The magic of a “two pizza” team
Backtracking through Bowie, doing your own thing, and the power of a draft backlog (Issue #321)
The first team I was part of at Medium was our “story matching and reader habits” team, responsible for (you guessed it…) matching stories with readers and helping them return to the app. We didn’t call it that. We affectionately named it “Matcha” because this was 2017 and matcha (the drink) was newly trendy. The acronym was a mashup of “matching” and “habits.” Our mascot was a smiling cup of green matcha.
The team was small — just seven of us: three engineers, one designer, one product manager, one data scientist, and me. We once had a pizza party in the office to celebrate, if I recall correctly, the launch of a new recommendations algorithm. I remember a backend engineer toasting with wine and making a speech (lol). We ordered two pizzas.
Looking back, I realize now that we were the perfect “two-pizza team” — a term Jeff Bezos coined in the early days of Amazon to mean, essentially, a lean, just-big-enough group to tackle a highly defined problem. For years, Bezos kept Amazon’s teams to just this size for efficiency’s sake.
In the Medium archive, software development expert unpacks some of the social science behind the term. One organizational behavior expert, J. Richard Hackman, claims “The rule of thumb [in forming a team] is no double digits. Big teams usually end up wasting everybody’s time.” There’s also the Ringelmann Effect, named for a French architectural engineer who discovered that, as more people join a group, each team member ends up doing less, and “coordination costs” (all those “just following up!” emails) increase. There’s no magic number to foster good work, but “research converges around the idea that small, single-digit teams maximize cohesion, coordination, engagement, and productivity.”
All to say: If you consistently find yourself working most effectively in groups of 4–6, now you know why. (And if you’ve worked super well in a group much larger, I’m very curious to know how it was structured!)
—
1️⃣ 1 story, 1 sentence
- Music critic (and enjoyer) is publishing an epic, multi-part David Bowie retrospective, beginning with a quote from the legend himself: “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area.”
- Medium writer attends a concert by 67-year-old techno duo Underworld and realizes that “acting your age” is a myth, and you’re never too old to do your own thing.
- The secret to writing every day? A gigantic backlog of unfinished drafts.
😤 A dose of practical wisdom
Avoid “low effort, low impact” tasks. ()
Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.
Edited by
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com
Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.
