[snuxoll]

This is what we do, we have 3 senior developers, 2 intermediate level developers and 3 juniors on our team. Even before we hired the juniors we ALWAYS had GoToMeeting up and conversed throughout the day and worked together on projects, it's more imperative with the Jr's so we'll usually pair someone up 1:1 with them on a separate call to mentor them on a project. We haven't felt a need for a physical office except as an occasional meeting space (which is why we are working on getting one built-out in the city where the majority of our remote team lives).

[mountaineer22]

So you do remote pair programming?

I have found this to be quite productive.

Real-time communication with voice, but also the visually shared WIP.

Is this your experience?

[snuxoll]

Yes, everyone on our team has a GoToMeeting license, throughout the day most of our team is pair programming using the screen sharing functionality or talking with our users about issues or doing UAT before deploying a new build.

Personally I'm not a fan of pair programming, I don't like shoulder surfing, but it's an invaluable tool for mentoring the juniors so I still participate when I'm not working on one of my more niche responsibilities I don't share with the rest of the team as much (DevOps, Salesforce developer, DB developer, business analyst, etc.)