The Mob Mentality Show Mob Programming at a Startup: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned
In this episode of the Mob Mentality Show, we sit down with Taimoor Imtiaz—CTO at a fast-moving, bootstrapped startup—for a raw, insightful dive into how his small dev team applied mob programming, trunk-based development, and GitHub Flow to accelerate delivery without sacrificing code quality.
Taimoor shares the journey of how his team transitioned from traditional PR-based workflows to real-time collaboration in mobs. Along the way, they faced timer-switching friction, monorepo challenges, and the trade-offs of scaling extreme programming practices in a production environment.
If you’ve ever wondered how mob programming plays out in a high-pressure startup setting—or whether trunk-based development is viable outside of big enterprise environments—this conversation is for you.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
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How GitHub Flow can be adapted for trunk-based development
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Why mob programming improved debugging and reduced defects
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Where mob timebox timers went wrong—and what the team did about it
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The real impact of developer experience and culture on delivery speed
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Lessons learned from using a monorepo in a fast-growing codebase
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Using extreme programming when resources are tight
Whether you’re a startup CTO, team lead, or individual contributor looking to evolve your team’s workflow, this episode offers real-world insights into modern software development practices that actually work under pressure.
Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/yTbzycv9qw4