Someone behind the software

I think good products carry something of the people who make them. Their experience, what they care about, and how they think things should work. You might not know who those people are, but you can feel their perspective in the product.

我认为优秀的产品承载着创造者的一部分特质。包括他们的经验、他们在意的事物，以及他们对事物运作方式的思考。你可能不知道这些人是谁，但你能在产品中感受到他们的视角。

The industry often talks about software as though it comes out of a factory. You collect requirements, build features, and measure whether they work. Follow the process and you should get a good result. Now we’re talking automating this whole pipeline with agents.

业界常把软件开发比作工厂流水线：收集需求、构建功能、衡量成效。只要遵循流程，似乎就能得到好的结果。如今，我们甚至在谈论用智能体（agents）来自动化整个流程。

But two teams can talk to similar customers, have access to the same technology, and make very different things. The difference comes from how they understand what they see and the style they go about building it. The founder background or company DNA also shapes this a lot.

然而，两支团队即便面对相似的客户、使用相同的技术，也可能做出截然不同的产品。差异源于他们对所见事物的理解方式，以及他们构建产品时的风格。创始人的背景或公司的基因也在很大程度上塑造了这一点。

At Linear, we have always valued intuition over process or data. I think people sometimes understand that as making decisions based on personal preference, without much thought or evidence. What we mean by it is that your intuition develops through experience and understanding. You work on something, talk to customers, make mistakes, and learn what to pay attention to. The intuition is your point of view on something, and forcing to use your judgment, not hide behind faceless data.

在 Linear，我们始终认为直觉比流程或数据更重要。人们有时会将其误解为仅凭个人喜好做决定，缺乏思考或证据。但我们所说的直觉，是指通过经验和理解积累而成的洞察力。你在工作中与客户交流、犯错，并学会关注真正重要的事情。直觉是你对事物的独特观点，它要求你运用自己的判断力，而不是躲在冷冰冰的数据背后。

Before we launched, we talked to people across companies and roles about how they worked. We had our own frustrations with this type software, but those conversations helped us understand what mattered beyond our own experience. Our perspective got better after those conversations.

在产品发布前，我们与不同公司、不同岗位的人交流，了解他们的工作方式。我们自己对这类软件也有过不满，但这些对话帮助我们理解了自身经验之外的重点。经过这些交流，我们的视角变得更加开阔。

So eventually the products 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. I sometimes think of this as the soul of a product. You feel that someone cares about how the whole thing comes together.

最终，产品通过创造者所关注的事物、他们决定不做的事，以及在功能实现后仍持续打磨的部分，形成了独特的性格。我有时将其视为产品的灵魂。你能感觉到有人在用心考量整个产品是如何融为一体的。

A feature can work perfectly well on its own and still make the product worse. Recognizing that requires some belief about what the product should be. Someone has to make the call, then stay close enough to customers to see whether they were right.

一个功能可能单独运行得很好，却反而让产品变得更糟。要意识到这一点，需要对产品应有的形态有某种信念。必须有人做出决策，并与客户保持足够紧密的联系，以验证判断是否正确。

Recently, many products are starting to feel messy to me, including products from very successful companies. There seems to be more thought going into what the technology can do and what can be added than the form it should take. The product changes are primarily additive, not improving the core problem.

最近，我感到许多产品开始变得杂乱无章，即便是出自非常成功的公司。人们似乎更多地在思考技术能做什么、还能增加什么，而不是思考产品应有的形态。产品的变化主要是做加法，而非解决核心问题。

I think the reasons for this is that it’s lot easier to add new capabilities, than rethink existing capabilities. So each product becomes a collection of abilities, without actually having unified point of view.

我认为原因在于，增加新功能远比重新思考现有功能要容易得多。因此，每个产品都变成了一堆功能的集合，却缺乏统一的视角。

I wonder whether some of this comes from how the work is organized. Individuals work with agents to produce changes independently, each operating a small software factory. Each change might make sense on its own, but together they start to resemble Frankenstein’s monster rather than a carefully shaped sculpture.

我怀疑这部分原因源于工作组织方式的改变。个人与智能体协作独立产出变更，每个人都在运营一个小型的软件工厂。每一个变更单独看或许合理，但拼凑在一起，它们看起来更像是弗兰肯斯坦的怪物，而非精心雕琢的艺术品。

Without the shared perspective, soul, or thought, the product becomes an average of all those outputs. The choices that once gave it character are being diluted by day. More things work, but it becomes harder to feel someone or even something behind them.

失去了共同的视角、灵魂或思考，产品就成了所有产出的平均值。曾经赋予产品个性的选择正日益被稀释。虽然能用的功能变多了，但却越来越难感受到其背后的人，甚至难以感受到任何灵魂。

Making software is getting easier. I hope 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.

软件开发正变得越来越容易。我希望这能给人们更多空间去建立视角并深入贯彻。去深刻理解问题，并不断打磨答案，直到所有碎片完美契合。

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

我想要感受到软件背后的创造者，而不是工厂。