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:

• How GitHub Flow can be adapted for trunk-based development

• Why mob programming improved debugging and reduced defects

• Where mob timebox timers went wrong—and what the team did about it

• The real impact of developer experience and culture on delivery speed

• Lessons learned from using a monorepo in a fast-growing codebase

• 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