The point of fizz-buzz was to serve as a simple filter at the front end of the interview process. It should be simple, but a surprising number of job candidates were unable to do it.
I've always been afraid of pairing. I don't know how well others would appreciate my periods of daydreaming followed by periods of hyper-fixated focus.
When your team owns an application you have no background knowledge in, and it uses a technology that you haven't touched since you attended a training 18 months ago; I would assume that your on-call response for any non-trivial issue would still be to page someone for help.
I find it ironic that the article itself was edited after the initial posting, per the disclaimer at the bottom. If Netflix added such a disclaimer in the credits of the episode, would that make it more acceptable to the author?
I would recommend looking at the company's culture. I've seen similar situations where the services team were treated as second-class citizens. What opportunities for advancement are recognition are there? Are they comparable to the product side? Is there any movement between the two sides?
To quote Charles Dickens -- "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery"
To practice being in a relationship. To gain a better understanding of what you want in a relationship. It is one thing to have a bad significant other as a teenager, it is totally different to have a bad spouse.
Many years ago I interviewed at a military contractor. Every time we walked through a work area someone went ahead and announced I was coming through to ensure nobody had something that would require a clearance to see.
In my experience, pair and mob programming are just yet another scenario where neuro-atypical people are punished for approaching their work differently.
I use a cycling poncho, fenders, and chain guard. I only ride about 3 miles, but even in the worst weather I only get wet from about mid-shin down, and even then only enough to be bothersome in the worst weather.
I'll just throw for the opposing side and point out that "Gov. Pete Wilson, took $1.6 billion from CalPERS accounts in 1991 to help close a state budget gap". A random internet calculator tells me that investing in the S&P 500 with reinvested dividents since July, 1991 has had a 844% return. I wonder impact $1.3 trillion would have on the CalPERS shortfall (edit: this would only be $13 billion).