Shopify reviews

3.4

46% would recommend to a friend

(3,728 total reviews)
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Tobias Lütke

50% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

Shopify has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 3,728 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Shopify employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologia da informação industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
5.0
Mar 26, 2018

Overall great place

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

good benefits, great culture, work from home

Cons

some issues with middle managers

5.0
Mar 23, 2018

The opportunity of a lifetime

Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

- Working on something that is actually being used by a lot of people. You really are making a difference. - The salary package (Benefits+Equity+Salary) is the best you can get in a Canadian company - Tons of opportunities to learn. I find that whenever something isn't working well, I'm empowered to either change it or give the feedback to the right team. - What you hear from the leadership team is genuine. You know that they aren't trying to con employees. - Working at Shopify is basically a golden ticket for your career. - You're trusted by your lead and your team. - The CEO cares highly about the people, the product and the company. He has great opinions and is willing to retract when he learns he's wrong about something.

Cons

- The recent reorg has brought some challenges. While it makes sense for most people, some employees might find themselves a little bit forgotten. - The very fast growth of the company has caused some issues. Usually, these are fixed with time, but there's often an awkward moment where no one really knows what's happening. There should be a better change management process. It's not about being afraid of change, it's about making it easier for people to embrace it.

1.0
Mar 22, 2018
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits are good for what is essentially a home-based severely-micromanaged high-pressure call centre environment. Unfortunately, that is the only positive thing about this company. You'll likely need a free prescription to an antidepressant and the free EAP psychology sessions for working here. My advice: take the training money and cash in the perks early on... then run!

Cons

High stress. Fake-smiling supervisors and trainers who will turn on you at the drop of a hat. - 4-letter words -- that Glassdoor will not allow me to list here, including the big one (!) -- run rampant in company materials and verbal trainings: this is amateurish and repugnant to any professional business person. The use of this word would be a huge HR issue -- up to and including firing -- in the vast majority of companies if it was uttered, let alone published internally or used by trainers and other veteran employees in recorded training sessions, especially in a customer-facing department. But this occurs everywhere and all the time at Shopify. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that it it is disrespectful and "can lead to depression, stress, reduced morale, absenteeism, retention problems [and] reduced productivity [and can] damage the image of the organization." - Poor training with recently-out-of-high-school former "Guru" trainers with all-powerful bad attitudes (and potty mouths) who throw systems, materials and jargon at you without any review of tools and resources: just a bunch of URLs to copy into your browser while glossing over material and requiring trainees to find highly-technical answers on their own via numerous badly-organized and difficult-to-search systems (compared to 1 or 2 with excellent search capabilities at leading companies). The little documentation that is provided in on-line exercises is often impossible to understand due to misinformation, misdirection and jargon. You're essentially thrown into a deep swimming pool without instruction on being taught how to swim. Then they will put you in the dog house and rationalize their bad management if you even hint that something could be done better or say that something was not explained clearly. - Non-divulgence of the actual expected work load during the interviewing process: 3 ongoing chats are needed (along with phone calls and emails), which is 50% higher than the norm in the industry (Amazon has a maximum of 2 chats, for example, which can be overwhelming at times... 3 is crazy and anti-productive, especially when you consider the highly technical subject matter usually involved). Pressure to upsell, even though sales was never part of the hiring conversation. At the mercy of many unhappy customers to award you (or likely not) an extremely high number of "smilies" or be punished for not achieving those metrics. - There are many reports on complaint sites of merchants enduring extremely long hold times and their accounts getting cancelled and/or payments delayed without any reason given (which the company says it can do in their Terms of Service), so the entire operation is extremely understaffed and badly managed. (It says that it will bar some sellers that may reflect badly on Shopify's reputation, so why does it still indignantly host Breitbart News, which promotes US ultra-right nationalism and has links to white supremacists, even after Shopify lost staff over the issue and continues to get lots of negative press about it?) - Your fellow trainees and workers will be mostly early 20-something former minimum-wage call centre and retail employees (which, I'm guessing, are the foundation for all the positive reviews here: they don't know any better compared to those of us over 35). - You have just one week following training to get up to snuff (according to the company metrics) or potentially be thrown out. This includes handling 3 chats on Day One. - It is essentially a company run by the Borg: you will enjoy being assimilated and won't ask any questions or you will be fired. - Do yourself a favour and read the negative reviews which are, by and large, accurate.

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Shopify Response
8y
I wanted to start by thanking you for the considerable time it must have taken you to write your review. Shopify cannot get better unless we know where we are failing, and your review does indeed point out many areas where you see Shopify is failing. Whilst I don’t agree with all of your observations, the beauty of Shopify’s diverse workforce is that we do allow room for different opinions to coexist provided at your core you can stand behind the Shopify values and rules of engagement. One of the values at Shopify which is key, and which I want to call-out here, is to be a constant learner. The people who succeed at Shopify are typically those who are constant and deliberate learners. Nowhere is this value more important as in our Guru team. We teach our Gurus to be resourceful, as we recognize this is a valuable strength to have in this role. We also ask that they constantly strive to learn, practice and reflect upon those skills and concepts necessary to succeed in the role. Since change is constant here at Shopify, being a constant and deliberate learner is a key to success. Our Gurus are given specific training, and professional development time during their scheduled working hours to develop new skills, network with other teams they might be interested in joining, or to use the time as they see fit to improve their success in the Guru role and at Shopify. If you are not being given a fair chance to succeed then please do speak to your lead or HR Business Partner. It is true that Shopify does have a casual corporate culture, and at times this can manifest itself in the use of the occasional expletive. The truth is that sometimes a well used expletive is indeed the best way to reinforce the true value of a point. I apologize for my use of a curse word here, but as you would know Shopify lives by the rule, ‘Don’t be an asshole’. No other phrase could quite succinctly embody our company belief that we should always treat each other with respect and without malicious intent. If all Shopify employees truly live by this rule and are in the habit of scrutinizing problems and ideas and not the people they’re attached to, we will all be able to grow both as individuals and as a team... now that is one powerful expletive. In conclusion I did want to say that I hope you have not found any of my comments to be ‘HR corporate-speak double-talk’ as I have genuinely tried to be nothing but open and honest with my response. Shopify is a company that values the individual and the impact you can make as part of a larger high impact team. If you fundamentally disagree with those values which Shopify lives by and the rules which guide our conduct then perhaps it is best that we part ways amicably. We appreciate that not everyone will thrive in Shopify’s fast-paced, constantly changing, non-corporate environment - and that is OK. What every Shopify employee does deserve, however, is the chance to succeed - and in most cases Shopify is very successful at providing our employees the resources and support they need to make the most of that chance.
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Glassdoor has 4,258 Shopify reviews submitted anonymously by Shopify employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Shopify is right for you.