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by endigma 1537 days ago
I do almost all my work completely collaboratively in a "pair" and have run into literally zero of the problems outlined here, is this a unique case?

We don't have problems with roles or scheduling or anything of the sort and we're 5 hours apart timezones as well

I wonder if I'm the outlier or if this article is bikeshedding about nonexistent problems

3 comments

Hey, I am the author of the article. Happy to hear that it works well for you. I have been personally where you are only in office environment, and fair point, it does and can happen that things work smoothly.

That said, I have seen it more not working than working. I think it depends a lot on the environment and conditions that people are working/operating, for example we are a relatively newly formed team (90% of the team joined within last 10-12 months), and we definitely see the outlined problems more, while we learn how it is to work together.

My partner works for a company that actually does pair programming in the interview process, to ensure all new hires perform satisfactorily using that method of development. All development there is done using pair programming and the general overall sentiment is that it improves productivity over solo development. So it works if everyone you hire works well with it.
How many developers even pair program regularly? 0.1%? Maybe?
That sounds truly awful