I'm a huge fan of Pair Programming as a default (there are no silver bullets in life, so if folks want to un-pair it's fine, but it's mostly pairing). By the time we got acquired by Pivotal Labs, we had about 120 pairs at Xtreme Labs.
In my experience, I see:
more learning
getting more done
more diversity
Whether the engineers were both senior or senior/junior, both parties learned a lot as part of the experience. It's rarely just one person mentoring (juniors usually ask all the best questions, which leads to the senior evaluating exactly why you do things the way you do)
In terms of predictable velocity, the idea of pairing keeps everyone on topic more easily. Less distraction = less total hours on the task, but each hour is more productive. It also allows you to jump back into flow more quickly.
I think pairing allows many more types of folks into the field. We had about 25% female engineers (which is higher than normal. Not 50% unfortunately), and very low attrition to boot.
Your mileage may vary (every person and every company is different), however, I would try it for at least 2-3 months (like Yoga!) before realizing it's not a fit. It actually takes 2-3 weeks just to get used to working full 8-intense hours a day 😂
Cheers,
Farhan
p.s. it looks like we overlapped at Trilogy for a short while (I was there from 98-01)
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Hi Ed, great discussion!
I'm a huge fan of Pair Programming as a default (there are no silver bullets in life, so if folks want to un-pair it's fine, but it's mostly pairing). By the time we got acquired by Pivotal Labs, we had about 120 pairs at Xtreme Labs.
In my experience, I see:
Whether the engineers were both senior or senior/junior, both parties learned a lot as part of the experience. It's rarely just one person mentoring (juniors usually ask all the best questions, which leads to the senior evaluating exactly why you do things the way you do)
In terms of predictable velocity, the idea of pairing keeps everyone on topic more easily. Less distraction = less total hours on the task, but each hour is more productive. It also allows you to jump back into flow more quickly.
I think pairing allows many more types of folks into the field. We had about 25% female engineers (which is higher than normal. Not 50% unfortunately), and very low attrition to boot.
Happy to talk about this more!
A few links:
Your mileage may vary (every person and every company is different), however, I would try it for at least 2-3 months (like Yoga!) before realizing it's not a fit. It actually takes 2-3 weeks just to get used to working full 8-intense hours a day 😂
Cheers,
Farhan
p.s. it looks like we overlapped at Trilogy for a short while (I was there from 98-01)