Shopify Reviews

Pros

Great clients to deal with

Cons

no cons perfect job for everyone

Pros

Great benefits and flex comp is helpful. I actually think onboarding and the resources available are great, but starting to feel the culture makes none of it worth it.

Cons

Very toxic, no team atmosphere whatsoever. They’ve pinned everyone against each other and hire over-qualified people to carry out menial tasks towards overused strategies. Seriously just hire a freelancer if that’s the case. Management talks to you like it’s your first job when the current situation is their fault - it’s all self promotion and I think they purposely cut you off from speaking to anyone else because if people had the opportunity management would be in some real trouble. There is no process, there is absolutely no trust and therefore no one wants to create solutions that benefit a team, and no one knows who to actually report this nonsense to. They will literally keep information from others so they can claim it as their own when they brag to SLT - who by the way hosts town halls where they talk about themselves or absolutely nothing and somehow take up an hour. Which is funny because they hire people smart enough to realize this. The crazy amount of talented hires they have are pinned against each other, they aren’t heard or listened to, and they are under utilized. You spend all your time figuring out what is going on vs actually honing your craft or creating process and strategy. There is harassment and bullying and no HR.

Pros

The Community Managers at Shopify LA (and Shopify NYC) are lovely, talented go-getters who are a delight to work with. Unfortunately, they're not being given the opportunities they deserve because of management.

Cons

The lead who runs Shopify LA is a selfish, terrible manager with no people skills. She has bullied 6 people out of Shopify LA over the last 4 years (myself included) and HR doesn't seem to care. She picks favorites and creates a hostile work environment for people she personally doesn't like. It doesn't matter if they're a great worker -- if she doesn't like you, you won't get the same opportunities as others. She's manipulative, secretive, and horrible to work with. Many things happened over the last year that made working for Shopify LA awful, too many things to list, but my last straw? This manager once pulled me aside and asked me, "Do you even want to be here?" and followed it with "I know you have a lot going on in your personal life right now and I don't take any of that personally, but other people might not know what you're going through and you can be really hard to be around". The personal stuff I had going on? My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I told her about this because I knew my work would be affected. Upon hearing the news, she bullied and gaslit me until I left. Shopify prides itself on being an empathetic company with great leadership and at a point that was true. I saw the shift happen in real time and this is no longer a place where people should work to feel fulfilled.

Pros

Good people and great mission.

Cons

While the company is not outright toxic, their unspoken culture and review processes definitely are. New employees are somehow expected to understand processes and conventions that are very unique to the company. This causes wild swings during the reviews that have no coherent metric to gauge individuals on. They speak about "impact" instead of "performance", but what that comes down to is how many meetings you schedule and how much noise you make and has nothing to do with your impact on the company, team, or mission you're tasked with. There is no formal software development lifecycle, so what you have is this combination of waterfall and agile but are also neither at the same time... which is interpreted and implemented completely differently depending on the team you belong to. In addition to this. They expect Senior Software Engineers to act like Senior Software Engineers, except that there are very few engineers at the company below a Senior Engineer. They will tell you that it is ok to be an individual contributor just to tell you that you're expected to lead as well, just to tell you to lead more during the reviews. Obviously this ends up being a situation where there are too many Captains and not enough crew. Official onboarding takes about 2 months. Unofficial onboarding takes about a year. Every engineer I have spoken with agrees on this.

Pros

Holistic compensation package, work-life balance, health care, and productivity perks. Innovative, creative teams to work with. Mission you can sleep at night working towards.

Cons

Scaled too quickly, did not prepare for change adequately or with enough care, immature/rash C-level organizational and business decisions, lack of data-driven decision making, and barely a finger on the pulse of employee needs and morale in response to rapid organizational changes.

Pros

Benefits are great and the only thing that keeps me around for now.

Cons

I can't speak to all of Shopify, but I can speak to the Transportation team that is a poor reflection of Shopify being it is overrun with leads from a previous company Shopify acquired. If you want to be belittled, gaslighted, and overworked while spit at for voicing that concern, then this is the team for you. Big 'ole boys club. Don't believe me? The team is run by 5 white men each elected by 1 white man and it shows. It's no wonder 4 women on the team have left, and a majority of the rest are applying elsewhere. Does anything change? No. Just more workload on the suckers that stayed behind instead of instituting change on the actual problem. HR doesn't help either, trust me, we've tried. And forget about growth. This is the land of empty promises.

Pros

* strong engineering culture - high degree of emphasis on software engineering craft * founder led and ambitious * exciting and dynamic space (commerce)

Cons

* some very strong ego managers that push to build their kingdoms * you’re at the whim of your boss, no recourse for any issues * poor, even problematic. leadership behavior often “hides” because of the bias towards loud/strong egos over thoughtful ones * weak understanding of data topics at highest levels means weak ML and data culture compared to peers

Pros

- The product is setting an industry standard; - There's a real need in the market; - The ecosystem is supportive of the broad mission and encompasses good companies and people.

Cons

- Sales managers don't know how to course correct and anticipate, severely lacking accountability; - Senior management lacks focus; - The direction changes literally every quarter; - The sales culture doesn't know how to grow up from what is is - SMB order taking. There's a huge problem when a company of this size doesn't know what it wants to be for any customer that isn't SMB and can't communicate its value clearly beyond a few key talking points. That might have worked when the tide was heading perfectly in its direction, but that's not the case now. Bigger issue is for any quota carrying rep at Shopify. The managers who are directing strategy and ultimately responsible are not trying to figure out core issues, such as: TAM, territories and data integrity. This leaves reps not knowing where to hunt, what to hunt for and praying that when shakeups occur they have something to work with. The market is generally much smaller at the enterprise than management wants to believe, until there is real product market fit. That will likely take 2-5 years to sort out.

Pros

really great benefits, flexible hours, paid time off

Cons

none that I can share

Pros

Great benefits and company values. Shopify is very welcoming and overall runs like a well oiled machine.

Cons

Some teams are not as mature as others in terms of their product vision, overall organization and ways of working. Make sure to ask lots of questions and do your research to understand what you're in for.