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Great benefits, great culture on engineer level. Risky for the APAC team

Software Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Shopify for 4 years
April 5, 2025
Singapore, Singapore
4.0
Neutral OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros
  • Great compensation and benefits.
  • Work from home with flexible working hours.
  • Good work-life balance if you do not need to stay up late for cross-time zone meetings. However, you can start work late the next day if needed.
  • Great engineers in APAC – talented, responsible, produce high-quality code, and are always willing to help out. There is no blame culture. One of the best teams I've worked with.
Cons

There is always a risk working in APAC, with most of the teams in NA and EMEA time zones. It's hard to get impactful projects here, therefore limited career advancement (depending on what you're looking for). It's hard to even keep your job despite good performances. My team in APAC was recently made redundant despite having the best engineers and producing solid technical designs and code.

There was a loss of trust in the senior leadership for my team. Politics were observed and felt by the engineers even. The good leaders were moved to other roles or have left. The SLT we ended up with seems to have more interests in their own KPIs than Shopify's overall goal, and definitely does not care about the growth of the eng team. The SLT told us one thing but told upper management a different story. Eventually, the eng team got the blame for what was directed by the SLT, despite having recommended the greener path. They unfairly called the team out for slow delivery (opposite to the comments from our prior SLTs) despite the amount and quality of work the team has produced.

Constant reorganization.

Constant tech changes. While keeping up with the latest technologies is good for tech firms, constant tech overhaul seems unnecessary, especially for something that is working well. It is disruptive and, in my opinion, not putting talents to the best use. Why not focus on improving the product?

Advice to Management
  • Look into your SLTs / middle managements.
  • Reconsider investment (and more trust and autonomy) in APAC; we had a very strong APAC team.

Additional Ratings

Work/Life Balance
4.0
Culture and Values
3.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
4.0
Career Opportunities
1.0
Compensation and Benefits
5.0
Senior Management
1.0

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