Shopify

Good benefits, generally good humans all around, remarkably few A-holes.

Big global company with decent support network for getting folks situated into this scale of work.

The chain of command is rather silly. Tobi Lutke putting himself at the top as CEO and CPO, while also unwavering in his role as founding engineer-in-chief, is just too much.

Engineering leads design systems within project parameters and fights for alignment through multiple layers of leadership, only to have Tobi take the entire project in a different direction or scrap it altogether. The end result is hundreds of individual contributors being blocked for weeks at a time while waiting for their next few minutes with Tobi. Middle leadership layers are relatively powerless to provide real direction or agency.

That makes for some pathetic middle leadership, who may support an initiative but refuse to endorse it, so the people below them have to sort it out with the people above them directly. This is neither a fast-moving nor nimble org, and efforts to empower GSD (or, “get s$#% done”) generally have the reverse effect.

Make Tobi choose a single C-level role to fill. That should be CTO if he wants to remain chief engineer. Otherwise, empower lower leadership to actually have authority over their org to eliminate the single-point-of-failure at the top on decision making.