Product designer, aspiring chef and carpenter.
Brooklyn, NY
Joined April 2009
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Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
I didn’t think it was possible to combine primary-loser-sour-grapes & Islamophobia into a more toxic cocktail than Andrew Cuomo. But Haley Stevens has managed to do it.
If she wants to betray civil rights, reproductive freedom, immigrant protections, and working families by endorsing Mike Rogers and trying to give control of the Senate to J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, I guess that's her business — but it’s appalling, oddly patronizing, and simply false to claim that it’s in the interest of Michigan’s Jewish communities.
Our safety comes from welcoming the stranger, fighting for universal human rights, and building pluralist democracy — not from endorsing neo-Nazi adjacent MAGA fanatics.
Fortunately, there’s a powerful response of solidarity and shared safety, that every Jewish & non-Jewish Michigander can do on Tuesday:
Vote for @AbdulElSayed
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
Working class people’s lives are on the ballot on Tuesday—their healthcare, their rent, their bills.
Haley Stevens just betrayed them by endorsing the very Republican she said she wanted to run against.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
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.
"If you are not working 7 days per week, you are going to lose".
Corgi Insurance is the most intense workplace culture in startups.
- The company works 7 days per week.
- Founder (@nico_laqua) lives and sleeps in the office.
- He built a cafe in the office because there was no local cafe that was open 24/7.
- 2/3 of the first 30 team members have the Corgi logo as a tattoo.
Today I went behind the scenes with Nico, who has used this culture to scale the company to a $2.6BN valuation in just two years.
My condensed notes below:
1. If You Are Not Working 7 Days Per Week, You Are Going to Lose:
Whatever you can get done in 5 days, you'll get more done in 6 and 7. If you are trying to solve the world’s hardest problems, a standard 5-day workweek will not cut it.
2. Work Trials Repel the Mediocre:
Corgi forces candidates into mock work trials over the weekend. If seeing a full office on a Saturday scares them, they don't belong. True intensity acts as a natural filter to attract killers and repel clock-watchers.
3. Lead from the Front Lines
You can’t demand 7-day weeks while sitting on a yacht. Nico sleeps 3–4 hours a night on a mattress inside the office. If you want your troops to bleed, you have to be in the trenches with them.
4. Culture Only Means One Thing: Winning
Forget superficial jargon like "hackers" or "ex-founders." Strip away the corporate fluff. A great startup culture is aggressively optimized around one single word: Winning.
5. Lifespan vs. Victories
Building something world-historic requires radical sacrifice. When asked if he'd rather build a trillion-dollar company and die at 50, or fail and live to 80, the answer was easy. "I would rather measure my lifespan in victories."
6. Reject the Comfort of "Quiet Quitting."
If you are operating in a hyper-growth environment and your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every single week, you are quiet quitting. To win, you must deliberately bypass the off-ramps of personal comfort and low volatility.
Corgi isn't for everyone—and that’s exactly the point.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
Someone can certainly *make* a billion dollars. That’s not the same thing as earning.
Growing fast and disrupting markets also often means chasing and wielding market power, political influence, and scale.
Take Airbnb. They heavily lobby politicians against passing housing laws to protect working class residents because it’s bad for their business model.
Airbnb could not exist at its current scale and size without the housing market destabilizations, displacements, and exploits that are supercharging the evictions of working people everywhere from Puerto Rico to Jackson Hole.
Now young people are planning for a future where they will never be able to afford to own a home while others have 20 and live off renting it out to them at extortionate rates with zero protections. Yes, a tiny amount of people can make billions of dollars doing that. And millions of everyday Americans are bearing the cost.
Sure you can earn a billion dollars. I've been teaching people how to do it for 20 years. The way you do it is to start a company that grows fast. You don't have to do anything bad to make a company grow fast. You just have to make something people want.
paulgraham.com/ace.html
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
This is really neat but it’s not a design tool as much as it’s a design _production_ tool.
The practice of design is mostly about what comes before production.
There’s no doubt in my mind that all parts of software production will become automated very soon. Writing code, making web pages, putting pieces of a design system together etc.
And that’s fine. I think few people actually enjoy this kind of production work. Wouldn’t it be better if we spent our precious time in life on what is more meaningful?!
At the core, the practice of design is methodical; like architecture, not like art. In a nutshell: We find constraints, form comprehension of the whole and propose solutions that honor those constraints. First after that do we enter some form of production phase, usually prototypes first, learn about some constraints that were hidden before, loop back, prototype and then build the production-grade “final” artifact.
These last few tasks are quickly losing value because AI tools can do it much faster (not yet better though) than humans. It’s simply just what has the best RoI for a business.
Some companies and individuals will continue to spend human time on certain parts of the “production line” as a market differentiator, but it will cost them a relatively high price compared to competitors.
Anyhow, I still haven’t seen a tool better than Figma that supports the actually-interesting part of the design process.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Figma focused their products on that, maybe separating “products for production” of “products for ideation & exploration.” The latter would obviously still leverage AI, but not to do the work for me but rather to support my efforts the way a therapist helps me live a better life (not living my life for me.)
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
design seems to be viewed as dispensable in this very moment
but the reality that will become clear, as time has shown, is that design is what will make you rise above the rest
I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but it does feel AI-related. Unlike PM and eng, which started growing in 2024 (two years post-ChatGPT), design didn’t. If I had to venture a theory, I’d say that because AI is allowing engineers to move so quickly, there’s less opportunity—and less desire—to involve the traditional design process.
That said, you’d think design would become a differentiator as more products compete for attention. Something to think about for your company! We’ll keep watching this trend and AI’s impact on org design more generally.
One interesting observation we made when we went a level deeper: the ratio of demand for PMs vs. designers has flipped. In mid-2023, we went from more open designer roles to more open PM roles. And ever since, PM demand has been pulling away (currently 1.27x). This will be another trend to monitor, in terms of how AI is reshaping org design.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
No matter how long I live after we get through this dark chapter, I will never get over the immorality, the amorality, the corruption, the criminality and the cruelty in service to one of the worst humans to ever walk the earth.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war. Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace.
I am focused on making sure that every New Yorker is safe. I have been in contact with our Police Commissioner and emergency management officials. We are taking proactive steps, including increasing coordination across agencies and enhancing patrols of sensitive locations out of an abundance of caution.
Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders. You will be safe here.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
One of the most shamelessly fraudulent presidential campaigns in American history:
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
JUST IN: 🇮🇷🇺🇳 Iran calls on the United Nations to hold emergency meeting.
"If the international community does not respond to the aggression, it will be the end of international institutions."
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
The term “preemptive” is pure propaganda. The U.S. once again used the veneer of negotiations as a cover to bomb Iran. Tehran had just offered terms that went far beyond the 2015 nuclear deal. What was preempted was diplomacy. The same propaganda tactics used in 2003 Iraq war.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
Bombing Iran in the middle of negotiations, while starving Cuba, while genociding Palestinians, while threatening to invade Greenland… the US and Israel are the single greatest threat to humanity and it’s not even close. We are all forced to live in the nightmare they create.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
A statement from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, on our discussions with the Department of War.
anthropic.com/news/statement…
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
The stumble is a warning - but not in the way Ross thinks. It’s a warning to everyone on the left - from the liberals in the center to the socialists on the far left: the rightwingers and their friends in the mainstream media will happily engage in smear campaigns and gotchas against Dems in way they never do against the GOP. That we are all talking about this AOC Taiwan answer and not the rest of her answers, or even the fact that the president is an imbecile and an ignoramus who couldn’t find Taiwan on a map of his life depended on it is what’s revealing and Dems need to be ready for this media climate come 2028
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance at the Munich Security Conference — one of the world’s premier foreign-policy events — seemed to be a step in the direction of higher office. It was supposed to be a triumphant foreign visit for Ocasio-Cortez, who is, on the national level, the best current hope for the American left, political columnist Ross Barkan writes.
Though she acquitted herself well in a majority of the interviews and panels in Munich, one stumble stood out, writes Barkan. Questioned directly about whether the U.S. should send troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, Ocasio-Cortez stalled for about 20 seconds. “I think that, uh, this is such a, a — you know, I think that — this is a, um — this is of course, a, uh, a very long-standing, um, policy of the United States,” the congresswoman said.
The stumble is “a warning for progressives,” writes Barkan. “It’s vital to approach certain foreign-policy and national-security issues, including China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, in a more sophisticated manner.”
Read the full column: nymag.visitlink.me/UC9HNO
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
SaaS is dead because, obviously, people in giant companies are highly motivated, love doing stuff, and can't wait to vibe code all the apps they ever need themselves. They hate getting on the phone and yelling at their rep in particular. Those days are over.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
“Move fast and break things leaves no room for beauty.” ❤️
I find this the most hilarious aspects of the taste discourse. Silicon Valley spends all its time building, working and not enjoying or appreciating good works, not reflecting why they are good.
Always moving.
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
I have another talk about around quality. I think essentially mass-market capitalism, and the mass-production of goods, did cause part of it. You might have started with a very good nail, but over time, you started making it cheaper and cheaper, until it's no longer good or tasteful. It was forgotten because making things cheaper was more easily measurable.
This is my criticism of Silicon Valley as well, it's mass-produced software. Incentives rarely are making something good, but having momentum and the metrics to show something is successful.
linear.app/now/why-is-qualit…
Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana retweeted
I’ve been thinking why are all AI labs/industry running doomsday predictions.
AI replaces every industry.
Video models = movie studios, cooked
Cowork: white collar work, cooked
Voice model: support, cooked
Coding agents: swe, cooked
What if this technology helps people to do better work? Like now you can get better support because AI handles more of the dumb work. When is the last time you got great support?
It’s not like most of these domains operate in some golden era of quality, but more in some level of enshittification era.
My hopeful view is that AI will lift all boats and will make people or companies that are very good at what they do, to make it even better and pull ahead more.
