The rigidity of this approach surprises me. I certainly think pair programming has value. But I don't understand why this company would be so rigid in enforcing it as the only way to develop software.
That is because you don't know Obie. HashRocket is Obie's vision about how sw dev should be done made manifest. I would go crazy working at HR, but hey the man has a right to his vision.
The interesting thing is how "agilists" who pride themselves on their , err, agility are very rigid about "the right way to develop software".
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Instead of people being forced to pair, they get to pair. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that they'd hire people that want to work the way Hashrocket works.
