Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

simplermachines.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 308 posts

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#71

Post by ratww »

Cederfjard wrote: post #69
ratww wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a very strange workplace. Its atmosphere was half frat-like and half cult-like. There was literal chest beating and shouting motivational stuff during sales meetings, an incredibly amount of beer (which isn't necessary an issue, but in this case it was ), sometimes drugs (which led to some people being fired whenever it became public), lots of sexual harassment complaints (which also led to some surprise fir…

> The cult-like part was the CEO fancying himself some Steve Jobs type, doing two-hour long presentations on random topics like his favourite economic ideas, or presenting a treatise against post-modernism. I of course knew which youtube videos he was plagiarising. Amazing. So ”Michael Scott from The Office”-type people really exist out there.

To stay on "The Office" universe, that specific CEO was more of a Robert California.

A bit creepy, intimidating, but still able to impress gullible people. He invited employers he thought were "winners" for diners (although the term the company used was "champions"). Instead of being fascinated by Sesame Street he was fascinated by DC Comics, though. I'm actually surprised at how fitting the comparison is.

All without the James Spader charm, of course.

EDIT: In person, however he was a great guy. I just don't think he behaved in a proper way as CEO.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#72

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Silhouette wrote: post #37
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…

Shorter days makes much more sense to me than shorter weeks. Wherever I've worked those last two hours of the day are always a waste.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#73

Post by robjan »

uh_uh wrote: post #63
ratww wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I didn't make it clear: the junior developer did take advantage of it when CEO asked. Also it was only really enforced during Sprint Retrospectives.

Not raising obvious problems with the process sounds just as dysfunctional as the pairing idea that created the situation in the first place.

Sounds like they were working in an environment will little / no psychological safety

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#74

Post by InvOfSmallC »

I worked at a place where pair programming was optional but suggested as a good practice. I worked there for 5 years. It was 4 years ago. My team did it and we still talk to each other almost everyday even if we switched jobs. I think it's a good experience if everyone likes it. I don't think we actually ever did 8 hours straight of pair programming. Between pauses and meetings it was more 4 hours per day.

I also have a friend a Pivotal and what is described in this article doesn't sound at all like what he usually chats about.

I think that what the author is feeling cannot be result of pair programming alone. I have to say though that many people dismiss it without even trying like some of the comments on this thread sound like.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#75

Post by scandox »

wilsonrocks wrote: post #60
ratww wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a very strange workplace. Its atmosphere was half frat-like and half cult-like. There was literal chest beating and shouting motivational stuff during sales meetings, an incredibly amount of beer (which isn't necessary an issue, but in this case it was ), sometimes drugs (which led to some people being fired whenever it became public), lots of sexual harassment complaints (which also led to some surprise fir…

I'm glad you got out! I find that CEO level bosses (I used to be a teacher so am including heads/principals here) love to pontificate about stuff not related to the job. I've often wondered why. It's sometimes harmless, and clearly,as in your case, sometimes harmful. I do wonder what causes it though.

A profound terror of their own personal insignificance and mortality?

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#76

Post by ratww »

wilsonrocks wrote: post #60
ratww wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a very strange workplace. Its atmosphere was half frat-like and half cult-like. There was literal chest beating and shouting motivational stuff during sales meetings, an incredibly amount of beer (which isn't necessary an issue, but in this case it was ), sometimes drugs (which led to some people being fired whenever it became public), lots of sexual harassment complaints (which also led to some surprise fir…

I'm glad you got out! I find that CEO level bosses (I used to be a teacher so am including heads/principals here) love to pontificate about stuff not related to the job. I've often wondered why. It's sometimes harmless, and clearly,as in your case, sometimes harmful. I do wonder what causes it though.

True! I think deep down we all want to be influential. They're just trying to cheat their way into it.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#77

Post by one2three4 »

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.

They can't. That's how the author got burned out. To my experience PP is to a large extend a way (for the management) to make sure that people are not slacking. As for the burnouts...

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#78

Post by phist_mcgee »

wilsonrocks wrote: post #60
ratww wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a very strange workplace. Its atmosphere was half frat-like and half cult-like. There was literal chest beating and shouting motivational stuff during sales meetings, an incredibly amount of beer (which isn't necessary an issue, but in this case it was ), sometimes drugs (which led to some people being fired whenever it became public), lots of sexual harassment complaints (which also led to some surprise fir…

I'm glad you got out! I find that CEO level bosses (I used to be a teacher so am including heads/principals here) love to pontificate about stuff not related to the job. I've often wondered why. It's sometimes harmless, and clearly,as in your case, sometimes harmful. I do wonder what causes it though.

People who have power over others begin to believe that the positive feedback they get from their employees (simply because they control a person's financial and career success) equates to them being a person of actual interest. They believe the attention means they are smarter, funnier and more charming than they actually are. Tie this to people with narcissistic traits, and you get a strong feedback loop where they never hear dissent, or critique so they fall further into this pattern of behaviour.

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#79

Post by raverbashing »

ratww wrote: post #32

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 MV…

> 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".

Funny, that would be the easiest way to get me to stand into a desk and make a "liberating speech", then drop the mic and leave the company.

That is not a development practice, it's a cult

Re: The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

#80

Post by harryf »

kstenerud wrote: post #68

Pair programming generates visceral responses due to it being introduced as if it were fact, which for me always triggers my spidey senses. People who didn't like it were told "you're doing it wrong" or "you didn't give it a proper chance". Dismissing criticisms out of hand only furthers distrust, regardless of the actual value of the idea. I played along and paired for awhile, but now steadfastly refuse to pair, eve…

Like many things in programming, we adopt it like a cargo cult ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming ) based on "some thought leader said" or "some company has amazing..." without actually doing any serious study. It's actually amazing for an industry that should be all about rational, reasoned analysis, that we're willing to perform such experiments on ourselves with so little evidence to show the value.

There is this study here - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222408325_The_effec...

"A more detailed examination of the evidence suggests that pair programming is faster than solo programming when programming task complexity is low and yields code solutions of higher quality when task complexity is high."

There are links to a few more here - https://tuple.app/pair-programming-guide/scientific-research... - none of it looks particularly compelling.

And I'm not "against" pair programming. It's just sad to see "cargo cult" adoption of practices.

Post reply on HN