Senior Leadership is out to Lunch - Software Engineer Shopify Employee Review

2.0
May 9, 2023
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great/close colleagues. - Interesting projects to work on. - Great learning resources and opportunities. - Good WLB, depending on where you are in the organization.

Cons

- The company is run by a CEO that changes his mind on a whim with little to no pushback from people directly under him. Case-and-point, he acquires a fulfillment company for 2.1 billion dollars, only to sell it for 1.1 billion dollars 10 months later. This is not an example of sane or prudent decision making. I understand that successful acquisitions are rare but I've never seen an acquisition given up on or resold less than a year later. Such whimsical decision making does not happen with people who know how to run companies. - Senior leadership outright lies. Case-and-point, in Feb 2023, the president of Shopify states that no more layoffs will happen. Then 3 months later a 20% layoff occurs. Even the most senior leaders of a company cannot guarantee, under all circumstances, that layoffs will not occur. So don't bother saying that they won't occur in major business news publications. This is an example of why you shouldn't take what leadership says at face value. - Depending on where you are in the organization, you may find yourself on project where you have to deliver features, quality be damned. You may or may not be okay with this approach to software development. - Internal processes and communication tools change with no realized benefit. On the contrary, there have been net negative benefits of some changes. - Attempts at fostering a trusting culture are laughable.

Explore other reviews about Shopify

5.0
Jul 2, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing company with incredible product

Cons

None that I can think of

2.0
Jun 29, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

- Kind and talented co-workers - Generous AI token spend - Fairly transparent company (has been getting less transparent over the years) - Lots of opportunity for impact

Cons

- Product management discipline is quite lacking since the new CTO joined - Microsoft culture is adding more chaos and stress, and causing projects to actually go slower - Managers are afraid to tell the truth to Mikhail about the loopholes in engineering; they just want to look good, so they rush their teams to ship crap - Top engineering leaders are moving out of management roles or leaving the company - Tobi used to be far more involved in ensuring a high engineering bar, but seems to have handed over the reins to the new Microsoft regime

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