This depends entirely on how well the requirements have been communicated, right? If you could go for long periods without meetings on large projects, it means either you had great PMs or you’re very good at collecting relevant info and planning in advance. Or, it could mean that your target was quite flexible and open to interpretation. I don’t doubt it, and I’ve known some developers who could do what you did, deliver something great without that much back and forth. I’ve also known many developers (probably most TBH) who will focus on problems the customers don’t have and endlessly go down rabbit holes that have no bottom. Heads down software engineering for big-O and data structures seems to be a lot more fun for some people than fixing weird hard to repro bugs with vague repro instructions that customers complain about. Many very good devs still need to check in and iterate and get some steering, especially if the requirements have not been well or fully explained… which in my own experience has been more or less always. ;)

Maybe those were some very detailed requirements you were getting, the deliveries were straight-forward, or you already knew the space pretty well. Or you're the only dev there. Somehow most teams just keep tripping over each other and need near constant management to ensure they're delivering what the stakeholders expect.

> I used to do software dev without meetings. It worked just fine. I would send whatever I did once it was done, and get direction on where to take it next.

You didn’t collaborate with other engineers? Or what if the spec you were given was unclear in places? Forgive me, but the style you describe sounds incredibly collaborative, super transactional.