Why Linear and Issue Trackers Are Always Lagging Indicators
Linear is always a lagging indicator
I argue that tools like Linear fail as real-time visibility metrics when management uses them to track progress, causing engineers to focus on tickets rather than actual engineering. Since most planning happens in informal conversations and design reviews before a ticket is even created, the tool only reflects work after the hard thinking is done. I believe half of organizational effort is wasted figuring out what everyone is doing, suggesting we need LLMs to synthesize status from Slack and PRs instead.
My pet theory is that at least 50% of the work done at a large organization is internally figuring out what the organization is doing.
- shaewest
I think the issue with more fine grained task tracking, is that suddenly you're providing information to higher ups that might not directly understand why 'planning' takes so long, or testing. Right now they're given a 'picked up till code review till test till deploy', and that's already a metric they try to optimize, and if we add in 'planning, then talking to customers, then talking to coworkers on the issue' we'll start seeing that get hyperoptimized which will hurt more than help, imo.
- QuercusMax
This article is incomprehensible. I picked up from context that "linear" is some kind of bugtracker, but aside from that I don't know what the author is trying to say.
- esafak
That depends on how you use it. Linear is positioning itself as the place where work starts; you write the ticket, and have Linear implement it: https://linear.app/agents
And the ticket tracker is the perfect place to discuss things before building them because it has the context of all the work that preceded it.