Provides the environment for growth - if you fancy it
Pros
There's a strong emphasis on taking ownership of your impact as well as your career path at Shopify, and so this can provide ample opportunity for personal and professional growth. Alongside this, the professional development budget, internal initiatives aimed at skilling folks up, and the general approachability of colleagues means that one can build up a pretty awesome skillset if they fancy it. In my own experience, I was able to contribute to areas such as people leadership, project management, and research before finding my passion in data. Meanwhile, as the company has pivoted to being fully remote, we're seeing a lot more consideration for folks outside the core EST time zones. Still some work to be done here, no doubt, but the improvement has been drastic. There's a whole bunch of other points I can put here, but these two are what really make the difference for me.
Cons
That expectation to own your career journey can be a hinderance to some folk, especially if they're lacking in confidence or not sure where they want to be in the future. Some teams are more comfortable in a remote environment than others, with some being able to build strong relationships across teammates while others may feel like strangers to each other. Shopify provides resources and training for leads in this area, but perhaps there's room to hold leads more accountable in engaging with those resources. Our Support folks get a very different experience compared to other areas of the company, to the extent that moving out of Support is seen as a landmark achievement. More can be done to provide a more equitable experience.
