How the heck can people work like that for 8 hours? I start to get very worn out at 2 hours of conversation.
But how often do you do long conversations? I also find it exhausting, but like almost everything: the more you do it the easier it gets.
The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
21–30 of 308 posts
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
There’s actually a term for this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#23This 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 ov…
If it is like workplace Stasi and like the movie Brasil, shouldn't we expect pairs to slack off together in conspiracy, watching movies like in Brasil or commenting on HN instead of working. Does pair programming cause dysfunction?
Also, is there a pair programming equivalent of the Scrum Master? That would be the chief slack position.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#24Sounds like the underlying reason is a link between performance and endurance. If you're achieving very high productivity, you can't do 8+ hours per day every day.
I wonder if it would possible to find a balance of doing shorter days / working fewer days, and offsetting that by being more productive in the hours that you do work.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#25This story should be in the dictionary under "Cargo cult".
This is a place that starts the day by sounding a gong so they at least wear the cult-y-ness on their sleeve.
I think this is one of those things that is going to work for some and not work for others.
I quit very quickly after being subcontracted into Pivotal. I need quiet focussed periods of inner monologue to turn over problems. I can't talk and think.
Other people think by talking. I suppose artificially limiting the types of people who work for you is a choice of some kind
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#26How 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?
It feels inhumane to me. Maybe for a little bit would be ok though.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#27This 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 ov…
I liked pairing. I was pairing for about three years, 09:30 to 17:00, with an hour for lunch.
It certainly is exhausting. It certainly produces better code. If you pair and rotate, then after a number cycles, everyone in the team knows the codebase.
There is something a bit weird about XP. It looks as if coders are being given control, and they are; but they manage themselves even more sternly than their management would have. That is, coders seem to demand more of themselves than even aggressive managers.
Everyone knowing the codebase is also a way for developers to shoot themselves in the foot; when everyone knows your job, it becomes easier for you to be replaced.
I'm not a master programmer - at best, I was a journeyman. I learned a lot from the people I paired with, about half of whom were better than me. I only paired with two guys that I found really difficult; one was a good programmer, but had quite severe asperger's. The other was a reckless, entitled idiot, and pairing with him amounted to trying to stop him writing any code.
I'm not familiar with those "power-phrases". And I never encountered power games. I guess we all had enough confidence in ourselves and our colleagues that we didn't feel we had to prove anything. We respected one-another. Well, I certainly respected (most of) the other team members.
In a disfunctional team, I guess pairing can only make things worse.
Regarding diluted accountability: I found the oppposite. At the morning SCRUM, you have to give an account of what you did yesterday. You can't make it up, because your pair is at the SCRUM too. And the evidence is in the commit log.
And I didn't find that productivity was low. I'd say that functionality was delivered at about 75% the velocity of solo work, but the code we delivered was much better quality, so maintenance and bug-fixing was massively reduced.
I was working with a team of rather good people; I imagine pairing might be a lot more tedious and unproductive if the majority of the team are dim, incompetent, socially maladapted, or psychopathic. But then the same applies to solo coding.
I don't know what a "Pivot" is.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#28How the heck can people work like that for 8 hours? I start to get very worn out at 2 hours of conversation.
I worked for a couple of years on a company where we had a "pair-up all the time" when working and... We were very aware it wasn't possible to keep up like that 8h/day every single day. Most days we were very happy with 4 hours, really productive (and exhausting) days were around the 6 hours mark.
We made sure to take breaks every 45 min-1h30 (depending how well the session was going), those breaks could be from 10 minutes to an hour, it needed to make us feel refreshed, not talk to people if needed, etc.
I actually miss this setup a lot, it was much easier to not feel stuck, much better to have a peer available all the time to bounce ideas, clear assumptions, discover the codebase, etc., but I couldn't ever do it 8 hours/day.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#29"We were Pivots, and one of the things that made us Pivots was that we paired."
Red flag for all kinds of weirdness if you're made to take on a company-based identity.
Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day
#30I 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.
>people who refused to use deodorant
What is it with people in our field that this is so commonplace? There are few things worse than a room full of IT people with the windows closed. "It's the smell" as Agent Smith said.