How do I ditch my pair?

[progGuy]

Hi,

I work as a developer for a medium sized IT company. We practice agile and extreme programing and part of xp is what they call pair programming. Everyone that programs must have someone else with them. It's a great thing, most of the time and it's better to have an extra set of eyes on the code. But it also makes for a problem.

When I try to work just by myself remotely I get someone from the office that needs someone to pair with and I actually end up in a remote session for 8hrs. We also get in hot water when the supervisor or other developers finds out we were programming without a pair.

So I was wondering if there were any other people/developers that ran into a similar situation but were able to pull it off so they didn't have to pair and could still work remotely?

[Simon_Vanuatu]

I don't know the answer to your question about dumping the pair - company policy is there for a reason.

All I can advise is look around for other jobs because there are plenty of programming jobs that welcome a remote work agreement and don't insist on pairs. Who knows you might score a pay rise too?

Simon

[tukrumunu]

You can still have a pair, but with via NetMeeting, Webex, GoToMeeting and so on.

[Ruben A]

Go To Meeting or any other remote session will not work because he will still be stuck for 8 hours. You either need to find another job or find a pair that also wants the 4HWW. My two cents.

[officer_dibble]

Go To Meeting or any other remote session will not work because he will still be stuck for 8 hours. You either need to find another job or find a pair that also wants the 4HWW. My two cents.

And then both lobby the boss for payment by results rather than desk time.