Episode 44 - Free
Jori: When we hack linear to do certain things or like our, we see our customers hacking it to a certain way, that's always an opportunity for us to.
Try to build a product feature or like another lens into the product, uh, to better accommodate that workflow.
Andrew: Remember the full episode is only available to our Patreon members.
Andrew: Hello, welcome to the Dev tools FM podcast. This is a podcast about developer tools and the people who make them. I'm Andrew, and this is my co-host. Justin,
Justin: Everyone. Uh, our guest today is Jori Lalo. Uh, j is one of the founders of Linear, which is an absolutely delightful issue, tracking and project management software. Uh, j it's a pleasure to have you on. Uh, I'm excited to talk about Linear, but before we dig into that, uh,
[00:01:00] Jori's Journey
Justin: would you like to tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself?
Jori: Yeah, thanks. Uh, pleasure to be here. Um, a few words about myself. Yeah. Uh, I've been an engineer for most of my career since like, uh, graduating a little over 10 years ago from school. I didn't even go to cs. Uh, so kinda like more, more self taught from a technology background, but always been in like computers and got into startups.
At the, kind, like the beginning of like the, I would say like the, the previous generation around, uh, 2007, 2008, eight era got like really in, interested in like the, the NAS and like startup, like scene in, San Francisco. Uh, I'm from Finland, uh, grew up there, went to school there, uh, was fortunate enough to end up moving into, into SF uh, in 2011 to intern for a small, small YC startup.
So that was kinda like my, my accidental entry point in like moving to the states and, uh, working for startups, uh, before that had coupled my own full start and was like in the student student ecosystem in Finland. But, uh, kinda like end up on that, that route and like being coding since, and like, uh, now start a couple of companies and so like the last one is linear.
Um, nowadays, unfortunately I don't code that much anymore, but, but I still like try to, try to stay relevant on other means.
Justin: For sure, for sure. The, the, the sacrifice of a founder's. Like you start by coding a lot and then slowly and slowly it
Jori: oh yeah. Everyone's like, oh man, like I, like, I wanna like quit my job and it's just like, do my own thing and so on. It's like, yeah, two, two years goes by. And I'm like, yeah, you're not coding anymore. So
Justin: Yeah, yeah, for
Jori: But you just gotta need to be, need to be okay with it. I follow my piece earlier this year, so it's, it's all good and good now.
Justin: Yeah. Awesome. So Linear's not the first startup that you founded. Uh, how is it different from the other experiences that you've had in your previous startup?
Jori: Yeah, so, uh, I had another company called k, uh, actually it was together with Corey, who's also one of the, one of the founders of Linear and or our CEO and design, like head, head of design as well. So we had a, a small startup, uh, around bookmarking space, actually kind of trying to like do social, social bookmarking app.
In uh, 2012, we went through YC together with it. Uh, before that it started out a, a small like side weekend, weekend site project, uh, that we once, uh, put together over a weekend, sat for a little while, like set for in a closet for like a, a year, but then we kinda like started working on it again. Um, I think with the paths for.
My two companies have been like drastically different. Uh, granted, they were like founded in a little bit, like different, uh, uh, like in very different times. If you go like back to 2012, that's already a decade ago. So I think, uh, like startup advice overall was not as, um, well, like distributed at the time.
I would say like nowadays, you know, like advice to raise a seed round and, and like getting angel investment and so forth, like the ecosystem has gone forward quite a bit and like a lot of this information is very widely available and like distribute it. And so many more people have gone through it. But at the time it was, uh, a little bit more, more unknown, I would say.
Um, and also like the ecosystem overall was smaller. It's like drastically smaller. This was like time before. You know, Stripe, Airbnb, and drop Box. They're all small companies of, uh, under a hundred people, roughly. Um, but kinda like the differences, uhlin never made it. So we did, we did try a couple of years.
Uh, it was basically just two of us with couple, like people like hovering around us. Uh, we actually even like failed raise, raise money. It's like we, we ran in cockroach mode from the little money that we got through y Combinator at the time and is very, you know, very, very different experience.
Um, also like granted, like I, I don't think like I.
We didn't really know like what we were doing, like when it comes to like building companies, but I think like, part of that was like, we never really worked that like startups either. Like I had, like, I like did a year before, before that, a startup, but it was two person company.
Uh, so I never seen scale. I never seen like how to hire people, how to like, grow the company as an entity, which is extremely important. And, and now with linear, um, I think, well kinda like long story short, like we kept, we tried like a couple of like different things. Um, neither of them like really out, uh, but we, there's like a couple like good learnings from it.
Like we were like always design driven and like we were fortunate enough to. It was a tools tool startup as well. So we were able to attract like, like-minded people as users for it and like build this small community around it. And, and that, that was something really neat. So I built stuff for people who really cared about it, but it just wasn't like really scalable.
We ended up like winding everything down and joining Coinbase in 2014. Uh, they were in the same YC batch as we were, uh, when we went through yc. So it's like natural fit, um, from that sense. But like, it's like, it's not a tool startup for sure. Uh, it's a very, very different, different space. But I joined them when there were roughly 20 people.
Um, I stayed there four and a half years roughly, and that is kind of like my school on learning how to like, build companies. Uh, just kinda like just learning from, like seeing from the sideline or like being part of, part of that, uh, rollercoaster that was that company, which I, I felt like really lucky. And I feel like if someone's, you know, like thinking of like starting their own company, joining a company that seems to be taking off, uh, at an early stage is the best thing that you can like do for yourself because you, you know, you, you kinda like get the training on like other people's dime and hopefully like you, you know, like maybe you like build wealth out of it, like in the, uh, in, in the process.
And like, also like build like real, like good, like friendships and, and increase your own skills and, and craft. Uh, so I don't like, that's, that's something like, that was like the school for me to like learn how to like, see very closely how to run a company. And Coinbase was like, is a phenomenal company.
I think like this one, one of those like little like misunderstood companies, unfortunately. Uh, just.
You know, you read, you read the stuff and so on. Um, it was not like that, like it's not a bad place. Like had like, I don't know, it's like phenomenal, phenomenal company with really, really passionate people.
Extremely like diverse set of like, uh, people who really care about the space and they're like, extremely good at hiring in their early days especially. And, um, they always move forward as well. I think that's like one of the things, like, often like startups, I feel like they just kinda like stay, become stagnant, become, become irrelevant.
Uh, Coinbase is always moving forward. Uh, and definitely like learn to how, how to hire well badly, how to grow well and like make, see like what kinda like mistakes are being made and whatnot. Um, a lot of like those things. You, I mean like what I mentioned earlier, Fundraising, like that kind of stuff, like you can read, but people don't really talk about or write about running companies or if there's a blog post about, or like a book written about some area, like no one ever really goes back and writes a second blog post of like, what we actually learn.
Like what is this doesn't work, or like, what are the caveats after? So I've been like a lot of, like, our industry also, I mean, it's, it's a young industry. Like we've been on this for like roughly a decade in its current form. Uh, there's a lot of cargo culting, uh, things that you just replicate because you've seen like other things replicated on top of it.
Then, um, you know, you follow the same, same formula, but if you haven't seen that, like what actually happens, like what comes out of those things, it's uh, it's hard to put a, take a critical eye on it. So,
Justin: Yeah, for sure. That, that early startup experience is, is, is critical. It's also a school of hard knocks. It's like you gotta be, uh, you gotta be mentally prepared for the challenge. Cause it is a challenge. It's like those early startup experiences are, they're a lot of work.
Jori: Yeah, it's, it's rough. Like, it's, it's, and like, you're, you're the founder, like, everything's kinda like one of you, the buck stops at you. So, uh, you can't really bitch about like, things to, like others. Like, he's gonna kind roll with it and like, uh, also like manage, like own mental health and, and so on.
It's, and it's, it's easier if you're a little bit like older, I would say at least like, personally, like when you're in your twenties, you kinda like, don't necessarily even know yourself, but, um, you know, you grow as a person and hopefully that makes, makes you a better leader as well.
[00:10:28] Founding with Friends
Justin: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so you started linear with two co-founders, uh, so you'd mentioned, uh, Kati earlier, and Tomas is another co-founder. Tomas was, uh, a staff engineer and manager at Uber for a while. so incredibly interesting dynamic between the three of you. Uh, now that linear has like been growing and, you know, I understand that y'all were like sort of friends before this, the linear company started.
Uh, how has the relationship changed, uh, between the three of you is like, uh, has, you know, it, it's, as you said, it's like, it's a, it's a challenge building a startup. And I'm just curious as like, uh, do y'all feel like a stronger group? Uh, you know, just curious about
Jori: Yeah. Uh, no, that's a, that's a really good question. We, so I know both of them separately for our, over a decade at this point. I mean, like with Qri of course, like we have.
Uh, separate company together. Uh, so I like worked with him much more closely in the past, which Thomas I never worked with prior to privately, but like we've been friends for a long time.
And, uh, he also like, moved, moved to San Francisco around, well, like after I did, but definitely like being, spending quite a lot of like time together and, you know, like once we were like at our separated like, or like employers, like exchanging a lot of like horror stories and so on. Like to is one of those, he's a extremely unique engineer.
Like he's one of the, you know, he's the like engineer's engineer. He can like, pick up anything I like build it to like an extreme level, uh, he cares a lot about like detail product. Uh, but kind of like, and at, at Uber they were building out a lot of the frameworks that built, build out the mobile applications and later on, like other things as well.
So he comes a little bit more from that. I wouldn't say like systems engineering point of view, but like, you know, building out tools to build tools. Uh, so he has like a very different perspective versus, uh, to myself and Corey, for example.
Um, it's been definitely, you know, like when you work together, uh, we, or when you start working together and you haven't worked together, you kinda like figure, need to figure that out.
We were relatively, um, how would you say, uh, pragmatic about that, like when we got started. So, uh, we didn't just like quit our jobs and start working on linear, like we worked on it for.
On over the weekends and we were like talking about it for probably like a year before we, uh, even incorporate or did anything like too official for it.
Uh, so definitely like had this like idea brewing or like that we want to like, do something about the space and like what would it look like? Uh, instead of just like, oh, I like also like a side note, a lot of people want to start a company that was not our goal. Like, which is like, you know, we wanna like build a product, like not, it's like, you know, uh, and start from that angle.
I think like overall, like often like much, much more healthier. Uh, in our case it's also like also easier because, um, it's kinda like a known product space and like we. We kind like knew like we, we want to do this. And like, there's probably like some interest, like there gonna be some interest, like these tools, someone like existed in one, uh, form or another for, uh, several decades at this point.
But, uh, when we started work, when we went eventually full time on linear, we did not hire anyone for the first, first year or so. Um, uh, I think, yeah, we incorporated that company around, was it like February? And our first, first employee who was like a friend from, uh, from Coinbase joined us in, uh, December.
And we were also like very focused, like, let's just, you know, like get, get together. Like let's just start building and make something that we can use first and like learn how to, like, we work together, uh, before we start, like adding people into the mix because uh, that complicates things like people are. Complicated . Uh, so, uh, that does something like we were like very intentional about, but of course, like the, the relationship has grown, grown quite a lot, and I think like we have like very healthy, um, very healthy and, um, also complimentary like, uh, skill set plus, uh, like our, like we, we help each other and like we care about different things, but you know, as long as you like, uh, speak the same, same language, that helps.
We're also on the language front, we're all fins. So that's, that's why I like, knew, knew both of them. Uh, although we, we all lived in a, in San Francisco for a decade or so, so,
Justin: I think one of the interesting things about linear is, so a, it's that we wanna build a product. It's not about building a business, it's about building a product. And I think it shows through a lot and, and how y'all like actually do development. The other thing is that the founding team was like a, a team that like had all the skills to build the product from the very beginning.
You know, just 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 churn amongst yourself and to get some like, product foundations right and everything.
Anyway. Yeah, that, that was really
Jori: 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 with startups. I mean to, he's been around the block for a long time, since the.com era uh, that, that, that as well. But it's just definitely, you know, like always like we're builders and like we love building things.
Um, yeah.
[00:16:25] What is Linear?
Andrew: 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, uh, what is it and how does it improve upon other similar tools?
Jori: Yeah, we're, um, what I, in the simplest term issue tracker, uh, maybe that has a
You know, it is like the, the term itself is, uh,
maybe like, not the best descriptor, but I think like it's something that everyone knows what it means on, on some level. Um, but it's, it's essentially a tool where you can like track your work, track feature requests, track bugs, uh, collaborate with your peers, uh, do project management, uh, build products.
Like we, we always, uh, been very focused. Uh, teams and companies like building products. Like that's, that's kinda like our, our foundation for it. We're not a general purpose tool. Uh, we're there for, you know, like developers, engineers, uh, PMs, everyone, uh, kinda like helping you build better products. And some of the, I mean, of course we come from design backgrounds, so we try to like, make everything well designed and, uh, we care about speed a lot.
Uh, that is like one of the core tenants for us. So, uh, make the app extremely, uh, fast and snappy. Uh, from the get go, we put a lot of like, engineering investment in the, that, uh, from very start instead of like trying to try and like first build something and then build, like, make it fast later. But we like all know how that building goes,
Uh, 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 that like, of those products existed before. So in, in that way, I would say like linears, we kind of like, there's, there's benefits to that. Uh, there's like pros and cons I would say.
And so the pros are that kind the business model, the industry is someone like, define, and we can, we know that like there's gonna 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 like, uh, journey. Uh, 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, and like for. In relation 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 like these kind 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 a, the, the goal post just moves over time. Like at first we're very focused on like, let's build something that we can use and maybe other teams of. Two to five to 10 people can use. Uh, your requirements are much more different than a company of several hundred people.
So I would say like, overall, like over our time, I think like focus is one of our core tenants as well, when like, speed, focus, uh, just not like trying to like pick your battles and like do do one thing, like do that thing well and 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 kinda like not something like we're, we're up for. So
Justin: That's awesome.
Andrew: 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, how did you do it? If you can, uh, comment on that.
Jori: So yeah, optimistic updates. I don't like, that's that, that's the story. 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 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 the get go to, uh, do, do updates locally first and then like likes us, communicate them, uh, distribute them like behind the scenes Um, 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, like, we kind of like 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, uh, issue description at the same time. But reality is that that rarely, rarely ever happens. So hopefully we can like, solve that at some point. But right now the last update, like last update wins.
Uh, so how it like technically happens is a little bit like similar to, for example, like how Dropbox builds their desktop, uh, application. Is that when you first, uh, log into linear, you get a larger dump, what we call a bootstrap, um, of kinda like all of your issues and like, like teams and users and that information.
Uh, we load that first in memory, then persist in an index db in the background. Um, if you use the product that's the caching, uh, indicator that like pops up one after you're logged in. And after that, uh, we just do delta, delta syncs 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.
Uh, so we, we maintain a copy of the. Connect the whole, like the database, uh, in memory and then persisted 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 the UI react to those.
Um, we use a little bit like, like it's a React application, react with type script. We use mobx under the hood, uh, to do all the updating. But, and like the developer experience for this is, uh, It is, uh, it is, it is 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 mutational mutations out of those and send those to the server. The server, uh, which then again, then creates the Delta packages for other clients. But all of that, uh, is abstracted from US 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 your background. So while it was like it's an engineering geat, uh, Tomas 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.
Uh, it's, it's not like easy system . That's why we have and 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 like at first, like our customers were relatively small. They don't have that much data, so we can just read every, all of their information into the client. As we grow, like we know that, like, that's not gonna 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. Um, so that's a, it's an ongoing, ongoing thing as well. But it's kind like at first, you know, we served like the small startups, now we serve companies like cross stage companies of, you know, Brazil, 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 sizeable, sizeable 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, kinda like the 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 . So
Justin: Really, I really love this. So it's like this really. Complex technical architecture that's required, but the, 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, and it would've taken y'all a long time to get to that point. So it's like, uh, I don't know. That's, that's really cool to, to hear about.
Jori: And yeah, it's, it's hard. Luckily nowadays there are starting to be some technical solutions for this. For example, repliCash, and
I'm sure you you know, like bunch of like
Justin: and,
Jori: yeah, bunch of others. When we started four years ago, there's nothing Couch db, which, and Coach DB and Fire Base, but they only really, they didn't work for a, uh, kinda like multi-tenant team tool.
It, they work really well. If you're 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 nothing existed, so we kinda like have to. Do the investment. And Tomas 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, like, there's a couple of, there's a couple of spinner and like loading states in the application, but, uh, you, you, you can use the product and like try to find them yourself.
I won't tell where they are.
[00:28:16] Building for your Customer
Justin: Working on a small team to solve a product like this is an interesting, like constraint. So I work at Oxide oxides, building a massive product and has, you know, our engineering team's like 65 people or something, and pretty much everybody's engineers, uh, 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? Because 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
Jori: Yep.
Justin: you know, you lose a lot of
Jori: 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 in probably a lot of like our industry. Um, unfortunately, of course, like those products, like those services need to be built. Um, I'm just, I'm just for 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, immensly like helpful for us. And everyone's like pretty close to like customers. And the kinda like customer closeness is also something that we try to build out from day one, like change logs. It's luckily not, it's been fascinating to see like all like startups nowadays do change logs and like push out this like more incremental like updates and like, uh, whereas like back in the day it used to be like used to like have that like tech wrench 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, uh, you know, things. It's not about like ego, uh, 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 like the customer you like, you don't, you kinda 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. Um, of course there's like room for that. Like there should, like, you should be like looking after yourself and everything. But, um, I'm just saying that like in a larger company that's much more of a, like, can be a reality that happens when you can really like make meaningful, uh, meaningful change or like, you're not fulfilled.
So then you're mostly like optimizing for okay, like how do I get a like, really good performance review? Uh, so it's like, that's So for, for us it's like, yeah, let's just talk to users and like build, build stuff that we're proud of and the team can be proud of. And I don't know, it's, it's a lot of like fun, fun doing it and we're in very good fortunate to be, be to like build tool for ourselves.
So,
Andrew: Yeah, dog food in your product is like one of the best things that you can do. Uh, 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. Uh, I work at Descript and this podcast is literally, uh, US dog fooding the descript product. So I can , I can be closer to it, so
Jori: I, I didn't know that. I'm like, you've been linear users for like really while, like really long time at this point.
Andrew: yeah. Uh, we are heavy, heavy linear users. Uh,
Jori: I know liked the a, the other Andrew, uh, he, he's, uh, he's, he's, he's very active on giving feedback, which we really, really appreciate.
Andrew: yeah. Oh, he's, he's active on giving feedback to my code too.
Jori: okay. Nice.
[00:32:18] Linear the Company
Justin: So I, I wanna talk a little bit more about linear, the company. And we've covered, we've covered a lot of this, uh, in different ways. And one of the things you talked about earlier is like, change logs. Um, and something that struck me very early in linear's life is that like, change log was a part of the, uh, is part of the product development.
Life cycle was a part of the, like, image of the company. It was like a part of the product. Um, and, and you know, it made me reflect on when I first like stumbled across Stripe stocks or like went to Stripe stocks for it's her first time and they treat their docs 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, uh, 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, um, 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?
Jori: Yeah. Um, I think when you look at linear, it's very easy to look at, look it as a product. Um, but I think for me, and like for us, it's like, 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 uh, it's not like, I think like we, like I aspire 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, um, like when it comes to recruiting or like, um, marketing or, um, like customer support and so on, like, we try to like take the same level of, uh, care and like, um, same, you know, uh, approach across, it's like trying to like fo like build focus, like try to do something like really high quality, uh, build out.
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, uh, because that's kinda like, they see the company as being, but then you have like your 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 kinda like, you know, like the priorities. I think we, we try to like build out a linear to be much more, you know, like equitable and like, um, more like, oh, like inclusive from all of these like functions.
Having like same hiring bar across functions. Uh, we try to like give, uh, people like, uh, fair, uh, fair offers and equity packages and so on when it comes to like, like, uh, compensation for example. Um, I know like in some companies like engineers or guards, like, and everyone else doesn't necessarily like matter.
It's, it's really bizarre because like everyone in the company, Like, should be like, really like doing, uh, doing the things like, like the company is the people. So if you have like this like group of primadonna somewhere and like they're really highly valued and like everyone else is not like, it's, it's, I don't know, it's kinda like messed up and like from the old world of thinking a little bit, uh, maybe this little like too ranty, but, uh,
But we, I, I really try to like think like linear as something like I can only be proud of as 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 like this is not gonna be a, you know, one night wonder, uh, it's not gonna take off tomorrow and like, be. be the, tool used by all the, like large companies. It's gonna take a long time. And where 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, uh, I think like marketing is something like a dirty word because I don 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 homepages or like page designs were kind of like the quintessential marketing tool that no one probably like outside like saw as marketing, but of course like is recruiting, but then it's also like just building out awareness of stripe.
Um, for us. Change logs, I would say. 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, uh, publicly. It was we, because we like wanna, like, it was something for us to hold us, hold ourselves accountable on shipping, uh, putting stuff out there, like keeping this like continuous move movement around us.
So, uh, we like started like doing a weekly change log. We committed to like doing it and like have stuff there. You feel 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. Uh, so that's how it started. But then morphed more of this like a cultural thing for us as well. And. Out of that, um, 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 like generations, like Agile manifesto came out way back in the day and people, uh, wrote books about it and like followed the advice and, um, but it's, um, I would say, you know, it's not super relevant or like there's the key tenants of it, like are relevant, but maybe how some of the stuff was, uh, uh, putting the products is not as relevant anymore for like modern companies.
What's an epic sprint? Uh, all these like interesting like words, uh, you keep on using. It's like, no, it's like, it's a project. Like, well, sprint's kinda like, so makes more, 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, get yourself like to the goal post.
Uh, it's like those like small things that, and like, hopefully like it makes sense also like outside the people who are in the like, uh, like, or developers who use these tools in the past, like it should be like comes a designer or comes 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 quoing some of our thinking as we, it's, it's part our beliefs and experience putting the paper, what we seen at this high growth comp, like companies like doing products really well. Like we worked at, like the founding team worked at, uh, Coinbase, Airbnb, Uber, for example.
Most of our employees are, we have like Bun many people from, uh, slack, Facebook, like you, you name a company, but like everyone like brings in this experience. And we know 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's like now people naturally come to us to ask these questions and it should not be like, everyone's like, job or ta like highest 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, uh, put on paper some of 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 like take start building. Like, like don't, don't ring 'em in 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 hurting themselves. Um, it's like people have good intentions, uh, but you might not always think about the broader consequences, like when you, uh, 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 the, there's a reason why that was configured in was like something was breaking and we, someone's like, we need to like codify this.
So like, people wanna make this mistake and then everyone kind of like has to live with it because there's this one thing that happened.
Um, like real world is like, there's one lawsuit that like ruins it for everyone, So, uh, you know, we try to like avoid, like by design, avoid some of these restrictions, uh, in the product that you can really like, necessarily like hurt yourself too much, um, by not letting you do certain things.
Um, but often it can be also a little like hard to communicate it to PE people, but we are 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 leading to linear method and we can, you know, put them in the product, put them in writing, share it.
Um, Yeah. as I said like earlier, I think like a lot of, like our industry grew really fast over the past decade. People are sort of like, you know, they're, they're repeating the same playbook without always like necessarily understanding what they're doing and.
I, think what we try to do when we build a product, when we build a companies think from first principles, 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, it's like, I wouldn't call it it, call it marketing, but it's stuff that like, I like things that we want to see, uh, as content, which is also a little like, I don't know a 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.
Andrew: 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.
Jori: Yeah.
[00:45:23] Linear's Future
Andrew: 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, the future of project management is
Jori: Yeah. Um, so although we've been like building linear for years point, I consider, I consider like things to be like very early stage for us. Uh, I think like we like just scratch the surface going like some of like the key key building blocks in place and like we're starting like, uh, approach to place where we can really start building on top of them.
Andrew: Well, that's it for this week's episode.
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