Linear essay argues good software needs a maker's point of view

An essay on karrisaarinen.com, written in the first person by someone who speaks for Linear ("At Linear, we have always valued intuition over process or data"), argues that good products carry something of the people who make them: their experience, what they care about and how they think things should work. You may not know who those people are, but you can feel their perspective in the product.

The author starts from a complaint about how the industry talks. Software is often described as if it comes out of a factory: collect requirements, build features, measure whether they work, follow the process and get a good result. Now, the essay says, there is talk of automating that whole pipeline with agents. Against this, the author notes that two teams can talk to similar customers, have access to the same technology and still make very different things. The difference comes from how they understand what they see and the style in which they build, and founder background or company DNA shapes this a lot.

Linear's answer is intuition. The author says people sometimes read that as decisions made on personal preference with little thought or evidence. What Linear means, the essay says, is that intuition develops through experience and understanding: you work on something, talk to customers, make mistakes and learn what to pay attention to. Intuition is your point of view, and it forces you to use your own judgment instead of hiding behind faceless data. Before launch, Linear talked to people across companies and roles about how they worked. The team had its own frustrations with this type of software, but those conversations helped it understand what mattered beyond its own experience, and, the author says, its perspective got better.

Over time a product develops a character through what its makers pay attention to, what they decide not to do and what they keep working on after it technically works. The author sometimes thinks of this as the soul of a product: you feel that someone cares about how the whole thing comes together. A feature can work perfectly well on its own and still make the product worse. Recognizing that takes some belief about what the product should be, and someone has to make the call and then stay close enough to customers to see whether it was right.

The second half is a diagnosis of the present. Many products, including those from very successful companies, are starting to feel messy to the author. There seems to be more thought about what the technology can do and what can be added than about the form the product should take, and changes are mostly additive rather than improving the core problem. The author's explanation is that it is a lot easier to add new capabilities than to rethink existing ones, so each product becomes a collection of abilities without a unified point of view.

Then comes a hedged guess. The author wonders whether some of this comes from how work is organized: individuals work with agents to produce changes independently, each operating a small software factory. Each change might make sense alone, but together they start to resemble Frankenstein's monster rather than a carefully shaped sculpture. Without a shared perspective, soul or thought, the product becomes an average of all those outputs, and the choices that once gave it character are being diluted by the day. More things work, but it gets harder to feel someone, or even something, behind them.

The essay ends on a hope. Making software is getting easier, and the author hopes that gives people more room to develop a perspective and follow it further: to understand a problem deeply and keep shaping an answer until the pieces belong together. The last line: "I want to feel the creator behind the software, not the factories."

Key facts

• The essay argues that good products carry the experience, priorities and ideas of the people who make them, and that users can feel that perspective even without knowing who those people are.
• The author says Linear has always valued intuition over process or data, and defines intuition as something built through experience, customer conversations and mistakes, not personal preference.
• A feature can work well on its own and still make a product worse; spotting that takes a belief about what the product should be.
• The author says many products, including those from very successful companies, feel messy, because adding capabilities is easier than rethinking existing ones.
• The author only wonders whether individuals working with agents, each running a small software factory, cause this; the essay offers it as speculation and ends with a hope that easier software-making gives people room to develop a perspective.

Why it matters

The essay speaks to a live argument in software: whether building can be run as a pipeline of requirements, features and metrics, now perhaps automated end to end with agents. The author, speaking for Linear, takes the opposite side and says the quality of a product comes from a coherent point of view held by its makers. The claim is that when making software gets easier, the scarce thing is the judgment about what belongs and what does not.

Who it affects

Mainly product designers, engineers and founders who decide what goes into a product, and teams that are adopting agents to produce changes. The essay is aimed at anyone who shapes a product's direction. It also speaks to users, who the author says can feel a maker's perspective, or its absence, in the product.

How to use it

The essay offers a way of thinking, not a procedure. Its practical points: build intuition by working on the problem, talking to customers and making mistakes; talk to people across companies and roles to get past your own experience, as Linear did before launch; judge a feature by whether it improves the whole product, not just whether it works; stay close enough to customers to see whether your call was right. It does not propose specific rules or processes for agent-driven development; it only states a hope.

How solid is it

It is an opinion essay based on the author's impressions. No data, survey, metric or study backs the claims, and no specific product, company or feature is named as an example of a messy product. The text does not name its author; the name appears only in the site's URL and domain. The agent explanation is explicitly hedged ("I wonder whether"), and the essay does not say Linear uses or plans to use agents or describe any Linear product change. The conversations before launch are not quantified: no number of people or companies is given.

Risks and caveats

The messiness complaint is a personal impression ("to me", "seems"), so treat it as one person's view, not a finding. Linear is a software company with its own stake in the intuition-first approach it praises. The link between agents and diluted product character is speculation, and the essay itself notes that making software is getting easier and hopes this will help. Defining intuition as experience-based, not personal preference, is the author's own framing of Linear's approach.

“I want to feel the creator behind the software, not the factories.”

— The essay's author, on karrisaarinen.com