Ampersand Gazette #93
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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Why Is Quality So Rare?
The following is adapted from a keynote talk the author delivered at Config in May 2025. It’s slightly edited for clarity, but wanted to share these thoughts on craft, quality, and the choices we make as creators in an age of AI.
The modern world has made huge advances in knowledge, technology, and skill. We can build faster than ever. We know more than ever. Yet quality still feels so rare. So many things feel unfinished, broken, or forgettable—why?
That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer, almost my whole life. I remember as a kid, seeing bikes at the store, some of them just felt wrong. I couldn’t understand why someone would go through the effort of making something and not make it beautiful.
Later in my life, I realized it’s because many don’t care, many opt for cost, and many just do what’s easy. What I was noticing, even as a child, was the presence or absence of craft.
Craft Happens in Cycles
Before machines, everything was made by hand. A tool, a chair, a door. They reflected the skill and care that was put into them. Some things were rough. But when someone puts their full attention into the work, the result could be truly great.
This is what craft is about—the deliberate attention put into making something excellent, not because someone is checking, but because it matters to the maker.
Then came the industrial revolution and mass production. We started losing the connection to craft. We began to optimize for costs, speed, and quantity.
We’ve been living our own version of this in the software industry. In the beginning, small teams crafted software with care. They took pride in what they built.
But over time, the teams grew and the process started to look more like a manufacturing line. As we learned to ship to the cloud multiple times a day, we started to change how we work and think.
“Just ship it.”
“Move fast and break things.”
We replaced purpose with metrics. If it didn’t move a metric, it didn’t matter. Even we, as designers, stopped asking; “Does this feel right?.” Instead, we started asking: “Does it convert?”
Experiments and A/B testing replaced judgment. Optimizing for a process replaced craft.
The interesting thing is that this cycle keeps happening in the same way with each technological advancement, it’s nothing new. In 1927, Earnest Elmo Calkins wrote in The Atlantic, “The directing minds, absorbed in the new wonder of so many things made so easily [...] aggravated that fact by producing the bad design in incredible quantities. We passed from the hand to the machine, we enjoyed our era of the triumph of the machine [...] and then we began to miss something in our cheap but ugly products.”
You see this common cycle play out. Craft exists naturally at the beginning. Then technology comes along and makes it easier or quicker to create things, and so we’re pulled away from craftsmanship. But then we start to miss it (in our work and the products we buy) and in response we seek quality, which causes a revival of craft.
AI is Making Craft More Rare
Today, we’re at a familiar moment in the craft cycle. Maybe even bigger than before.
AI feels more like a change in substrate, rather than just another tool. Like electricity, the internet, or the mobile phone, it changes the material conditions of how we make things by putting near-instant creation in everyone’s hands.
While mass production separated the maker’s hand from the object, AI attempts to separate the maker’s judgment and taste from creation itself.
With each prompt, we’re trying to outsource not just labor, but the craft itself—the thinking, the intuition, the care. Yet craft, by its nature, can never be fully outsourced. The qualities that make something truly excellent come from being deeply involved in the entire process.
Technology makes it faster to build, but harder to care.
Craft is the Pursuit of Quality
The craft we’ve been discussing is essentially the input that creates quality. When something is crafted with care and attention, it possesses a certain feeling—a quality that’s difficult to define but impossible to miss.
Christopher Alexander called it “quality without a name.” He wrote: “There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit … It is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.”
It’s when something feels alive. When something feels right, even if you can't exactly describe why. You know when it’s there. And you know when it’s not. Like a door opening and closing perfectly, it’s satisfying.
At Linear, we recently did an interview series on quality. My takeaway from those interviews with different makers was that everyone approaches it differently. There isn’t a single right way to operate or create quality.
But one thing was common with everyone: The belief and need to seek that quality. Seeking the feeling of rightness, even when it was hard.
Quality is a Business Strategy
While some seek quality, it’s still not that common. Time after time, working in companies and teams, I heard: “Quality doesn’t matter, we have other priorities.”
The conventional wisdom in tech is that quality doesn’t scale. That pursuing craft is too slow, too expensive, too precious for business realities. That at a certain point, you have to choose between growth and craft.
This belief is so pervasive that it’s rarely questioned. Companies optimize for immediate metrics and quick wins, assuming quality will somehow take care of itself (it never does).
While I understood the reasons, I never fully believed in them. In the back of my mind, I always believed that if you actually try to do it, it can work. So when I started Linear, quality became a central part of the business. Not just because it was important to me personally, but also because I saw it as a way to win.
In a crowded market of issue tracking tools, Linear stood out through quality. Quality creates gravity—it pulls people in rather than requiring us to push. One team would experience Linear, tell others, and adoption would spread organically throughout organizations. This natural flywheel of experience to advocacy to adoption to loyalty has powered our growth far more effectively than traditional tactics ever could.
Linear became profitable by year two. And by year four, we had more than 10,000 paying customers with effectively zero marketing spend. Turns out when you build something that feels just right, your customers will do your marketing for you.
Quality at Linear
When I talk about quality, I don’t just mean product quality. I mean the whole customer experience. So, how do we build for quality at Linear?
• Quality as the north star for every team
We evaluate decisions by asking “does this improve quality?” not just “will this ship faster?”
• Intuition & customers over data
We trust our sense of what feels right and listen closely to users, not just metrics
• Hire only people who show craft and care
We look for evidence of taste and attention to detail in our work trials
• Small teams using their judgment
We believe 3-5 people with good taste make better decisions than large committees
• No handoffs, whole team iterates towards “right”
Rather than assembly-line development, we keep teams engaged from concept to completion
• MVPs for internal use only
We don't ship half-baked experiences; we test incomplete products internally first
• Zero bugs policy
Issues are fixed within 7 days
I’ve learned that building quality requires three elements working together: The belief that quality matters fundamentally, the skill and taste to recognize it, and the willingness to care deeply about the user’s experience.
Quality is a choice
The cycles of technology always drive us toward prioritizing speed and cheapness. We forget the craft. We stop paying attention to quality. And while we can’t stop these shifts, we also don’t have to surrender to them.
Quality is a choice we can make every day.
We can choose to care and put it in our work.
We can seek that feeling of rightness.
It starts with an individual. It can scale through teams and companies, but it always starts with an individual—you. Individuals who seek the quality without a name. Even when it’s not measurable or when the world tells them no.
I genuinely believe it’s the right thing to do, and I know it’s good for business. So if there is one trend I’d like to start, it’s this one. Regardless of what the world around us might tell us, let’s make this choice—let’s keep making things we’re proud to put our names on.
This is a full transcript of a speech given by Karri Saarinen, CEO of Linear
“Why Is Quality So Rare?”
May 27, 2025
Can you picture that Venn diagram of Good, Fast, and Cheap? The first time I was introduced to it, I was told, you can always have two out of three. Watch.
You can have it Good and Fast, but it won’t be Cheap.
You can have it Fast and Cheap, but it won’t be Good.
You can have it Cheap and Good, but it won’t be Fast.
No matter what the it is.
A perfect description of a business process that totally misses the point of Quality.
I rarely print a whole article in the Gazette. Usually, it’s because there’s a specific point I want to make via particular parts of an article. In this case, I couldn’t edit it. Oh, I tried. I did. But I failed.
I failed because no matter what I cut out, I realized that I was cutting out some piece of the process necessary to Quality. Further, that that would never do. That, in fact, was to miss the whole point of the presentation.
I hold Quality as highly important in my own value system. Quality matters more to me than Good, Fast, or Cheap. Are you asking how Good and Quality are different? I hope so.
Things are Good, most often, when the criteria for judgment are very narrow. Really, it means Good (enough). Fast and Cheap are pretty much self-explanatory, but Quality, even as Karri Saarinen says, is that elusive something.
I was asked to help a friend with a presentation recently. I spent several years teaching people how to give effective speeches, and sermons, come to that, and he wanted an outside perspective on his slides. He gave the speech. I coached.
The first few slides were illuminating. His talk was about Branding, and he opened with some research statistics from people who study branding in business. It took a bit for me to realize that they were telling the story from the viewpoint of the brands, not the viewpoint of the people who the brands are for.
It’s the mistake Westerners make all the time, and it boils down to a couple of vital points.
First, Quality is not the choice that is ordinarily made in business these days.
Second, business these days is for consumers not customers.
Ever heard of a Consumer Service Department? Me, either.
We rewrote the slides to tell the story from the viewpoint of the brands’ customers. Amazingly, that opened the way to prioritize Quality.
I’m not bashing AI here, either. AI has its uses. Alt text, anyone?
But even if your priority is Quality, and that value is embedded in the fabulous prompt you write for your favorite AI program, AI is missing the three fundamental elements required for Quality. They are:
Belief that quality matters fundamentally—um, yeah, AI doesn’t have beliefs.
The skill and taste to recognize quality—uh, sorry, AI doesn’t have skills or tastes.
The willingness to care deeply about the user’s experience—AI doesn’t have will, so it can’t have willingness.
Plus P. S. AI can only treat the person inputting as a user/consumer; it can’t switch its perspective—from consumer to customer.
AI isn’t the culprit here. AI is what AI is, not more or less.
But that’s not true of you. Have a think on this: Are you happy being a consumer? I’m not. When I interact with businesses, I am indeed considering using their products or services, but I’m a customer.
It’s the customer who demands Quality, not the consumer.
Sadly, it’s a chronic error in the West. We choose, again and again, what can be measured over what can be valued. My favorite example is the ACA. The pols love to tell us it’s about healthcare, but it’s not, and it never was. The ACA, as well-intended as it was meant to be, is about health insurance.
Healthcare can’t be measured, but health insurance sure can be. I don’t know about you, but I’d much prefer the beings with whom I share Earth to have healthcare over health insurance any day.
It’s a Quality issue.
One of the ways we’re going to begin to shift what’s happening in our world these days, is to revise how we think of ourselves, and to stick to who we decide to be from now on.
You gonna be a consumer or a customer? As a consumer, good (enough), fast, and cheap are the watchwords. As a customer, Quality is. What’s it gonna be, Belovèd?
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You Don’t Always Have to
Process Your Emotions
Emotions are a fundamental part of what make us human. They can be overwhelming, complicated or quiet—but we experience at least one emotion 90 percent of the time. This finding doesn’t shock Ethan Kross, the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan, who has been studying the science of emotion for over two decades.
What did surprise him, however, were results from another study, which found that about 40 percent of participants believed that you can’t control your emotions. “I was really floored,” Dr. Kross said. “If you don’t even think it is possible to manage your emotions, why would you ever try?”
He contends that emotions, even negative ones, are information. It’s not possible to control every part of our emotional lives, but people who are good at managing their feelings are less lonely, live longer, maintain more fulfilling romantic relationships and are more satisfied with their lives.
You don’t always have to ‘process’ your emotions. The prevailing wisdom in therapy and on social media is that we should face negative emotions head on—and that if we don’t, they will fester inside of us, Dr. Kross writes. There’s no doubt that coping with stressful situations through chronic avoidance is harmful and can lead to more psychological distress. But the trouble with the “avoidance is toxic” argument is that it assumes that all avoidance is bad.
Sometimes, it’s best not to choose between approaching or avoiding, but to shift between the two intentionally. Avoidance can allow the intensity of a negative experience to diminish, and it can provide distance that helps us see the experience from a broader perspective.
Talk to yourself in the second person. When we use the word “you,” it is almost exclusively to refer to other people, Dr. Kross said. But when you use it on yourself, it’s a tactic known as distanced self-talk, which can be a powerful way to regulate negative emotions. Dr. Kross and his colleagues found that people who used distanced self-talk to regulate their feelings showed signs of feeling better within seconds.
Your senses are an emotional superpower. Dr. Kross’s research has found that some of “the most effortless” tools that you can use to shift your emotions are sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste. Our brains respond almost instantly to sensory experiences—and we can use our senses as “emotional levers” to change our mood. You can also intentionally use music to regulate your emotions.
When it comes to using these strategies, Dr. Kross cautioned that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. “Different tools for different people in different situations,” he said.
Excerpted from a Well Column by Jancee Dunn in The New York Times
“You Don’t Always Have to Process Your Emotions”
4.8.25
There are people who love to process their emotions with others. If you’re one of them, and it’s working for you, and the people you process with, excellent. But, if you don’t like to process your emotions with others, that isn’t a failing, despite what the processors tell you.
Each of us handle our emotions differently. And with reason. When I have two clients in the same day present a similar problem to me, I have found over forty years that the two, despite the “same” problem, will have it wired internally in completely different ways. That’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed so fascinated with the human psyche for so long.
I agree with Dr. Kross: Emotions are information. They’re the best barometer each of us has to let us know how we are, what’s happening, and if we have the need to make a change. But, and here’s the issue, a whole slew of people live as though they are victims of their own emotions.
Um, no. In fact, absolutely not. Now you may feel helpless to change your emotions, and sometimes in the heat of the moment that may be true, but it isn’t true long-term. The thing that I see again and again is people assigning responsibility for their own emotions to others.
It’s the “you made me” defense, if you will. Again, um, no. You can’t make me … anything emotional. I allow myself to be [that particular emotion.] A very different matter.
You may not be the direct catalyzer for your emotions all the time, but you are always and forever responsible for dealing with them all the time. How you do that is up to you.
Jill Bolte Taylor, the author of My Stroke of Insight, her memoir of watching herself have a stroke and recover from it, says that the average emotion lasts 90 seconds. Ninety SECONDS! That’s all.
Well, hell’s bells, I can manage any feeling for ninety seconds. Can’t you?
Dr. Kross’s suggestions are good ones. Here’s another, more specific one: when you’re caught in an emotion that’s too hot or too cold or too anything to handle, take a page out of Sir Paul McCartney’s songbook, and Let It Be.
Yup. Just let it be what it is for however long it takes you to get a little perspective. One of the best techniques I know for handling is emotions, like this one, is the Time Out. Put yourself in time out. Stop. Walk away. Let it be.
Remember it’s ninety seconds of discomfort. Do something different. Play the piano. Read a book. Do jumping jacks. Weed the garden. Something … anything to let the feeling have the space it needs to dissipate.
Now that isn’t avoidance, it’s allowing. As in the first few verses of Creation … And God said, Let there be … Allow the feeling.
Sure, okay, you have an opinion of it. So? Is it helpful? Kind? Transformative? If not, let it be, too.
There’s a book on my shelf that I’ve never read. I bought it for the title alone. “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die.”
They don’t. But feelings allowed the space to be, relax, and release, return their progenitor to real ease. Try it once. You’ll see that I’m right.
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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …
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I’ve done the changes for Impending Decision, and uploaded the MS into Vellum—the magical software program that makes ebooks so elegant. Now it’s time for us to read it aloud as a proof. I’ll keep you posted on a pub date.
Because of working on the changes in Jayne’s book, I’m still nose to the grindstone with Evil Words and Jaq Direct. I’m hoping to finish them this next week, and send the MS across the living room to my editor. Fingers crossed.
As for writing … well, all I can say is that between now and November five major planets will go in and out of retrograde, and let me share what that means for a multiple air-sign girl like me. I CANNOT get grounded!
I have considered … Mex in Shrew This! as a next book. I have considered the next in Boots & Boas, a novella featuring Geoff and Greg’s story. I have considered a series I started more than 20 years ago, which, if I go that route, I will share with you as soon as I decide. I have thought about doing the backlog of publishing that’s on my plate, and catching everything up. I have considered putting writing books down for a while to focus on my new plans for my web presence having finally connected with my web wizard.
And I CANNOT DECIDE. So I’m not. Deciding, that is. When it’s time for me to know what’s next, I’ll do what’s next, but with all this chaos all around us, on Earth as well as in the Heavens, I’m just gonna hold still until told otherwise.
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Soon enough, it will be time to feature the complete series of The Subversive Lovelies. Here are the first three-and-a-half books.
As always, whichever book of mine you enjoy, would you please leave a stellar review, if you loved it? Those reviews are how others find indie authors like me. I really appreciate it!
Reviews really are the engine that powers the career of an indie author.
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Having just finished integrating Tony’s edit of the fifth Boots & Boas Romance, Impending Decision, it deeply reaffirms my long-standing opinion that Tony Amato is my favorite editor for lots of reasons, but mostly because he has an uncanny ability to seek, find, see, and polish the truth of a writer’s voice.
The coolest thing is, the genre doesn’t matter. His skills apply. I write mysteries, romances, speculative fiction, essays, and nonfiction. Others of his roster write for academic journals, radio plays, micro-fiction, erotica, memoir, poetry, screenplays, essays, workbooks, teleplays—you name it. His talents help with any kind of writing.
If the truth of your voice as a writer is in need, may I encourage you to reach out for Tony’s spectacular book-husbanding? Seriously, this is the guy. He’s edited my books for more than 20 years, so I ought to know. Find him here. Oh, and here’s his substack Subscribe here.
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The Making of a Mechanical Heart: Self-Discovery, Joy, and Forgiveness on the Road to Dying by Felice Boucher
From the blurb … “This is not a poor-me story. Boucher pulls us through a series of captivating scenes, from her tough and at times hilarious upbringing in the 1950s and 1960s in Lewiston, Maine, to her days as a single mom and art student in Portland, to portraits of lovers along the way. Then cancer arrives, and a chance meeting with Buddhist teachings begins to heal her heart.”
This book is Ow and Wow woven together so inextricably that my reaction shifted from paragraph to paragraph. This is what the author says about its genesis:
“My book started as a letter to my adult children. I wanted them to know about my childhood and how it formed who I am today. The letter continued to grow longer and longer. I ended up being diagnosed with stage four cancer and given only eight to nine months to live. I worked on the letter that ultimately became a book. It gave me a reason to get up every morning. I worked on it every day for two years. It was something that I just had to do; the stories and feelings just came tumbling out of me. I'm not a skilled writer; however, I love telling stories. Thank you for taking a look at my book.”
I don’t think anyone would argue the notion that these three words … You have cancer … are definite life-changers, but Felice Boucher uses them in a way that’s all her own. The metaphor of a mechanical heart is a great descriptor for how she was raised.
Felice raised her own children completely differently, and once they were launched, realized, although she doesn’t say this explicitly, that she had one more child to raise—herself. Then she set about the task, facing Stage Four cancer, with aplomb, with courage, with fear, and she persevered until she lived into her own form of inner peace.
This book does not uplift, nor does it trample down. Instead, it’s a steady chord of harmony. Sometimes, it’s harmony lost, sometimes, harmony found, but harmony both ways always. I could not put it down.
This is the book to give any friend who faces those same three words. No miracles, no crazy leaps of faith, no woo, just real, honest, vulnerable growing up.
P.S. Felice’s photographs are totally stunning. Find her here for a visual treat, and if one ends up framed in your home, so much the better.
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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one?
Does this seem obvious to you?
It isn’t to most people.
Why is that, do you suppose?
The reason is …
that, being human, we want instant gratification.
Great, we say, so God is listening.
Big deal, what’s next?
How’s God gonna fix it?
Or fix me?
Think, Belovèd, think.
Haven’t you ever had a friend
ask you just to listen?
Not to comment?
Not to fix?
Not to advise?
What they needed was a witness.
And afterward, didn’t that friend say,
“Thank you so much.
I just needed someone to listen.”
God listens to everything.
Where the process breaks down
is in our receiving the witness.
So spill your guts this week,
and then wait till you feel heard.
God listens,
so I promise you will.
I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we?
Until next time,
Be Ampersand