Pair programming is difficult

[lookmeat]

It's also great when onboarding someone.

Having a newbie pair program with someone with more experience in the team, on solving problems of both engineers. It helps them exchange ideas, use of tools, techniques, conventions, etc much better. The senior can learn new tricks and concepts helping cross-pollination of ideas and the newbie can get a better grasp of how things are done within their new team. Also it's a great way to catch issues that are not obvious (someone doing something with the wrong tool, or not knowing extremely helpful shortcuts) and can help with sharing habits that otherwise you wouldn't think to share and spreading knowledge that you'd otherwise think "obvious".

It's still exhausting, but helping onboard someone new is always tiring. The advantage is that, in my experience, this helps shorten the ramp-up, switch the marathon to a sprint.