Nice comment. just one thing confuses me. what's wrong with a manager knowing the code well? It seems helpful to me to tell a manager exactly what part is causing a bug and he be able to understand that.
I believe in pair programming within a team, at least a couple hours a week. I credit it as something that has accelerated my growth as a programmer through the years, and people who I respect have said the same thing. I think it's great on hard problems, bringing new team members up to speed, cross-training, and generally learning how other people think when they code.
The studies I've seen say that it also produces better code. I'm not convinced that 40 hours a week is necessarily the right way to go, but many places I've known do 0.
Other people hate pair programming at all. Those people would not be a good cultural fit for the kind of place I want to work.
I havent had the chance to do pair programming at the workplace yet, but we'd do it all the time in Programming Competitions and it was very effective.
I think the reason managers don't tell you to do pair programming is that they thinking two devs on two different tasks is more productive than 2 devs on the same task. Though i'd argue that when two people are workign on the same screen, there's a less chance of them drifting over to HN every once in a while (like i am doing right now)
