Linear’s performance is incredible - the best perceived speed of any web app I’ve ever used.

We were constantly fighting our existing issue tracking tool to support EPD. We felt there was a lot of “work about work” to keep tasks and projects organized. Views easily got out of date and required fine tuning. It was difficult to search for issues and then save those views. It became clear to us that we were trying to get our previous issue tracker to do something that it simply wasn’t built to do well.

Linear is different. It has a better model and structure for engineering orgs. Sprints, points, priority, and status are all treated as first class properties of tasks. Search and filtering are powerful and the timeline view is one of the best I’ve seen. The command palette and keyboard shortcuts make it way faster to move around and do things, too.

Linear is more opinionated than other tools. There aren’t multiple ways to use it. This actually has made it easier to learn and adopt across the organization. It’s also an app full of great ideas that can inspire our own product development.

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Descript

CEO & Founder

The ability to have a single place to communicate around bugs and feature requests is genuinely very helpful. We can point to Linear as the source of truth where people will update information and have conversations.

I think people prefer using software from companies that have a high velocity of shipping features. When we first started using Linear, we requested a new feature — issue templates. Templates are huge for us and we still use the feature regularly, particularly for capturing comprehensive information around bug reports and customer requests so that engineering can hit the ground running. Default templates mean that rather than having to refer to a wiki on how to create an issue, the information is there when we need it. I'm sure we weren’t the only ones who requested it but a couple weeks later, Linear actually shipped the feature.

Using Linear has had a positive impact on our customers' experience, too. The GitHub integration sends an automatic status update when code is merged for an issue. This means is that the customer-facing DRI knows exactly when engineering fixes an issue and can let the customer know that a bug is resolved or a feature request has been shipped. Linear removes a step in the communication chain. I don't have to remember to go and check that issue or ask the engineer for an update. This alone has driven value for our customers since they get updates faster. As the company has grown and it becomes harder to track the status of any given task, these automated updates have become more important.

The fastest way to build internal applications

Retool

Deployed Engineer

As a distributed team, we were looking for a better tool to help us manage our product development work and reduce the cost of coordination. Then we tried Linear and suddenly all those problems went away.

We started using Linear while working on a new, intense project. We needed something that could keep up with a new team developing ways of working together. The project itself was moving quickly with constant changes to priority and scope. We spoke on looms multiple times a day but needed a tool to help us manage tasks. Everything we tried added more work to our plates.

Then we tried Linear and suddenly all our task management problems went away. I think one of the main reasons was the speed. The team felt that they could get into the tool, find what they were looking for or figure out what they needed to do, and then get back to work. That combined with the Inbox was helpful because now engineers felt like they could go to a single place to see what mattered to them. They didn’t have to go and look at the entire board or search through all the issues to figure it out.

The biggest challenge with these tools is usually adoption, but that hasn’t been an issue with Linear. People just started using it on their own. Engineers on the team could figure out how to use Linear without needing to ask for instructions. I remember one engineer who was skeptical of switching tools. We were on a Zoom call, and as I updated an issue in Linear, the change updated in his browser as fast as it displayed in Zoom on the screenshare, if not slightly faster. He audibly gasped. He didn’t need any convincing after that point.

I noticed an inflection point on the team when I saw that engineers were proactively creating their own issues and defining work within the tool. A lot of times, the project management tool can’t keep up with the pace of the work but Linear does. It is so easy to create at the speed of my thinking. I don’t have to wait for the software to keep up as I structure work. I don’t need to stop and think about how to organize the work, how it relates to other issues, or where to save it. I can just create.

Historically I haven’t been able to trust my project management tool to be a source of truth. It almost always lags the truth. That’s not the case with Linear – it’s always the best view of work.

Loom

Senior Engineering Manager

It’s powerful enough for the engineering team but incredibly intuitive for people who don't touch code.

We had been trying to adapt flexible tools to product management and it wasn’t working. Our previous tool could be used for everything but it didn’t give us the information we needed most: a clear view of what everyone was working on as individual contributors and where our energy was focused as a company.

Once we started using Linear, things immediately felt faster. The defaults were close to how we approached building product. From issue tracking to the Github automation to quarterly milestones, it fit with our workflow. While we planned to try Linear with my team first, before we could finish the trial the whole company was using it. We don’t just track engineering and design work in Linear but also tasks related to growth, documentation, and support. Even the contractors we work with are in it.

A couple of things changed once the full team was on Linear. One is that we're able to track what is going on in a distributed company which had been hard to do with random docs and outdated lists. Everything is synced in Linear across views and with GitHub, so it’s always up to date. This means people are able to communicate better. They see what is happening and know who to ask questions or what is next.

The second thing is that using Linear built a culture around taking action. We started keeping better track of issues that used to get lost in Slack messages or conversations. It was so fast to create an issue and even enjoyable that people now create issues instead of talking about them.

There had been some concern since Expo is an open source tool and moving to Linear meant that we’d no longer have a single, public source of truth. Using Linear requires this trade off but the benefits have been worth it.

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Expo

Engineering Manager

Linear might sound on the surface like tools you’re used to, and in some ways it is, but like any really good tool, it’s a step function increase in value. It offers just the right primitives with just enough flexibility, while avoiding busy work and remaining simple to use.

We believe that building the best product requires three things: great builders, autonomy, and context. But having all three is really hard, especially as you grow a team. Autonomy gets traded for an increase in context, by adding synchronous meetings or project managers. Context gets lost at the expense of maintaining autonomy, as decisions and data get lost in a sea of tools.

As we passed a product team of 10, and a company of 25, we started to lose context. A feature might live partially in Github, Trello, Dropbox, Slack, and Figma, and they rarely stay in sync. For us, context was losing to autonomy and we needed a solution.

We searched every tool to find a way to bring balance back to autonomy and context. You name it, we tried it. 

When we tried Linear, we knew we’d found something magical. Every team has its own needs with its own process, and somehow Linear manages to be flexible enough to solve for all of them without being confusing. High level context is captured in Projects, long term context is captured in Roadmaps, low level context is captured in Issues, and short term context is captured in Cycles. Any teammate can zoom in to a specific timeline or part of a project, or zoom out to understand the long term plans.

Linear might sound on the surface like tools you’re used to, and in some ways it is. You’ll instantly recognize almost every aspect of it so it’s easy to get started. But like any really good tool, it’s a step function increase in value by offering just the right primitives with just enough flexibility, while avoiding busy work and remaining simple to use.

Unsplash

Head of Product & Co-founder

It's easy enough for my coworkers to update that I always have the current state of the world.

At Render, engineers take turns doing customer support. We'll answer questions in our Slack channels and email users who report in bugs and feature requests. Often, an issue will come up from a user that has been reported before but we haven't gotten around to implementing it yet. The common impulse is to jump in and fix the problem they're having, but it's more helpful to be able to pause and check Linear to see the state of the issue. There's usually a reason we haven't fixed it yet and we'll see that in the description or comments. We make better decisions because the information is updated and in one place.

It's also been helpful that members of our team outside of engineering feel comfortable in Linear. We can share issues without friction and they can use the tool without much onboarding. This has been helpful in planning meetings, where it's so much easier to throw in a link to a Linear issue to share context than to explain the background information verbally.

That's another thing I appreciate about Linear: how easy it is to be onboarded between the UI and simple terminology. Projects, labels, and teams are just projects, labels, and teams. Anyone who opens Linear can understand it quickly. Linear keeps everything in one place in a way that's easy for people to reason with, and I think that's what an issue tracker is for in the first place.

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Render

Software Engineer

Linear’s GitHub integration is so perfect it tickles my brain. 

It ties task management to git. From git-blame to GitHub PR to Linear task, it’s all linked. I love the way you "stumble towards success" using it, as long as you start with the right branch name.

The app is full of positive feedback cycles. If I start a branch unconnected to a task, I'll be making my own life harder down the line. Linear forces me to make sure that there is a task for each branch. This ensures there is context around each change and then allows my coworkers to keep up. I built a CLI tool to optimize our workflows further.

Linear been a gamechanger for our workflow at Darkroom.

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Darkroom

Linear makes it easy for everyone on the team to be a stakeholder in the product.

At a lot of companies, the PM will tell you what you're going to work on. They break everything up into tasks and assign it to you. You become this coding monkey that is responsible for punching out code and your input is coffee and dollars.

At Doppler, it's the polar opposite. Everyone on our team is responsible for their own tasks. We have this high-level goal of what we want to accomplish. Everyone puts their own issues into Linear. My job and team's job generally is to make sure that we're working on the right things. People get to be a stakeholder, add their own work, and say, "This is what I believe we should be working on, at least for my domain in the company." It makes everyone feel that they have a voice.

We even take it a step further and let people create issues for others. They can come up with an idea, assign it to someone, then that person can acknowledge that they are going to work on it because it goes into a sprint cycle when it’s moved to todo. Once work is shipped, the issue creator is notified and can even follow up with the customer afterwards. That's powerful. It would have never happened in a nonlinear world.

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Doppler

Linear has helped us keep our momentum as we’ve grown and even sped it up.

We use Craft for almost everything internally, from knowledge management to stand-ups to gathering ideas. We saw that bug reporting and smaller improvements didn't fit well, though, so we tried Linear. We don't think all-in-one tools work. While we use very few tools outside of Craft, Linear is one of them.

We loved how lightweight Linear was and that we could gradually add more features to our workflow as our team needed them. We used the app with its default settings from day one without having to modify configurations or create new processes. We signed up, created issues, and then started tracking them. A few weeks later we started using projects. Recently we began using cycles to give us a clear view of goals for the week and progress we're making toward them. Someone on our team built an integration between Linear and Craft in one day. The app has become a critical part of our daily life.

We love to move fast. We care about delivering features that are polished and fun to use. We’ve learned over the years to avoid tools that slow us down or bring us out of our flow. At startups, it’s even more critical to ship fast. Linear helps us do this.

Craft

Product Manger

Linear is built for efficiency which is so important for developers. It doesn't get in a way. 

When we were onboarding new team members, one of the most important things was that we didn't need to explain how to use Linear. We added them to the tool and they figured out what they needed to do there in order to work efficiently. 

Unlike so many other applications, Linear doesn't get in the way of your work or disrupts your flow in order to write something down. It’s so easy to use Linear that as an individual, you catch yourself creating more issues that are just for you which you normally wouldn't. You're assigning them to yourself because it's easier to keep track of work that way and because you trust the tool to help you get that work done. 

Putting the individual experience first may seem counterintuitive for a team collaboration tool. But at the end of the day, it's the individual contributor who produces the product and its components. We have all worked on teams that have scaled up and seen how suddenly you're doing a lot of "busy work" yet you stop shipping and you're not progressing anymore as an organization. The Linear team clearly builds the app with the individual maker in mind, from the small details to keyboard shortcuts to automations. I think it's a great example of how you can build a product that serves the individual while powering the team by finding the right bridges between these two worlds.

Raycast

CEO & Co-founder

Taxes, retirement, and health insurance have traditionally been independent silos, so the problem we’re solving is complex, dynamic, and operationally interwoven. To do it well, we need to execute flawlessly on the basics to stay focused on delivering the larger vision. Strong command of our tools and processes is critical.

Linear gets the structure just right. It’s clear but flexible. It’s opinionated but you never feel like you’re fighting the tool. You can customize the app to suit your needs but it’s not a Choose Your Own Adventure game.

Every team at Catch users Linear– engineering, design, operations, engagement, compliance. Teams structure their work differently and use different features, yet we’re all able to work together closely with a single thread. Finance and insurance are both complex and regulated industries, so it’s especially helpful to be able to create a connected plan across different activities and know whether we’re facing something within or out of our immediate control. 

. Now we have one place to go for all of our projects with tracked progress per team. Intuitive graphics to show momentum or potential overrun. Figma designs, Github pull requests, Notion product specs, and Intercom customer conversations are all linked together. Linear forms a common backbone and is the singular thread that aligns different pieces and parts of projects together.

Automated taxes, health insurance, and retirement for independents in one simple app

Catch

CTO/CPO & Founder

We love the way Linear supports autonomy of our delivery teams, giving each of them flexibility to fine tune their process. 

At the same time it brings everyone at Pleo together, providing a well thought-through baseline for successful project management.

We found that Linear doesn’t have all the features some alternative tools offer, but it has just the right features built and combined just the right way to support the workflows we need - in a way that is intuitive and robust. This product philosophy is very compatible with how we build Pleo and the reason why it was a natural fit for us.

Smart company cards that automate expense reports

Pleo

Engineering Lead

Linear felt different from other products we’d used in the past because of the emphasis on design. 

Everyone on our team, regardless of technical expertise, has been able to participate in the product development process because of Linear’s intuitive design.

As we transitioned to remote work during the pandemic, the app was critical in helping us keep tight communication loops, discuss ideas, and create a central space for our work as well. If it's not in Linear, it's likely to disappear.

Using Linear created good habits and workflows for us early on, and that’s scaled well as the company has grown. Even the tiniest tasks go into the app and there is a lot of relief that comes along with knowing that our thoughts, ideas, small fixes, hopes, dreams and brainstorms are all in Linear.

Braid

We could see that tasks were getting done faster and the product quality improved.

We had outgrown our current tools and were looking for a tool that would scale with us. We also wanted a tool that was easy for everyone to use.

As a small startup it was important that people could take ownership of their work. I’ve found that people do better work when they own the responsibility. You should write your own issues. You should understand why the code is delivered the way it is and be able to reflect on what different paths you can take along with their time costs and tradeoffs.

Because Linear is low touch, anyone in the company can enter the product development process. Everyone on our team up to their level of comfort owns some aspect of the product and manages their own tasks and projects. This also frees up my time for higher leverage work like talking to customers.

Linear felt like a natural fit to our process and in fact elevated it. The app creates a sense of momentum. You create an issue, work on it, and then it almost guides you to completion.

Reducing friction at every stage of the business lifecycle

Middesk

CTO & Co-founder

Our product got better and our releases got shorter and we’ve had fewer bugs because we now have every single detail written down in Linear.

I think it’s helped productivity due to the fact that it’s fast. It matters because the team can stay focused on delivering value for our customers and that means we can market our product better and faster. It took us one day of consideration and not even the full day to move to Linear.

What Linear changed is that it takes the same amount of time to create an issue as it does to write something in Slack. Instead of talking about an issue, what we're doing now is creating the issue, no matter how small or relevant or irrelevant at that time. That didn't happen before because creating tickets took a lot of work. 

This is where speed really matters. You open up Linear quickly. The app loads fast and you can use keyboard shortcuts for everything. It takes a couple of seconds to create an issue and then you can focus back on what you were working on. There is less context switching and Linear feels like an extension of your brain.

I'm quite amazed by the delivery speed and the pace that Linear is delivering features. I’ve sent feedback and then seen my request get delivered a couple of weeks later. We appreciate that a lot. That's also how we like to work over at GraphCMS. We like to deliver fast and Linear helps us do that.

GraphCMS

We tried several project management tools. They helped us 

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Linear is the tool of choice for category leading and fast growing companies