Someone behind the software

Good products reflect the people who create them, capturing their experiences, values, and perspectives. It's easy to view software as a product of a factory assembly line, but the reality is more nuanced. Two teams, despite sharing customers and technology, can produce vastly different outcomes. The driving force behind this difference lies in their understanding of the product and their approach to building it.

Founders' backgrounds and company DNA play a significant role in shaping this, just as much as the intuition developed through experience and customer interaction. At Linear, they have always prioritized intuition over rigid processes or data-driven decisions. This intuition, born from firsthand experience and understanding, serves as the guiding point of view.

Before launching a product, they engaged with various stakeholders to foster a deeper understanding of what truly matters. Over time, this collective insight influences the product's development, imbuing it with a unique character. The soul of a product is evident in how its creators prioritize certain aspects and what they choose to overlook.

A feature may work well independently, yet fail to elevate the overall product. This understanding requires a commitment to a certain vision of what the product should embody. Regrettably, many products today seem to prioritize feature expansion over refining the core problem. The tendency is to add capabilities rather than improve existing ones, resulting in a collection of functionalities rather than a cohesive solution.

This approach, fueled by ease of addition rather than thoughtful restructuring, leads to products that feel disjointed and lack a unifying perspective. The blame often lies in the organizational structure, where individuals independently work on changes, each operating as a mini-software factory. While each change may make sense on its own, collectively, they can resemble a chaotic amalgamation rather than a well-crafted masterpiece.

Without a shared vision, the product can become a diluted average of its constituent parts, losing its unique character and soul. The easy accessibility of software development may be fostering an environment where fleeting perspectives contribute to this diluted outcome. However, the author remains hopeful that as people continue to deeply understand problems and persistently refine their solutions, they will be able to infuse their creations with a clear sense of creator behind the software, rather than a faceless assembly line.