Ya, like any methodology it is easy to get wrong. Like I had a very good experience with Agile because the org I worked at studied the material (ie, they RTFM’d) and understood how to use the framework without drinking too much Kool-Aid. All my other experiences with Agile have been orgs blindly adopting random SCRUM practices and forcing everyone to do them without truly understanding why (for example one place story-pointed everything, often multiple times, but no one ever looked at them). It’s the same for pairing.
For what it’s worth, my experience was not at all like you described. My 100%-pairing job is the only job that I never once had to work evenings or weekends—unless I got pinged while on-call which, btw, happened only once in my 3.5 years there. Working outside of office hours was actively discouraged and if you did it anyway, you would receive no accolades for it. Places that like are rare, though.
And ya, I think it’s impossible to delete a “respond-to” mention. I’ve accidentally done that several times before.
