How the heck can people work like that for 8 hours? I start to get very worn out at 2 hours of conversation.
Yep feels forced like hell, no breathing room. Isn't it enough to be a team of two without holding hands all the time?
The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
11–20 of 308 posts
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#12I could deal with this for maybe a week. 6 years is just mind-bending. Incredible endurance/tolerance.
I quit my job when pairing was introduced. I was open to the idea when I read about it but hated the reality. Everything from working 12 inches from people who refused to use deodorant to having to explain what I was thinking instead of just doing it. Also all my tools, preferences, keyboard shortcuts, etc. were mine, committed to muscle memory over years, and nobody else's setup was the same. Didn't work for me.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#13This story should be in the dictionary under "Cargo cult".
Ding, ding, ding.
I find it funny most people don't realize pair programming is about control. It's like a workplace Stasi. Management expects you to deal with the inevitable conflict resolution, even if that's not your job. Even if your pair shows only for a couple of hours a day and you have to do the work of two people.
“Much harder to spend time on HN” people who like pair programming either like to have power over someone else, or they want to coast and/or be handheld.
People say it's about collaboration... it's more about learning power phrases like “let’s timebox this exploration”, “you have to call the keyboard”, “let’s do plus and deltas”.
I tolerate it because the productivity is so low it helps recovering workaholics.
It's the best secret to dilute accountability and charge outrageous consulting fees.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#14How the heck can people work like that for 8 hours? I start to get very worn out at 2 hours of conversation.
Honestly reading that felt extremely anxiety-inducing and like a nightmare work culture. My work patterns are too chaotic to ever pair for more than an hour if I’m forced to.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#15How the heck can people work like that for 8 hours? I start to get very worn out at 2 hours of conversation.
I've paired on a couple projects and miss it. The exhaustion is very real but pairing really works when you take breaks.
When one is loosing focus, there isn't a hesitation to say let's take a break. I found it similar to taking a timeout in basketball.
As an engineering manager I stressed it to the team. Take breaks or you will break.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#16How the heck can people work like that for 8 hours? I start to get very worn out at 2 hours of conversation.
Honestly reading that felt extremely anxiety-inducing and like a nightmare work culture. My work patterns are too chaotic to ever pair for more than an hour if I’m forced to.
Work patterns, emails, special requests from team members, bladder, time for collecting thoughts, etc.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#17My experience is that it's best when it happens organically. Enforcing this sounds like a punishment.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#18As someone who worked in an all pairing shop for two years (run by a bunch of former Pivots), I can confirm it’s pretty draining, though my experience wasn’t nearly as bad. I actually liked pairing a lot of the time, and still think it’s an excellent way to onboard into a new code base, even in a non pairing shop (I even miss it sometimes!). For me, the main drawback after a while was that I felt like I was less effi…
> my second job had quite a steep learning curve as I had to figure out how to debug and navigate on my own, without talking through it out loud.
Why couldn't you talk through it out loud?
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#19I worked for a shop that adopted the Pivotal model and I can say that it was hell on Earth. If you check the research data it is obvious that pairing is only effective in some very special cases like: knowledge transfer for new teammates, onboarding people, getting juniors up to speed, solving __very__ complex problems. For your everyday work it is not only draining, but also a waste of both of your time. What makes it even worse is that your downtime will double because of pee breaks, coffee breaks, lunch breaks. People rarely feel the need to go at the same time. Nowadays if I'm interviewing somewhere one of my first questions if they have adopted this madness or not.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#20As someone who worked in an all pairing shop for two years (run by a bunch of former Pivots), I can confirm it’s pretty draining, though my experience wasn’t nearly as bad. I actually liked pairing a lot of the time, and still think it’s an excellent way to onboard into a new code base, even in a non pairing shop (I even miss it sometimes!). For me, the main drawback after a while was that I felt like I was less effi…
> my second job had quite a steep learning curve as I had to figure out how to debug and navigate on my own, without talking through it out loud. Why couldn't you talk through it out loud?
Sounds funny if you talk aloud while no one else is there.