Nate Norberg

Follower of Christ, Husband, Father, Musician, Software Developer/Designer, and Sound Guy

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@JJ_Denhollander Um, why would emptying out the chambers and replacing them with those who can clear this low bar be a bad thing?

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@burkeholland What? Are you saying I need to pay attention to context for things instead of making a black and white decision?

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@dillon_mulroy I’m glad to hear others feeling this too. I felt like I kept hearing stuff like “the best devs are thriving with AI”

It’s nice to hear I’m not the only one who sometimes misses the old world

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@realDailyWire That’s because it doesn’t say that. That’s from the Bible.

It’s probably hard for him to keep track of all these texts that he hasn’t read

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@sarah_edo I feel like I’m always chasing the seam of this supposed split. I was a CS and music major and now I’m an engineer who designs. It’s my happy place!

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@ThePrimeagen I wonder if every day a different developer merges a PR to rearrange the home screen

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@kellaywho Congrats! That's such an achievement!

[dax @thdxr]

it's so crazy ai is bad at your job but good at everyone else's job

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@kentcdodds I actually like using my computer/phone for things. Plus, most of the chaos in my life is stuff that AI can't help with anyway (other than my job)

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@mr__blonde_ @DavidAFrench Yeah, that's fair. I use the label more for myself though. I want to keep my own ideals. My concern is that if I call myself a democrat (instead of saying i've been voting for democrats) then I'm training myself to be less objective about things

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@mr__blonde_ @DavidAFrench I call myself independent because i don't agree with either platform on everything. every election i'm weighing candidates and issues, even if lately i've been mostly siding with one party

it just seems weird to me to pick a party ahead of an election

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@dillon_mulroy I’ve never had such mixed emotions about a technology. It’s exciting and I’m more productive than ever, but if I could wish it all away I probably would

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@nlevin i like it! everything just looks a bit sharper

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@ThePrimeagen Maybe it could 100x your coding speed, but that doesn't 100x your company, it just reveals your new bottleneck

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@figma 👋 I'd wear it

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

I love this mentality! (and also love Taskmaster)

[Brian Bailey @bb]

We spent a year building Basecamp 5, which launched last week. One phrase kept coming back to me throughout: Don't accept the premise.

But that may have also been because I was watching Taskmaster 😄

https://t.co/DMjz76SlmY

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

The fallacy of this is that more creates more. More hours, more hiring, more something.

And it is true in a sense. If you put in more work, more work will happen. But I think for most startups, the leverage is really in how differently you approach the problem, how well you cultivate your team, and the strategy.

Any large company can outspend you on hours. They have thousands or tens of thousands more people, spending more hours. If hours worked were the metric, every large company and government organization would always win and do the best work. More hours, better output.

This thinking is often representative of younger founders, where the startup becomes their identity and life. They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you. But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.

I’ve never worked this way. As a designer, I always saw the need to take a step back, to take a break. At times, I might work 12 hours or 16 hours, or whatever amount was needed, but it wasn’t the norm. You just can't grind design, you need inspiration. But taking that step away from the work, would give me more perspective, inspiration and I could approach the problem differently or I could just see the solution.

Grinding is never good for any creative problem, and startups or creating new products are often mostly about creative problem solving. Grinding works ok for email jobs, or where you just executing on very clear playbook.

With Linear, we’ve never worked this way. We work reasonable hours, 5 days a week. All of us founders have families. Many of our employees have families. I personally stop every evening, spend time with the family, cook dinner for the family, eat dinner together, and focus on things outside of work. Sometimes I work in the late evenings or weekends, but to me the pride is that I don’t need to. Company should be succesful without it.

My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesn’t require heroics or personal sacrifices every single day.

There are times when our team is heroic. Launches, incidents, some other work that just needs to be done. They will work late into the night because they know it is the right thing. But we don’t require that every day or every week, and the more this happens, the more I think it is a failure of our company and leadership. The team and the leaders should always keep a reserve to use when something is needed.

Our thinking was also that quality, which we value, doesn’t emerge from working more or stressing people more. It emerges when you create the conditions for it to emerge. Often it is the appreciation, space, time, and how the person feels. A person who is rested will do better work.

I wouldn’t attribute much of our success to working a lot. The success came from having clear thinking, ideas, and focus to do the right things.

I sometimes wish we could move the culture more toward a Zen master.

Real mastery is not exerting the most effort. It is achieving the outcome with the least necessary effort.

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@maceip @jacobmparis Hmm, I’d have been willing to pay some for arc, but they just pivoted away to making an AI browser that I didnt want. It’s a shame

[Nate Norberg @natenorberg]

@maceip @jacobmparis When did they do that? I was using arc until several months after they abandoned it and I don’t remember them ever asking me to pay for it

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

Faith in eventually.

Making something new takes patience. But it also takes faith. Faith that everything will work out in the end.

During the development of most any product, there are always times when things aren’t quite right. Times when you feel like you may be going backwards a bit. Times where it’s almost there, but you can’t yet figure out why it isn’t. Times when you hate the thing today that you loved yesterday. Times when what you had in your head isn’t quite what you’re seeing in front of you. Yet. That’s when you need to have faith.

There are designs that are close, but not there yet. There are obvious conflicts that will need to be resolved. There are lingering things that confound you, confuse you, or upset you, but you know that eventually they’ll work themselves out. Eventually you’ll find the right way to do something you’ve been struggling with.

It’s hard to live with something that isn’t quite right yet – especially when it’s your job to get it right. It’s important to know when to say “it’s fine for now, but it won’t be fine for later.” Because moving forward is critical to getting somewhere. And, eventually, you’ll figure it all out. It’ll all work out in the end.

This is what I’ve always believed, and have always tried to practice. A dedicated faith in the eventual resolution of a problem, the eventual execution of a concept, and the eventual realization of the right design. Even when something’s poking out you don’t like, or something isn’t aligning quite right, or the words aren’t as elegant as you’d hoped, or something just isn’t easy enough yet, you need to have confidence it’ll all come together eventually.

Remember that what you’re making is in a perpetual state of almost right up until the end. And it's never right even after.

In the meantime, you just press on and keep making things, trying things, and getting closer and closer to the time when you can tie the loose ends into a perfect bow and present it to the world. What fun it is!