When programmers interview for a job here, we ask that they spend a week with us, and we pair them with as many people as possible. Besides checking their skill level, we want to see if we could all work side by side with them for weeks at a time and if they’re a fit with the company. It gives them a chance to check us out, too.

Our programmers exhibit idiosyncrasies that might be found in any workplace, such as one person leaving a work area messy, and the germaphobe who disinfects everything. On certain days, people may not be the best partners, like the day I was preoccupied because my dog was at the vet. If that occurs, the other person can usually snap their partner back to center line.

People working so close have occasional personal conflicts, too. Hashrocket provides our workspace, office furniture, mouse pads and anything else we need, but we use our own laptops.

Once two of our programmers had a falling out over a keyboard function. The navigator wanted to remap the caps lock key as a control key for when they switched roles. But it was the driver’s laptop, and he didn’t like that idea. When the driver went to the restroom, the navigator changed the key anyway, and the two had a disagreement. They came to terms when the navigator agreed that the person who owns the laptop gets to decide the computer key function.

The ability to pair program all the time was a selling point for my taking this job. Previously, I worked for an I.T. group at a government agency in another state. I tried to get buy-in for pair programming there, but we were allowed to do it only occasionally because of the perceived drawbacks. State governments have tight budgets, so it was a hard sell. Some people can’t believe it saves money for two people to do a job one person can do.

THIS style of programming all day every day is exhausting, but it makes me more disciplined. It’s easy for a programmer working alone to give in to distractions  to check e-mail, Twitter or Facebook, for example  when confronted with a problem. We’re on social media a lot anyway, because we need to stay current, but many people take five-minute breaks every half hour, and that’s the recommended time for accessing Twitter or the Internet.

That schedule of working 25 minutes and then taking a 5-minute break is a time management technique called Pomodoro, which means “tomato” in Italian. Every once in a while a programmer won’t stop after 25 minutes and we’ll hear someone say, “Respect the tomato.”