Shopify

Most people are pretty good at what they do, maybe even world class. This is especially true for some teams and engineering management. But I can't say that about everyone. To be fair, they employ a lot of people and not every job is technically demanding.

Production Engineering / SRE and data infra do some interesting work. A lot of innovative internal/open source tools, libraries, and frameworks.

Great office design and layout. The perfect balance between open and closed layout, in my opinion.

Free food, coffee (espresso machines too), and snacks.

A lot of office activities. They throw some cool parties too (but these are tech parties, so take that with a grain of salt). Quite a few intern events and getaways as well.

Decent benefits.

Many of these office perks are common in big tech companies, but there are barely any in Canada.

It's got a little bit of a "big fish in a small pond" kind of feel.

For a while, they were the only big modern tech company in Canada, and maybe still are. So everyone is grateful, and everyone -- EVERYONE -- drinks the Kool-Aid.

There's some shuffle in upper management with them getting to this size. But that comes with growth, I'm guessing.

A lot of the culture/office/HR teams think they are "different" and do a lot of things for the sake of being different.

To TA: Lose the "Life Story" round.

There are people with a traumatic or not easily relatable childhood/past.