Pros: - Kind and talented co-workers. - Generous AI token spend. - A fairly transparent company that 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.

Pros: Most of the engineers I work with at the ground level are well-intentioned, smart individuals.

Cons: Oh boy, where do I start? Shopify used to have a great culture, but it has taken a severe nose dive. They've grown too big too fast and don't know how to scale. It's very chaotic and they have completely unrealistic deadlines on projects that will never come to fruition. Any sort of criticism, even if constructive and not "bashing," is deleted off Slack by a moderator. In turn, it's become a bit cult-y and filled with toxic positivity. Upper management constantly promises things and then doesn't deliver. Overpromise and under-deliver seems to be a Shopify motto.

Pros: I would say that the best part about working at Shopify is its unwavering commitment to its mission of making commerce better for everyone. It really is satisfying working somewhere that you know has a net positive impact, as opposed to finding new ways to barrage users with an endless stream of advertisements or other brain-rotting content. From a technical standpoint, there are endless opportunities to learn and advance. If you are interested in growing as a Web Developer, it is certainly one of the best places in the world and currently retains the best Rails developers in the world.

Cons: Recently, Shopify committed to moving fully remote for all roles in the company. For the most part, I am really enjoying it, but we used to have absolutely killer benefits when working from the office: catered lunch, an amazing office space, high-quality coffee, beer, and in-office presentations, which are all gone. In addition to the obvious material loss, I feel that the culture has taken a hit, since these benefits encouraged getting to know your co-workers and socializing. I was hoping that they would replace these benefits with something else, but it has been over a year now and nothing material has been forthcoming, so I am not holding out hope.