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The Friendship That Made Google Huge (newyorker.com)
Coding together at the same computer, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat changed the course of the company -- and the Internet. An anonymous reader writes: The New Yorker has profiled Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, two of Google's most storied developers and to date, the company's only Senior Fellows, the highest level Google awards to engineers. The article dives into some of Dean and Ghemawat's successes at Google but focuses on their deep and collaborative friendship -- particularly exploring the power of programming with a partner. "I don't know why more people don't do it," Ghemawat explains. As Dean points out, all you need to do is "find someone that you're gonna pair-program with who's compatible with your way of thinking, so that the two of you together are a complementary force."
As Dean points out, all you need to do is "find someone that you're gonna pair-program with who's compatible with your way of thinking, so that the two of you together are a complementary force."
Is that all? No. First, you need to find a great match for pair-programming which is already hard enough. But you need to find one who is nearby (this doesn't work all that well remotely), and who happens to work at the same company or startup or whatever, on the same team or on the same or similar assignments. Or you need to already have that coding partner and have the luxury to pick your own employer and assignment together, have the time and energy to work together on some FOSS thing, or be in a position to found your own startup. So no, I am not at all surprised that not many people end up doing this.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
^ That's usually what happens when you pair people who are TOO similar... like pairing an INTP with an INFP or ENTP (or worse yet, another INTP). They succumb to the same problems, and feel the most strongly about things they're likely to disagree about. Egos clash, and it rarely ends up being a good idea.
For pairing to really work well, you need two people who are similar enough to agree about striving toward the same goals, but follow meandering mental paths that cross back & forth along the way towards that goal. Ideally, when perfectly matched, you end up with two people who can easily solve each other's problems without making them feel insulted, and both feel like they're getting as much out of it as they're putting in.
The main reason pairing works at all in the real world is due to demographics. INTP & INTJ (the golden pair) is rare overall, but account for something like 40-60% of career programmers, so the odds aren't quite random. But personality type compatibility is still just ONE requirement... they also need to be comparable in skill & genuinely regard each other as equals. Even an INTP and INTJ can resent each other or have cat fights if their skills/contributions are too lopsided.