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The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

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Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#31

Post by denton-scratch »

Clewza313 wrote: post #3
asplake wrote: post #2

“Teams had half as many workstations as they had engineers.”

Yes, that's how pairing works: two people, one keyboard, one workstation. Having done this for a while, I wholeheartedly agree with everything the author says. It's great for software quality and productivity (among other things, it's much harder to slack on HN), but it's also incredibly draining and definitely not for everybody.

Two people, TWO keyboards, one workstation (with a good monitor). You can't keep switching seats, or shuttling the keyboard back and forth. Remove as much unnecessary friction as possible. And assign someone on the team to be the tea-mug refiller for the day.

And management have to provide a workstation for each worker; you pair at a pairing workstation, but everyone needs their own machine for stuff like email, Slack, and reading the news over lunch.

Bring a notebook, and record the work you are doing with your pair. You will need that information for the next-morning's SCRUM.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#32

Post by ratww »

I also worked at a company where pairing was mandatory for 8 hours a day. Plan was concocted by two tech leads who, of course, didn't pair themselves.

The exhaustion was visible, and productivity was very low. Since everyone vocally thought it was a "waste of time", there was a Fight-club-style "rule" where we couldn't talk about the downsides in public or even in Scrum meetings. We missed several deadlines for an MVP, code quality was abysmal and the product barely worked.

It stopped when the CEO took issue with it. He gathered the team to ask "why is the productivity so low?". There was an awkward moment where a junior dev was trying to answer but a tech lead was trying to tell him "don't break the rule".

It was an absolutely surreal experience, but not out of place in that startup.

EDIT: I also remember one of the tech leads complaining during a Sprint Retro that some of us weren't reading Slack fast enough, and we said "well, I was paring, I wasn't at my computer", to which he became a bit agitated and visibly angry. It was an awful place to work.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#33

Post by fancy_hammer »

piva00 wrote: post #28
MattGaiser wrote: post #5

How 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 m…

6 solid hours of coding solo is pushing my daily limits. I can do more but productivity goes down. Day in day out pair coding sounds for 6 hours sounds more intense again.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#34

Post by scandox »

It takes a long time to get over the kind of Stockholm Syndrome an employer like this creates. The OP is at the first stage: disengaging and trying to get perspective. At some point hopefully they will see that they were being psychologically manipulated to meet a corporate goal without any concern for their individuality. That to me is the definition of a bad employer: they want units not humans.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#35

Post by denton-scratch »

mleonhard wrote: post #7

> Over time, over years, pairing wore me down. Took a little bit more each day than I could recover. Until my life was working, and recovering from work, and then working some more. This can be true of any demanding job. Pairing is like running or cycling together. One person will be faster or have more endurance than the other. The slower one must set the pace or they will get exhausted quickly. For sustainable dail…

Not clear why this was downvoted.

It's true that the slower person should set the pace; unfortunately that doesn't always happen. I found that some of my pairs were so much faster than me, that they had to spend quite a lot of time explaining what they were doing - I was slowing them down.

But with rotation, it won't be more than a couple of days before you're paired with someone more closely-matched to your abilities.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#36

Post by ratww »

fancy_hammer wrote: post #33
piva00 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

6 solid hours of coding solo is pushing my daily limits. I can do more but productivity goes down. Day in day out pair coding sounds for 6 hours sounds more intense again.

Yep. 6 hours of pairing feels more like 12 hours of solo coding.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#37

Post by Silhouette »

nikanj wrote: post #24

Sounds 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.

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.

There have definitely been experiments along those lines with successful results. I can't immediately find the original source, but I remember reading a few years ago about a business that switched to working 9-3 Monday-Friday, with resulting benefits to both productivity and morale. One advantage that was emphasized in the interview was that people were no longer distracted by non-work concerns like who would pick the kids up after school or needing to book medical appointments in the middle of the working day. With shorter working days and everyone being around during the same hours, collaboration and maintaining focus were also easier.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#38

Post by tartoran »

nikanj wrote: post #24

Sounds 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.

8+ hours is not okay not every other day or even less frequently. Ok, once in a while is ok if one is in a good rhythm and they are enjoying themselves. But after 4-6 hours productivity drops sharply and starts to erode from the following days: fixing up poorly made design choices, etc

If your employer expects you to be productive 8 hours a day I’d look for something else

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#39

Post by ratww »

mleonhard wrote: post #7

> Over time, over years, pairing wore me down. Took a little bit more each day than I could recover. Until my life was working, and recovering from work, and then working some more. This can be true of any demanding job. Pairing is like running or cycling together. One person will be faster or have more endurance than the other. The slower one must set the pace or they will get exhausted quickly. For sustainable dail…

That's not true in my experience. I also participated in such an "experiment" and I'm normally the one with more endurance and speed, able to do overtime, or work on personal projects after hours.

In my experience, with daily pairing, both workers felt completely drained of energy after 4 hours (including pauses).

Pairing a couple hours a day, or a couple times a week is alright, and very productive. Doing it 5 days a week is borderline inhumane.

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