I love pairing. It always results it better outcomes than not pairing and I've been saddened by the slow decay of the term to now refer to like "talk to me a bit until I'm unstuck" instead of "both work together and get it done"

I happened to "pair program" for the first time in years today! My coworker asked me to come over and help him with a problem.

'course we only did it for like 5 min to get him over the hump.

I think that's the only use case. It sucks having someone hover over you otherwise.

I worked at Pivotal Labs, it was an amazing experience to be in an environment where everyone was onboard with a very well defined methodology. Certainly not for everyone, but everyone who was there had the same mentality. A bit like you'd expect from a cult or the military.