Pair Programming During the Interview Process at Pivotal Labs (2012)

Pivotal Labs is a software consulting firm that does a lot of Web, iOS, and Android development. Their formula for getting things done quickly and raising the knowledge level of all their developers is through pair programming, said Will Read, Software Engineer for the development shop that tests everything before they write any code.

"It's a sustainable culture where I know when I hit 'deploy' things are going to go out well because I've got confidence around the code I just wrote," said Read.

Pair programming makes all the developers smarter. If Read is sitting next to a database expert, he'll learn from him as they're tackling database problems. Similarly, Read can return the favor when they're tackling CSS and HTML issues.

While they do a lot of development in Ruby on Rails, they're ultimately looking for people who want to learn by doing, said Read. Many developers came into their shop with no Rails experience at all.
They don't have a preference as to which environment is better. In fact, it's preferable that you're flexible, because Pivotal Labs doesn't want people fighting the holy war as to which development tool is better. They want people who will simply use the best tool that will fit the job. They're very open to hiring people who don't have a specific language experience but do have experience developing, said Read.

Part of the interview process involves actually sitting down and getting involved with pair programming. Candidates pull up a problem and tackle it with the person sitting next to them. They're not concerned with interviewees being able to program right there on the spot with the right syntax. Rather they want to see is if you can articulate what you're thinking. Can you show that you can ultimately solve the problem?