Incredible talent. Awful senior leadership. - Engineering Manager Shopify Employee Review

2.0
Jul 11, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There are some immensely talented people at Shopify. For a company that is known to underpay, I was always amazed by the level of skill we were able to onboard.

Cons

Over the last year the culture at Shopify took a steep dive. New SLT seems to forget that they are running a team of humans. A lot of unreasonable pressure and expectations are being pushed downstream while SLT is never held accountable for their choices. The company made promises to their employees regarding compensation adjustments and proceeded to miss all of their timelines one by one without any accountability. We're now policing public messages to make sure no one is voicing anything with any resemblance of criticism to our leadership team. While I was not at Shopify very long, I did get the impression that disagreeing with SLT or criticizing our CEO was truly something you were not allowed to do there. Ironically, it feels like the easiest way to prevent that would have been to not give people a reason to feel so passionately against the job SLT is doing.

Explore other reviews about Shopify

5.0
May 29, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Very collaborative, even across team boundaries - Very healthy work-life balance culture - Lots of room to grow, explore, and be impactful - Remote-friendly - Fun

Cons

- Seeks constant growth and visibility, which can be difficult to achieve depending on the circumstances - Internal documentation can be hit-or-miss - One of Shopify's tenets is "thrive on change" and so there can be a lot of change (org restructures, project scope, etc.)

2.0
Mar 31, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The work itself is genuinely exciting. Shopify is doing cutting-edge work in AI search visibility and GEO that very few companies are touching at this scale. The tooling is excellent, the problems are interesting, and the peers are talented, collaborative, and generous with their time. If you're passionate about where search is heading, the craft-level work here is hard to beat.

Cons

The management experience on the Growth Marketing / SEO team did not match the quality of the work. Feedback was inconsistent (positive in meetings, critical in private messages) which made it difficult to know where you actually stood. Issues that were never flagged in real time were later consolidated into a formal performance document, which felt predetermined rather than developmental. When I raised concerns professionally about the communication dynamic, the relationship shifted noticeably. I've spoken to others who experienced a similar pattern on this team. The culture says it values direct feedback, but in practice, giving feedback upward was treated very differently than receiving it.

2
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