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Why is it terrible for the business if developers are left alone?

Personally I don't mind pair, live collab, etc., but I cannot really justify it productivity-wise. I just don't get as much stuff done as when I'm alone.

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I think it's easy to feel that way, but any time I've tried to measure this objectively on teams, pairing (I can't say I've ever measured mobbing) comes out ahead, even in terms of raw velocity. There's also knock on benefits down the road as IMO with pairing / mobbing there's less of a tendency to miss edge cases and so you're less likely to have bugs that need to be revisted, which is an enormous cost savings.

This is an important point - developers have a tendency to focus on our individual performance rather than the performance of the entire organization. In my experience, while individual performance goes down for some with pair/mob programming, both quality and velocity go up for the whole organization.

And it goes without saying that we developers love our freedom because it means we can work at our own pace. Often I find when I'm pairing all day I'm putting in way more focused time than when I am soloing.

Not my experience at all. All you need is one toxic/incompetent/stubborn developer to be part of your group and everything slows down to a crawl. Removing developers from a team can dramatically increase the productivity of the team.

Even if the instant velocity of some practice is higher, the long term average velocity might not be. Which is to say, if your devs hate pair or mob programming and quit, your teams velocity is going to be greatly impacted.

If devs consistently react negatively to a practice, in itself that’s evidence to be wary of the practice.

Then you can hire devs who are better able to build the things that you need.

If devs universally react negatively to a practice, sure. If some devs don't like a practice, but it's more effective, that's an argument to ensure that you're filtering for it in hiring.

Not my experience at all. Perhaps you simply worked with developers that were better than you? So your productivity seemed to improve because they took more of the load? No offence but it could be a possibility. In my experience, doing pair programming etc. is great fun but it most definitely slows me down. I constantly have to explain why it makes sense to do X and why individual steps work.

Developers are not the people who know what to build, so the productivity gains of being left alone are not productivity gains that make the business more valuable.

Are you a developer?

I work at a very small startup, there are very few things I don't do.

Is one of the things you do to decide what to develop? And is another of the things you do actual development?

If yes to both, then there are apparently developers -- at least one developer! -- who decide what to develop.

And if you are capable of doing that, then why should every other developer in the world be incapable of doing it?

Because every other developer in the world screeches and retreats to their lair when you so much as mention attending a single meeting, let alone the number of meetings and conversations with clients and leadership I have to keep up with what we need to build next.

Additionally, for a dev to directly learn what to build, they’d need to work two full time jobs. Most prefer to do just the one job.

Oh, I see: The fact that you can do that doesn't mean that anyone else could, it only means that you're so much better than anyone else. OK, thanks, gotcha, good to know.

Can? Yes. Will? No.

It's just two separate jobs, why would anyone sign on to doing two jobs when they can specialize in one or the other, unless they're in a situation like mine, which nearly nobody is.

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