I used to work at a startup where I was the most senior engineer below one of the founders, a guy who happened to be remote, thousands of miles away, except abo

I used to work at a startup where I was the most senior engineer below one of the founders, a guy who happened to be remote, thousands of miles away, except about 2-4 times a year when he would fly in for a week or so and share my office with me. He was very enthusiastic about pair programming and we would do this for a couple of days every time he was in town, and afterwards would rave about how thrillingly productive it was. Except it wasn’t really true. I did really enjoy us putting our heads together and solving problems, and a day pairing really did feel more productive in absolute terms than what I would accomplish on my own, but more than twice as productive? Not a chance. More than twice as exhausting? Definitely. 4-8 days a year is about all I could take of that. PS my theory about why he found it so invigorating and productive was that normally, he was too busy to ever spend an entire day writing code. He would be interrupted with meetings and questions all day. The difference when we were pairing was that he was “hiding out” for an entire day with his head in an IDE and shutting everything else out. I suspect he’d find it equally invigorating if he had the ability to do that on his own.