Quand on fait des choses légères, ou on voit nos clients hacker dans un certain sens,
c'est toujours une opportunité pour nous de tenter de construire un produit ou d'autres
lignes pour le produit, pour mieux accommoder le travail.
Je vous remercie, le tout épisode est seulement disponible pour nos membres Patreon.
Bonjour, bienvenue à la DevTools FM podcast. C'est un podcast
sur les tools de développement et les gens qui les font. Je suis Andrew et c'est mon co-host Justin.
Bonjour tout le monde, notre guest aujourd'hui est Jury Lalo. Jury est l'un des founders de Linear,
qui est une source d'enjeu de tracage et de software de management. Jury,
c'est un plaisir de vous avoir, j'ai hâte de parler de Linear. Mais avant de nous le dire,
qu'est-ce que vous voulez nous dire aux listeners un peu plus sur vous?
Merci, c'est un plaisir d'être ici.
A quelques mots pour moi. Je suis ingénieur pour la plupart de mon
carrière, comme en graduant un peu plus de 10 ans à l'école. Je n'ai pas eu de CS,
donc plus de la taille de la technologie, mais toujours en compétition,
et en décembre, à la première génération, en 2007, 2008,
l'époque de l'époque a été intéressée, comme le start-up de la NASC,
comme le fait de voir en San Francisco. Je suis en Finlande, j'ai vécu à l'école,
j'ai été fortuné d'en arriver à la JSA en 2011 pour un start-up de l'école.
C'est comme mon point d'entrée par accident, de bouger à l'estat et de travailler pour les start-ups.
Avant ça, j'ai eu quelques start-ups pour moi, et j'ai été dans l'écosystème étudiant
en Finlande, mais j'ai terminé sur cette route et j'ai commencé un couple de
entreprises, et la dernière est linéaire. Maintenant, j'ai l'impression que je ne
ne coude pas beaucoup d'autres mots, mais j'ai toujours essayé de rester rélevant sur les autres mots.
Pour sûr, le sacrifice d'un founder, c'est comme si tu commences à coudre beaucoup,
et puis tu le fais lentement. Oh, oui, tout le monde est comme, oh, man, je veux qu'on
quitte mon travail et que je puisse faire mon propre truc. Et ça, c'est comme, oui,
deux ans, deux ans, on va aller sur les rôles, et tu ne coudes pas encore.
Il faut être bon avec ça. J'ai trouvé ma piste avant cette année,
donc c'est tout bon maintenant. Yeah, c'est génial.
Donc, Linéaire n'est pas le premier start-up que tu as trouvé. Comment est-ce que c'est différent
de l'experience que tu as eu et de tes précédents start-ups?
Oui, j'ai eu une autre company qui s'est créée. En fait, c'était avec Corrie, qui était aussi
un des founders de Linéaire ou CEO, et le design de la designer aussi.
Donc, on a eu un petit start-up autour du space de la marque, en fait,
en essayant de faire un app social de marque en 2012, on a vécu dans YC,
ensemble avec ça. Avant ça, c'était un petit project week-end,
que nous voulions mettre ensemble sur un week-end. C'est ça pour l'année,
comme ça, dans une classe, pour un an, mais ensuite, on a commencé à travailler sur ça.
Je pense que les paths pour mes deux entreprises ont été très différents.
En fait, elles étaient founded dans des différents
tempss. Si tu retournes en 2012, ça a été déjà un an. Donc,
le start-up d'advice, en général, n'était pas très bien distribué à l'époque.
Je dirais que, à l'époque, les conseils de la salle de la cédure,
et d'avoir un investissement angel, etc. Le système d'écosystème a
commencé beaucoup plus tard, et beaucoup de ces informations sont très
réellement disponibles et distribuées. Il y a beaucoup plus de gens qui n'ont pas
passé par ça, mais à l'époque, c'était un peu plus inconnu.
C'est aussi un système d'écosystème plus petit,
plus drastiquement petit. C'est un temps avant de
faire des biais de l'air, des biais de l'air, des biais de l'air.
Elles étaient toutes les petites entreprises de près de 100 personnes.
Mais, on a des différences. Le biais n'a jamais été fait.
On a essayé quelques années. C'est deux de nous, avec quelques gens
qui ont fait un an avant le start-up, mais c'est une company de deux personnes.
Je n'ai jamais vu la scale, je n'ai jamais vu comment les gens s'y acheter,
comment se développer la company comme une entreprise, qui est extrêmement importante.
Maintenant, avec Linaire, on a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.

On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.





On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.






On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.












On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.











On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a essayé quelques deux choses différentes.
On a des compagnies de malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente
malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, malinvente, mal
mais les gens ne parlent pas vraiment ou ne parlent pas vraiment de compagnie de roulage
ou si il y a un blog ou un livre qui parle d'un certain endroit
comme personne ne reprend pas vraiment et ne parle pas de ce que nous avons appris et ce que ça ne marche pas
ou ce que les cabillons sont
donc je pense que beaucoup de notre industrie aussi
je veux dire, c'est une industrie jeune, comme nous avons été sur ce pour environ un décès dans sa forme
il y a beaucoup de choses de carcocalte qui ont été répliquées parce que vous avez vu comme d'autres choses répliquées sur le dessus
et vous pouvez suivre la même formule mais si vous n'avez pas vu ce qui s'est passé
comme ce qui s'est passé sur ces choses, c'est difficile de prendre un visage critique
oui, pour sûr, cette expérience de début est aussi critique
c'est aussi une school de hard knocks, il faut être mentalement préparé pour la dégagement
parce que c'est une dégagement, c'est des expériences d'experience de début, il y a beaucoup de travail
oui, c'est drôle, c'est comme si vous êtes le fondateur, c'est comme si un de vos barres s'arrête à vous
vous pouvez vraiment parler de choses à l'autre, il va se faire un rôle
et aussi, vous êtes en santé mental et ça
c'est facile si vous êtes un peu plus âgé, je dirais
au moins personnellement, quand vous êtes dans vos 20s, vous ne vous en avez pas
nécessairement même pas vous-même, mais vous vous en avez un enjeu et j'espère que ça vous
rend un meilleur leader aussi
oui, absolument, alors, vous avez commencé en ligne avec deux co-founders, vous avez mentionné
il y a un co-founder, Thomas, un staff ingénieur et le manager de Uber
pour un moment, donc, un dynamique très intéressant entre les deux
vous, maintenant que l'on est en ligne, et que vous comprenez que vous êtes des amis
avant que la compagnie l'aie commencé, comment est la relation change entre les deux
vous? comme vous l'avez dit, c'est un challenge de la compagnie, je suis
juste inquiétant, est-ce que vous vous sentez un groupe plus fort?
juste inquiétant,
non, c'est une question vraiment bonne, donc, je sais que les deux sont
séparatisées pendant un décès à ce point, avec Kari,
c'est un groupe très fort, et on a des compétences très fortes,
donc, j'aime travailler avec Kari plus près de la vie,
avec Thomas, je n'ai jamais travaillé avec Kari priori, mais nous avons été
amis depuis longtemps, et il a aussi bougé à San Francisco,
et après que je l'ai fait, mais on a vraiment été
spending beaucoup de temps ensemble, et quand nous sommes
séparatisées ou employés, on est en train de
changer beaucoup de histoires horaires, et tout ça,
Thomas est un d'entre eux, il est un ingénieur très unique,
il est un ingénieur, il peut
prendre quelque chose et construire un niveau très
très important, il tient beaucoup de produits en détail,
et à Uber ils ont construit des frameworks
qui ont construit les applications mobiles,
et ensuite des choses comme ça, donc il vient un peu plus
de ce, je veux dire, un point d'ingénieur des systèmes,
mais de construire des outils pour construire des outils,
donc il a une perspective très différente vers moi et Kari,
par exemple, c'est vraiment,
quand on travaille ensemble,
on, ou quand on commence à travailler ensemble,
et on n'a pas travaillé ensemble, on a dû
se faire ça, on était relativement,
je veux dire, pragmatiques sur ça,
comme quand on a commencé, donc on n'a pas
quitté nos travail et commencé à travailler en ligne,
on a travaillé sur ça pour les semaines,
et on a parlé de ça pour un an,
et on a aussi parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,


et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait,
et on a parlé de ce que nous avons fait.
En ce moment-là, la décision est de calculer
une manière très EXPHERE Baptiste,
une manière très millions d'objets dans nosquels que l'on vit.
Une manière très 컬,




ils veulent déjà maintenir une croissancezne.
Ça peut être nécessaire pour ces Rate Dött,
Or so, I think, yeah, we incorporated a company around, it was like February and our first employee who was like a friend from Coinbase joined us in December.
And we were just like very focused, like let's us, you know, like, get together, like let's just start building and make something that we can use first and like learn how like we work together before we start like adding people into the mix
because that complicates things like people are complicated.
So that does something like we were like very intentional about, but of course, like the relationship has grown quite a lot.
And I think like we have like very healthy, very healthy and also complimentary like skill set plus like our, we help each other.
And like we care about different things, but you know, as long as you like speak the same language, that helps.
We're also on the language front, we're all Finns, so that's why I like to do both of them.
Although we all lived in San Francisco for a decade or so.
I think one of the interesting things about linear is so, A, it's that we want to build a product.
It's not about building a business, about building a product.
And I think it shows through a lot and how y'all like actually do development.
The other thing is that the founding team was like a team that like had all the skills to build the product from the very beginning.
You know, it's like you had design expertise, you had product engineering expertise, you had system development expertise.
And that's just like, it feels unique to me to have like a well rounded team like that from the very get go, you know, which gave you a lot of leeway, I think, to just like.
Turn amongst yourself and to get some like product foundations, right?
And everything.
Anyway, yeah, that's really interesting.
I mean, like, I mean, like, yeah, we've also like had a little bit of work, the bigger companies, we know how those work.
We like work startups.
I mean, Thomas, he's been around the block for a long time since the dotcom era.
So that that that as well.
But it's just definitely, you know, like always, like we're builders and like we love building things.
Yeah.
So we've talked a little bit about linear, but we haven't really like addressed what linear is.
So for our audience that might not know what linear is, what is it and how does it improve upon other similar tools?
Yeah, we're, but in the simplest term, issue tracker.
Maybe it has a, you know, it's like the term itself is maybe not the best descriptor, but I think like it's something that everyone knows what it means on some level.
But it's, it's essentially a tool where you can track your work, track feature request, track box, collaborate with your peers, do project management, build products.
Like, we, we always been very focused on teams and companies like building products.
Like, that's, that's kind of our, our foundation for it.
We're not all a general purpose tool.
We're there for, you know, like developers, engineers, PMs, everyone, kind of like helping you build better products.
Soms, I mean, of course, we come from design background.
So we try to like make everything well designed.
And we care about speed a lot.
That was like one of the core tenants for us.
So make the app extremely fast and snappy from the get go.
We put a lot of like engineering investment in the debt from very start, instead of like trying to try and like first build something and then build, like make it fast.
Later, but we kind of call it, you know, I think, cause so.
But part of that was also that we weren't, we weren't trying to build something completely new.
We, we tried to, you know, like build a better product, the like of those products existed before.
So in that way, I would say, like linear, we kind of like, there's, there's benefits to that.
There's like pros and cons, I would say.
So the pros are that the business model, the industry is somewhat like defined.
And we can, we know that like, there's going to be like customers for this.
If we do it right, like every engineering team or product team uses a tool like this at some point of their journey.
Some maybe started later, some started earlier.
Um, but then the con is that the kind of like the MVP is, uh, is somewhat more like, people have more expectations.
So I don't like, for in relation to that, uh, we also, um, you know, we, we were comfortable working for a year before hiring anyone.
We pushed back on, uh, fundraising and all these kinds of things, because we just like knew that, like, we need to like get the foundation, uh, correct.
And like in many ways, four years later or three, four years later, we're still working on that foundation.
Uh, it's just that the goal post has moved over time.
Like at first, we're very focused on like, let's build something that we can use and maybe other teams off.
Two to five to 10 people can use, uh, your requirements are much more different than, uh, company of several hundred people.
So I would say like overall, like, over our time, I don't like focus is one of our core tenants as well.
Like speed focus, uh, just not like trying to like pick your battles and like do do one thing, like do that thing well.
I'm like, understand, like what you're also like trying to do instead of like, uh, trying to build everything and like hope, like someone will like stick with it.
Um, that's, that's kind of like not something like we're, we're up for.
Yeah, it's awesome.
So one of the big differences between linear and other product products is that it has a local first approach where, uh, it does a lot of things locally in the app before like communicating with the
backend.
Uh, why was this such an important baseline feature for you guys to get in?
And how did you, how did you do it?
If you can comment on that.
So yeah, optimistic updates.
I don't like, that's, that's the story.
Uh, local first and offline readiness or someone, they're almost like, like local first, like for sure.
But like offline readiness, for example, is like a byproduct of like how, just how we build linear and we're able to like plug that in afterwards.
So the goal is just like build something that's really, really snappy.
And if you see a spinner or like a loader after your every interaction, um, you know, like it's like, if that's your foundation, like it's extremely hard to like change.
So we select build out the foundation from get go to, uh, do, do updates locally first and then like just communicate them, distribute them like behind the scenes.
Uh, of course, some might fail, but like most of them, uh, they don't.
Uh, often the question is like, okay, like how do you do conflict resolution?
Well, the short answer, like simple answer is like, we kind of don't have to that often.
Uh, so in a tool like linear, most changes are addition on something that's like already happened.
We're, we're not a, we're not a notion or Google docs.
You don't edit the same text block.
Uh, of course you can edit like the same issue description at the same time, but reality is that rarely, rarely ever happens.
Um, so hopefully we can like solve that at some point, but right now the last update, like lands last update wins.
So how do like technically happens is a little bit like similar to, for example, like how Dropbox builds their desktop application is that when you first log into linear, you get a larger dump, what we call a bootstrap, uh, of kind of all of your issues and like teams and users and that information.
Uh, we load that first in memory, then persist in index DB in the background.
Um, if you use the product, that's the caching indicator that like pops up one after you log then.
And after that, uh, we just do delta, delta sinks or like delta packages distributed through web sockets and those get up, uh, applied on the local, uh, copy of the store that you use.
So we, we maintain a copy off the contact, the whole, like the database, uh, in memory and then persisting in index DB.
We first update everything into that, uh, show everything in the client, then send those over.
If you get something like those, like delta packages over the wire, they select it, applied, like DUI react to those.
Um, we use a little bit like mo, like it's a react application react with type type script.
We use mobex under the hood, uh, to do all the updating, but, and so like the developer experience for this is, uh, it is, uh, it's a different from a lot of like applications where you have to, like, we do all the heavy lifting for you.
We do like the mutations and queries and, uh, like, we don't do queries, but like we do mutations.
So whenever you, like, mutate something, we auto generate mutation, crevule mutations out of those and like send those to the server, uh, which then again, then creates the delt packages for other clients.
But all of that, uh, is abstracted from us, like engineers at linear.
So we basically only interact with the, with the store.
That's the application state.
And you reach from it, UI updates, you change things to it.
Uh, mutations are created in the background.
So while it was like, it's an engineering feed.
Tuomas actually has a YouTube video about it.
Uh, I can share it.
After the fact, but, um, it allows us to move faster while putting this upfront investment in place.
It's, it's not like easy system.
That's why we have Tuomas and a couple of other engineers working on it.
Uh, nowadays, more, more or less full time, full time as well, like scaling this, uh, is, um, you know, like, we knew it, like.
At first, like our customers were relatively small, they don't have that much data.
So we can just read all of their information into the client.
Uh, as we grow, like, we know that, like, that's not going to work out anymore.
So then we started like chipping off on doing other, more unique things, uh, on top of it to help it scale.
So that's a, it's not an ongoing, ongoing thing as well, but it's kind of, at first, you know, we, we
started like the small startups.
Now we serve companies like cross-states companies of, you know, Verso, Retool, like several hundred, uh, engineers.
And then Cash App is also using us and they're, I don't remember like how big they are, but it's a sizable, sizable
engineering organization.
So we've been able to like scale linear asset product, uh, both like on, from the product perspective, but also from the
kind of technical foundation perspective.
And that's, that's in the end, like our goal, like we want linear to be the, the one tool that you use.
Like if you're a small startup, like pick up using it, like don't think about it.
And it should, uh, get you throughout your, your like scale IPO and beyond.
Really, I really love this.
So it's like this really, uh, complexe technical architecture that's required, but the thing that you're going for,
the thing that you're pushing for is optimistic updates.
You know, I want to do an action and feel like it instantly completed.
And it's like, it's a difference between a performance first company and a company who thinks about performance after the fact.
Because architecting a system or introducing that type of architecture post shipping a product is a non trivial endeavor.
And it would have taken y'all a long time to get to that point.
So it's like, uh, I don't know.
It's, it's really cool to hear about.
And yeah, it's, it's hard.
Luckily, nowadays, there are starting to be some technical solutions for this.
For example, Replication, I'm sure you know, like a bunch of, yeah, yeah, bunch of others.
When we started four years ago, there's nothing coach DB, which coach DB and Firebase, but they only really, they didn't work for, uh, collect multi tenant team tool.
They work really well.
If you're just like one user who switches between like different applications and your, your state follows you, your settings follow you.
But for, for a tool like linear, like it's nothing existed.
So we kind of like had to like do the investment and Twomb's really went, went to town with it.
And I'm, I'm glad he did.
Uh, I, I don't personally like have the engineering like capabilities, like pull that off.
But I'm really fortunate to be working with him.
And yeah, it's now it's like one of the, like the defining things of, of linear.
It's like the speed and the snappiness.
We basically don't have a lot.
Like there's a couple of, there's a couple of spinners and like loading states in the application.
But, uh, you, you, you can use the product and like try to find them yourself.
Tell the weather.
And working on a small team to solve a product like this is an interesting like constraint.
So I work at Oxide, Oxide's building a massive product and has, you know,
our engineering teams, like 65 people or something, and pretty much everybody's engineers.
You know, it's one of those things where it makes you focus on
only the things that's important and like really keeps you focused on the product.
And I think a lot of things that companies face as they scale is you lose a cohesive
product vision, right?
Cause it's like hard to get, you know, 200 engineers or 300 engineers on the same page
about like what you're trying to do, what you're trying to build and how you want to
approach customers.
And so many people get so far from the customers that it's like, you know, you lose a lot of this.
Yeah.
Maybe you never even talked to the customer or maybe you never even like actually used your own
product, which is, you know, it's a, it's a reality and probably a lot of like our industry.
Unfortunate.
Of course, like those products, like those services need to be built.
I'm just, I'm just like, we're, I think we're fortunate enough that we're building a tool
that we use to build the tool.
So we live in the tool all day long.
And that's just immensely helpful for us.
And everyone's pretty close to customers.
And the customer closeness is also something that we try to build out from day one.
Change logs is, luckily, it's been fascinating to see a lot of startups nowadays do change logs
and like push out this, like more incremental like updates.
And like, where's it like back in a day, it used to be like, it's like have that like tech crunch
launch window and you like build everything towards it and like then you move on.
But now, at least for us, it's like much more like incremental, you know, things.
It's not about like ego.
It's not about your like next promotion or like these kind of things, which is also like
if you get like really far away from the customer, you start, you don't, you can like
lose like track a little bit of like what you are trying to build as a team or as a
company and you like start thinking a little bit more yourself.
And what are your goals?
Of course, there's like room for that.
Like, there's, like, you should be like looking after yourself and everything.
But I'm just saying that like, you know, a larger company, that's much more of a like, can be a
reality that happens when you can really like make meaningful, meaningful change or like
you're not fulfilled.
So then you're most like optimizing for, okay, like, how do I get a like really good
performance review?
So it's like that.
So for us, it's like, yeah, let's just talk to users, like build stuff that we're proud of
and the team can be proud of.
And I don't know, it's a lot of like fun, fun doing it.
And we're in very good, fortunate to be, be to like build a tool for ourselves.
Yeah, dog food in your product is like one of the best things that you can do.
It's just like, if you're building a code library and you're not using it, you're
probably not experiencing the problems that your users are facing.
I work at Descript and this podcast is literally us dog fooding the Descript product.
So I can, I can be closer to it.
So I didn't know that.
I'm like, you've been linear users for like really well, like really long time at this point.
Yeah, yeah, we are heavy, heavy linear users.
I know it like the, the other Andrew, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's very active on giving
feedback, which we really, really appreciate.
So.
Yeah.
Oh, he's, he's active on giving feedback to my code too.
So I want to talk a little bit more about linear, the company, and we've covered,
we've covered a lot of this in different ways.
And one of the things you talked about earlier is like change logs.
And something that struck me very early in linear's life is that like a change log
was a part of the, is part of the product development lifecycle, was a part of the
like image of the company.
It was like a part of the product.
And, and you know, it made me reflect on when I first like stumbled across Stripe
stocks or like went to Stripe stocks for the first time and they treat their docks
as a part of the product, right?
That high quality bar.
And it was really interesting to see that same high quality bar, like clear design,
unified voice, like brought to this like company change log.
And then you've got this, this idea of a public change log rolled into what
you're calling the linear method, which is a lot of high level concepts.
Can you talk about that a little bit like the linear method and where that came
from and how it sort of plays into how y'all think about product development?
Yeah.
When you look at linear, it's very easy to look at, look at us as a product.
But I think for me, like for us, it's like, it's much more beyond that.
When we talk about building out the company and like, you know, like doing stuff
inside the company, it's not like, I think like we, like I ask for our
to like build linear on the same standards across whatever it's like
something on the engineering or design to like all the other functions at the company.
So like when it comes to recruiting or like marketing or like customer support
and so on, like we try to like take the same level of care and like same, you know,
approach across.
Just like trying to like build focus, like try to do something like really
high quality, build out like something like people care about and like feel good
about because all of these things, I think people often are very, very laser
focused on just the product because that's kind of like they see the company as being.
But then you have like, you're recruiting people, like your recruiters are like the
first person, like, or like the first contact, like many people have with the
with the company.
So that should, in my mind, like our mind, like have the similar level of like care
or like the feeling when you interact with them.
And it's kind of like, you know, like the parties, I think we try to like
build out linear to be much more, you know, like equitable and like more like
inclusive from all of these functions, having like same hiring bar across
functions, we try to like give people like fairer offers and equity packages
and so on when it comes to like compensation, for example.
I know like in some companies, like engineers are gods, like and everyone
else doesn't necessarily like matter.
It's really bizarre, because like, everyone in the company, like, should be
like really like doing, doing the things like built, like the company is the
people.
So if you have like this, like group of primandona somewhere, and like,
they're really highly valued, and like everyone else is not like, it's, I don't
know, it's kind of messed up.
And like from the old world of thinking a little bit.
Maybe that's a little like too ranty, but.
Ah, but we, I really tried to like think like linear as something like, I
can only be proud of us a company that like where I want to work really long
time.
And we're trying to like build everything like very sustainable like fashion
as well, like we know that like, this is not going to be a, you know, one night
wonder, it's not going to take off tomorrow and like be the, be the tool
used by all the like large companies, it's going to take a long time.
And we're so like trying to build a tool that we want to use ourselves, but
also like build out all the other things in, in the way that like, we want to,
you know, interact as well.
Well, I think like marketing is something like a dirty word, because I
know like, there's a lot of like, not that, I mean, like, not that interesting
like things happening necessarily.
Some companies are doing really well.
I think like, as you mentioned, Stripe, their home pages or like page design
signs, where a kind of like the quintessential marketing tool that
no one probably like outside like so as marketing, but of course, like is
recruiting, but then it's also like just building out the rareness of Stripe.
For us, change logs, I would say is unintentionally, it was never designed
to be that, but it like morphed into that.
Like, we started doing change logs before we even released the product publicly.
It is, we, because we just like, when like, it was something for us to hold
us, hold ourselves accountable on shipping, putting stuff out there, like
keeping this like continuous movement around us.
So we select started like doing a weekly change log, we commit to like doing it
and like have stuff there.
You feel a little like embarrassed if you don't have anything meaningful or
if you put something out there and like, it's no one cares about it or, you
know, like you do something only for you, but like not for the others.
So it's like a really good forcing function.
So that's how it started, but then morphed into more of this, like a
cultural thing for us as well.
And out of that linear method is it's just.
Like, I think like our industry, like we've been building out products for a long time.
And there's been like, definitely like several generations, like Agile Manifesto
came out way back in a day and people wrote books about it and like
followed the advice and, but it's, I would say, you know, it's not super relevant.
Or like, there's the key tenants of it, like relevant, but maybe how some of the
products is not as relevant anymore for like modern companies.
What's an epic sprint?
Uh, oh, this is like interesting, like words, uh, you keep on using.
It's like, no, it's like, it's a project or like, well, sprint, kind of
like, still like, it makes more, it makes more sense.
We, we like to call them cycles and, uh, instead of like having a burn down
chart that goes down, uh, we have it like up because it's much more motivating to
like make progress and like, you know, like, get yourself like to the goal post.
Uh, c'est like, those like small things that I'm like, hopefully, like
it makes sense also, like outside the people who are in the, like, uh, black
or developers who use these tools in the past, like it should be like, it comes
a designer or comes a customer experience agent into the tool.
Like it should all make sense, uh, to you.
So I mean, we try to like build linear to be this approachable thing.
That's, uh, it's not a luxury product.
It's like, should be a quality product for everyone to use and everyone to enjoy
and like get out of your way to build better things, uh, build better products.
So linear method is something that we, we wanted to start codifying some of our
thinking as we, it's, it's part our beliefs and experience put into paper.
What do we see in that these high growths companies, like doing products
really well, like we worked at, like the founding team worked at coin
base Airbnb Uber, for example.
Most of our employees are, we have like many people from Slack, Facebook,
like you, you name a company, but like everyone like brings in this like experience.
And we know that like people don't run the agile, like playbook at these companies.
It's like everything is like a little, like it's much more like this iterative, uh,
approach of building products.
And I think like what we try to like, then also, like people come to us
nowadays to like ask, like how did you build linear to be like at this quality
bar, like how can we replicate that?
So a lot of it is like now people naturally come to us to ask these questions.
And it should not be like everyone's like job or like higher priority, like
trying to figure out their product development process for like from scratch.
Uh, you know, like there's certain things that work certain things that don't.
Uh, we just try to like put on paper, some of the, like the best practices
that we found that worked for us and like the companies where we worked.
And things that we believe that are like valuable for guiding people to
the right direction.
Um, and maybe avoiding some common traps.
Uh, some people call it like to be a little bit opinionated.
Like we have a little bit like opinionation in the product, but in the
end we try to like build a little bit like, maybe like guide people towards
the right direction.
So it's like, here's small set of tools, both principles and a tool that
you can take, start building, like, like, don't, don't reinvent the wheel.
Like this should work for you.
And once you learn, then apply your learnings and like modify things.
Like it should not be restrictive, but it should just be helping you to
focus like on what's, what's important.
Um, and on the product side, what we often try to do a little bit is to
help people avoid courting themselves.
Um, it's like, people have good intentions, uh, but you might not
always think about the broader consequences.
So like when you do something, I think like everyone has probably used
one of these products where there's a lot of like required fields or similar
things, a lot of like codified process, which it had, there's a reason
why that was configured in.
It was like something was breaking and we, someone's like, we need to
like codify this.
So like people won't make this mistake.
And then everyone kind of like has to live with it because there's
this one thing that happened.
Like real world is like, there's one lawsuit that like ruins it for everyone.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
So, uh, you know, we try to like avoid, like by design, avoid some of these
restrictions, uh, in the product that you can't really like necessarily
like hurt yourself too much, uh, by not letting you do certain things.
Um, but often it can be also a little like hard to communicate it to people,
but we're probably okay saying no to things or like deferring until we
learn more about it.
Now I can build our own, own thinking around it.
And then, you know, some things like lead into linear method and we can,
you know, put them in the product, put them in writing, share it.
Yeah.
As I said, like earlier, I think like a lot of like our industry crew
really fast over the past decade, people are select, you know, they're,
they're repeating the same playbook without always like unnecessarily
understanding what they're doing.
And I think what we try to do when we build the product, when we
will be built the companies, just think from first principle, it's
like, what do we want to like see?
What do we see in like done, done wrong?
Um, for example, like how we do our marketing is like, I wouldn't
call it, call it marketing, but it's stuff that like eyes is like things
that we want to see, uh, as content, which is also a little like, I
don't know, weird word, uh, to me.
Uh, but, you know, certain high quality things that like we enjoy
seeing and things that, you know, you don't have to like do stuff
that you don't enjoy seeing, like you can be a little bit more opinionated
about it.
Yeah.
I think it's cool how you guys feature the methods so prominently on
your website, you're like, here's the wheel.
Here's how we think you should use the wheel, but feel free to use
the wheel, however you want to.
Yeah.
Um, okay.
So moving into our last question for the episode, in each episode, we
usually ask like a future facing question, uh, to like summarize the space.
So for linear, what, what are you guys building towards?
What do you think linear might look like in five years and more generally, uh, what
do you think like the future of project management is?
Yeah.
Um, so.
All the way being like building linear for several years at this point, I consider
it, I consider like things to be like very earliest age for us.
Uh, I think like we like such scratch to surface, going like some of the
like the key, key building blocks in place.
I'm like, we're starting like, uh, approach the place where we can really
start building on top of them.
Well, that's it for this week's episode.
Remember, the full episode is only available to our Patreon members.
Thanks for listening.