Linear COO on Rebuilding the Product Development Lifecycle for Teams and Agents — From Issue Tracker to Shared Operating System | Cristina Cordova | E299

Linear maintains a lean team of 140 employees while serving over 20,000 paying customers by prioritizing high-bar hiring through 2-5 day paid work trials rather than traditional interviews. As the company scales into the enterprise market, it shifts from feature-based messaging to value-based narratives that emphasize organizational efficiency and seamless migration. The integration of agentic workflows—ranging from "Tesla-style" human-in-the-loop triage to fully autonomous coding agents—allows teams to accelerate product development. Chief Operating Officer Cristina Cordova emphasizes that leaders must maintain native thinking by personally experimenting with AI tools rather than delegating all technical exploration. This approach enables the company to build for diverse user needs, from individual contributors seeking keyboard shortcuts to CTOs requiring enterprise-grade security and data-driven insights.