The main issue is that pair programming has to be more than twice as productive as two people working separately to justify itself. When you put two people together to work on the same thing at the same time, you are essentially halving your coding team. Even if pair programmers working together are 50% more productive (which I highly doubt, since programmers working together waste a lot of time arguing and/or explaining themselves), they are still 50% less productive than they would be separately.
If some company wants to pay me a high salary to buddy up with people, I don't give a shit--I'll do whatever as long as I'm being paid. As a business strategy it's obviously dumb though.
The main issue is that pair programming has to be more than twice as productive as two people working separately to justify itself. When you put two people together to work on the same thing at the same time, you are essentially halving your coding team. Even if pair programmers working together are 50% more productive (which I highly doubt, since programmers working together waste a lot of time arguing and/or explaining themselves), they are still 50% less productive than they would be separately.
If some company wants to pay me a high salary to buddy up with people, I don't give a shit--I'll do whatever as long as I'm being paid. As a business strategy it's obviously dumb though.