I worked, everyone shared desks (you sit wherever your partner for that project is sitting at the moment) and nobody had their own space. It may be different at other Pivotal offices, but I didn't enjoy the short time I was there.

jacques_chester 10y ago
In fairness, pairing is not for everybody. We fret about whether we select for extroverts. In my experience, no, but pairing certainly takes a lot out of me. On the flipside, we absolutely smash out the work here. I love being able to finish stuff every day, every week.

DerpyBaby123 10y ago

I got referred to Pivotal by an employee I used to work with. After passing the pairing interview it seems that I was denied further hiring progress because of a nonpoaching agreement with my current employer (a competing consultancy). I'd love to work there but dont know what I can do.