Comment by tareqak
7 years ago
After reading this article, I'm surprised that Google doesn't encourage pair programming / developing developer relationships at the level that Jeff and Sanjay have here. One might even argue that the manner in which interviewing and hiring is currently done in the tech industry in general might actively work against building the sorts of relationships where the output is greater than the sum of the inputs.
Edit: added a missing "the".
Their specific choices seem hard to replicate. Very strong friends, both very strong programmers, both willing to work at the same company. I'm sure that parts of their successes can be applied elsewhere, but from the article a lot of it is about having a strong relationship.
See also Andrew and Brad: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yG-UaBJXZ80
In a way, Google does encourage it by requiring all code to be reviewed before check in. If you're pair programming, you already have a reviewer and can check in right away. One-person projects can be more frustrating due to the delay.
It doesn't seem to be enough to encourage widespread pair programming, though.
Every company I've worked at as a software engineer, even my first where we emailed patches to each other like cavepeople (and no we were not using git) has had code reviews before check in. It's not at all the same thing as pair programming though.
They do not discourage is, but there promotion system encourages "authorship" and pair-programming does not produce that.