Downsides of Pair Programming

• Stifles creativity, innovation, experimentation, learning, and exploration
• Dependency on another (lunch/tea/holiday/bathroom breaks, start and end times)
• What do you do when your pairing partner has to leave early to pick kids up from school?
• More talk less code (talking out loud how many other people in office do that normally?)
• Lack of code ownership
• Loss of confidence - again dependency on another
• Higher risk of developer turnover and burnout
• The other developer can slow you down
• Limits out of the box thinking
• Annoying if developer has to be questioned about everything
• Internal management politics plays into pair programming
• Lack of developer autonomy means less responsibility and focus
• Sometimes neither pair programmer is able to solve the problem and need even more eyes (!?)
• Doesn't work in areas like data science and big data where there is a lot of out of box thinking and exploration
• Pair programming is an anti-pattern in agile workplace and doesn't make for a nimble programmer
• Your promotion, bonus, and delivery is dependent on the performance of the other programmer
• If senior programmer works with junior programmer invariably they wasting their time
• If two programmers work together of same skill-level they wasting their time
• Thinking out loud about everything can actually be counter-intuitive
• It makes a programmer less productive and efficient overall in being responsive to the needs of business
• The programmer (observer) that is watching the other programmer (driver) is likely to be half asleep part way through the day
• Pair programming feels like working in a sweat shop
• Conflicting egos and skills disparity
• Lack of privacy
• No Downtime
• Looking over the shoulder feels weird and distracting
• Increased burnout in workplace can be a health & safety risk
• Can turn into a tutoring session and discussion rather than actually completing work
• Pairing means you have to use the same developer tools, potentially tools you are less productive in
• Can two people not work better towards same goal separately?
• How difficult is it to communicate to the person next to you in your team without pairing all day?
• How many people do you see in an office doing pairing work (Finance, Marketing, Reception, etc)?
• With higher turnover and burnout risk means more time spent training and recruitment
• If your pair programming partner leaves company, time will be taken up adapting to the new partner and pair dynamics in team
• Can mean increased risk of redundancy if company or individual is not performing (have to let go of the pair rather than one programmer)
• Do you think out loud about other things in life when you not programming (most people would call it weird)?