Pair programming is a crucial form of collaboration for modern engineering teams. By pairing up with designers, product managers, and fellow engineers, developers can ship high-quality code more efficiently. These partnerships also present great mentorship opportunities, especially for junior engineers learning from experienced teammates.
In an office setting, it’s easy to pair up. You look around the room, find someone who’s free, and walk over to their desk or wave them over to yours.
In a remote setting, pairing up is a lot more rigid. You probably start with a chat message (“Hey, are you free for 5 minutes?”), and then wait for a response. (And maybe repeat this a few times to different people to see who responds the fastest.) When someone finally replies, you open their calendar to schedule a meeting (typically a 30-minute bloc, even though it’s only a 5-minute question). Then, you wait for the meeting time to come around to finally pair up.
When remote teams operate that slowly, it’s no wonder some implement RTO mandates.
In a virtual office setting, however, pairing up mimics the in-person experience. You look around the virtual space, find someone who’s free, and walk over to their virtual desk or wave them over to yours.
Pair programming in a virtual office like Gather brings back the speed and naturalness of pairing up in person without sacrificing the flexibility of remote work.
How Remote Pair Programming Works in Gather
Let’s say you’re a platform engineer looking into an incident that was just reported. You think you’ve identified the cause but want to consult a tech lead before rolling back.
Instead of messing with calendar events or messaging a bunch of people and patiently hoping for a fast response, you can look at your Gather office, Wave at someone who’s free, and start a conversation in seconds.
Imagine the following image is your team’s desk pod in Gather. At a glance, you can see that Karen is on Do Not Disturb mode 🔴 but Carina is available to pair up 🟢.
To get Carina's attention, you can Wave at her. It’s a fast way to start a conversation that doesn’t require typing the “Hey are you free for 5 minutes to dig into…” message. Skip the typing, send the Wave, and pair up in seconds.
When your teammate approaches you, simply turn on your microphone and camera to start talking. While you troubleshoot, you can share screens simultaneously, making it easy to switch between the incident report and the fix. You can also annotate so everyone knows exactly which line of code is referenced on the screen.
The rest of your team will be able to see the two of you paired up, and they could even walk over to join your efforts to resolve the incident.
An impromptu collaboration like this occurred in Beatport’s Gather office, and according to Director of Engineering Morgan Soley, the conversation saved their engineering team two weeks of work.
Morgan saw two engineers paired up and walked over to say hi. They were debating how to solve a problem, with ideas that would take at least two weeks of work. Morgan offered an alternative solution (a third-party provider the team uses), which was context neither team member had.
Thanks to this completely unplanned pairup, they got unblocked and prevented two weeks of work on the wrong thing.
Why Remote Engineering Teams Choose to Pair Program in Gather
A virtual office offers a variety of benefits, including increased employee engagement and a greater sense of connection to teammates. Regarding collaboration, however, engineering teams choose Gather for three main reasons: flexibility, speed, and efficiency.
1. Flexibility: It’s easy to pair up and walk in/out of conversations
Conversations on Gather are much more fluid and flexible compared to traditional meeting tools. Consider this scenario:
Two engineers can pair up. A third can see them and walk over. They can Wave a designer over if they have questions about a mockup. Once they have clarity, the designer can walk away and let the engineers keep working.
These interactions happen seamlessly in a single place without messing with meeting links or filling up people’s calendars.
Intuition Systems is the perfect example of this fast-paced collaboration. Leading up to the beta launch of their app, their engineers all sat at a table together in their Gather office. If anyone had a question, all they had to do was unmute. This made it instant to find someone to pair up with, allowing them to troubleshoot in real-time and stay 100% aligned before launch.
"I’ve always loved the energy and focus of a war room during crunch time—it’s where the magic happens. Gather has given us the ability to recreate that intense, collaborative environment remotely, which is absolutely invaluable."
Billy Luedtke, CEO of Intuition Systems
2. Speed: Conversations are quicker than 30-minute meetings
The flexibility of conversations in Gather means engineers can easily pair up without the hassle of formal meetings. This leads to shorter, more productive conversations.
The average conversation on Gather is less than 10 minutes long. For comparison, Zoom reported an average meeting length of 52 minutes in 2022. (Source.)
One user on G2 reported that using Gather reduced their code review times from 2+ days to under 1. The transparency of conversations, plus the freedom to join or leave at any time, increased the frequency of their pairing sessions, ultimately allowing them to release to production faster.
3. Efficiency: Multiple people can share screens and annotate at the same time
When you pair up on Gather, multiple people can simultaneously share their screens, making it easy to switch between them.
From G2 | What do you like best about Gather?
Screen sharing for code pairing or presenting a demo works great! For someone who believes remote work is superior for both productivity and work-life balance, Gather is the perfect tool to make that work style shine.
Daniel L. Software Developer
In addition to simultaneous screen sharing, you can record meetings, annotate the screen, and send chat messages to have side conversations or share files. These productivity features, combined with the flexibility of pairing up, make pair programming on Gather an easy and natural experience.
Try Pair Programming on Gather
Get started with a free 30-day trial when you create your first virtual office on Gather. This gives your team time to try pairing up, working through an incident, or running a sprint while working in Gather.
Need help getting started? Follow our Pilot Guide for our best advice on onboarding your team.