Shopify

I was on the development team at Shopify, and I looked forward to coming to work every day. I received fairly generous pay and benefits, and the work was interesting. But the thing I appreciated most was a manager that really cared about how I was doing and gave me actionable feedback to help me improve. I felt like it was a great experience for developing my career.

Among the other pluses were:

• Worked 8 hours a day for the most part; people didn't care when, as long as I showed up to meetings and got my work done. I personally felt no pressure to work longer hours.
• Was never concerned with making money, only with delivering the best quality product.
• Great emphasis on craftsmanship and quality of product; everyone was very dedicated to this goal.
• An excellent CEO: technically skilled, visionary, and inspiring. Tobi deserved to win CEO of the Year (Globe and Mail 2014).

It was sometimes difficult to communicate between teams, and sometimes the decision-making process was a bit opaque (though upper management was remarkably transparent). Though developers are treated well, sales and support staff seemed to get their jobs reduced to performance metrics (which are visible to everyone in the company). I don't know if I'd want to work in a job like that.

Please encourage everyone to be humble and show some humility. But please try to preserve as much of the culture as possible as the company scales up.