I wrote about the importance of team chemistry in my last Charge Capture post and how it’s key to creating world class medical software. So what helps create that chemistry? It takes a team and a car. When I first started with pMD, I parked at a lot nearby the office and bought daily permits. Parking in San Francisco is usually off-the-charts expensive, so I definitely had a discount at $6 a day. I didn't know where anyone lived and everyone commuted to work independently.

This went on for about a year or so until Siavosh, one of my fellow dev members, moved a little further away from work and needed to figure out a new way to get to work. Siavosh had lived close enough to walk before, or if he was feeling really lazy, had a neighborhood parking pass that could be used all day just outside the nearby gates. He was in a bit of a conundrum now, but he didn't stress. You see, Siavosh was our transportation liaison (I still don't know what that means) and he had heard about free carpool parking in the underground parking lot at an elusive Presidio transportation meeting (no one knows what these are, either).

Anyway, as luck would have it, he had moved literally onto my commute route! Driving from Daly City, a city just south of SF, I take many side streets to avoid the main rush hour crunch of the inner highways - it was a boring 30-40 minute car ride. But stars aligned and this gave way to the first ever pMD developer carpool! Now I have a carpool buddy to chat with and shake up the monotony of commuting.

Through this carpooling, I've learned enough to call Siavosh a friend rather than just a coworker in the amount of time that otherwise would have taken A LOT longer as just cube-mates. We had worked pretty well together before this joint commute, but I'd attribute a lot of our growth as the pMD iOS team to riding in a car together for 10 minutes a day, each way.