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Linear co-founder Karri Saarinen has argued that software reflects the experience and judgment of the people who build it. In an essay, he warns that AI agents and easier feature production can make products feel fragmented when teams lack a shared point of view.
Linear co-founder Karri Saarinen has argued that a product’s character comes from the people who shape it, warning that software built through increasingly automated, agent-assisted workflows can become a collection of disconnected features. In an essay titled Someone behind the software, Saarinen says customer understanding and human judgment remain necessary to make those features fit together.
Saarinen’s central claim is that products carry the perspective of their makers, even when users do not know who those people are. Similar teams can speak with similar customers and use the same technology yet make different products, he writes, because they interpret what they learn differently and make distinct choices about what to build. A company’s founders and working culture also shape those choices.
He describes Linear’s approach as valuing intuition over process or data, while rejecting the idea that intuition means choosing by whim. In his account, judgment develops through experience: working on a problem, talking with customers, making mistakes and learning what deserves attention. Saarinen says conversations across companies and roles before Linear launched broadened the team’s understanding beyond its own frustrations with project-management software.
He also criticizes a pattern he sees in software products: adding capabilities without improving the product’s core problem or making the experience more coherent. An individual feature may work properly yet still weaken the overall product, he says. The difficult work is deciding what belongs, what to leave out and whether the product’s direction continues to serve customers.
Why Product Judgment Still Matters
Saarinen’s argument speaks to a practical question for software teams as AI agents make it easier to produce code and changes: does faster implementation lead to better products? His essay does not offer measured evidence that agent use has made products worse. Instead, it sets out a concern about how work is organized. If contributors or agents make changes independently, features can each appear reasonable while the whole product loses a consistent direction.
That concern matters to users because software quality is not limited to whether each feature functions. A product can become harder to understand when additions do not support a shared purpose. Saarinen’s proposed counterweight is a clearer point of view, informed by customers and maintained through deliberate decisions about the complete experience—not simply the volume of capabilities delivered.
For companies adopting agent-assisted development, the essay suggests that coordination and product judgment remain important even if implementation becomes easier. It does not establish a particular workflow as the solution, but it frames coherence as a responsibility that cannot be handed to a production pipeline alone.
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From Customer Research to Product Character
Saarinen grounds his account in Linear’s early product work. Before launch, he says, the team talked with people in different roles and at different companies about how they worked. Those conversations helped refine the founders’ own perspective and identify needs beyond their personal experience. The essay presents customer contact not as a substitute for judgment, but as one of the experiences that makes judgment better informed.
He contrasts this with a factory-like view of software development: gather requirements, build features and measure whether they work. Saarinen says this model can overlook the decisions that make a product feel unified. As tools make it easier to add capabilities, he argues, teams may spend more effort on what technology can do than on the form a product should take. His reference to agents is part of that concern, not a report of a specific product launch or measured industry trend.
“Good products carry something of the people who make them.”
— Karri Saarinen, Linear co-founder
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What the Essay Does Not Establish
The essay is Saarinen’s perspective, not a research study comparing agent-assisted and conventional software development. It gives no data on how often products have become more fragmented, how users experience those changes or whether agent use is a cause. Saarinen says products have seemed messier to him, but the source provides no examples or independent assessment to verify that observation.
The source material also does not specify when the essay was published, identify particular agent tools or describe a concrete change to Linear’s development process. It remains unclear how Saarinen’s concerns might translate into measurable product practices, or how teams could distinguish useful experimentation from additions that weaken coherence.
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How Teams Put Judgment Into Practice
Saarinen does not announce a new Linear feature, policy or development plan. His essay instead leaves software teams with a broad challenge: make room for people to understand problems deeply, stay close to customers and keep shaping products after individual features work. As agent-assisted tools become part of development, readers will be able to judge the argument against how products evolve and whether their parts continue to feel connected.
No follow-up study, company initiative or specific milestone is identified in the source. The immediate next step is therefore not a scheduled event but an ongoing question for product makers: whether easier production will support more considered design, or simply make it easier to add more without a shared direction.
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Key Questions
Who wrote the essay?
Karri Saarinen, co-founder of Linear, wrote Someone behind the software.
What is Saarinen’s main argument?
He argues that software reflects its makers’ experience, judgment and choices. In his view, a coherent product requires more than features that work individually.
Is the essay saying intuition should replace customer research?
No. Saarinen describes intuition as judgment developed through experience, including talking with customers, working on problems and learning from mistakes. He says customer conversations helped improve Linear’s perspective before launch.
Does the essay prove that AI agents make software worse?
No. It raises a concern that independently produced changes could weaken a product’s coherence, but provides no comparative data showing that agents have caused that outcome.
Did Saarinen announce a change to Linear?
No specific product announcement or policy change appears in the source material. The essay is an argument about software-making and product judgment.
Source: hn
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