One of the best projects I worked on had zero-overhead communication (2020)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - what makes a ‘good job’ good for me has always had more to do with my coworkers than the work itself.

I had a very similar experience about 8 years ago, a perfect team of three - a project manager, another coder, and me - all in sync, all working hard but barely feeling like we were working at all, each phase just flowed from conception to planning to design to development to testing to release, like it was nothing. And yet it was a HUGE piece for our client. It all just went so well.

I miss being in that kind of situation. You don’t always get it in this industry, and you can always afford to demand it or to hold out for it either.

I really hope you let them know and haven’t lost track of them.

Small team with a largely overlapping shared knowledge and attitudes.

Which is not to say it isn't really nice, but I think the chances of it happening are in some way inversely proportional to the number of people involved. It's probably not linear either.

I haven't thought about it in years but my very first pc support traineeship ( 25 years ago!! ) had aspects of this. There was so much shared context for us both that we often left it out, much to the bemusement of anyone else listening.

"Hey, remember we need ", "yeah", "oh and can you pick up", "already did its over there", "oh cool ok can you", "sure, probably after lunch"

It was FUN. But you just can't do it with much more than 2 or 3 people.