I worked at ThoughtWorks for three years, and -- like everything else XP -- pairing was very much the norm, for the software engineers, and I believe on the who

I worked at ThoughtWorks for three years, and -- like everything else XP -- pairing was very much the norm, for the software engineers, and I believe on the whole it worked to our benefit. I am off-the-chart introverted, so the forced intimacy aspect was a nightmare, but I balanced that emotional downside with the intellectual upside of learning a ton of things I might not have otherwise from the folks I paired with.