The email is from earlier in the pandemic but it was leaked recently. Email excerpt below: Team, ... Shopify hasn't historically been great at setting clear expectations across the organization and I think this is starting to cause an enormous amount of managerial debt that's ballooning out of control. I can't tell you how to do that in your various departments. But a good start would be to remind everyone that we are a business. More importantly, we are a hugely ambitious one. We are trying to create a world class product that gives superpowers to the merchants that we are obsessed over. Everything Shopify does is to accomplish this, and everyone at Shopify should be able to describe how their job, through a series of direct or indirect steps, furthers this mission. To help you make this more clear to your team members, here are some pointers about what Shopify is not: Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family. The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can't un-family you. It should be massively obvious that Shopify is not a family but I see people, even leaders, casually use terms like "Shopifam" which will cause the members of our teams (especially junior ones that have never worked anywhere else) to get the wrong impression. The dangers of "family thinking" are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team, not a family. ... Only way to do this is through having incredible people. Some of them we hire on future potential, and we help them but expect them to grow into their potential. Some of them we bring in further down their careers. But we all have to re-qualify for our jobs every year. The red-queen race of Shopify's historic 40% or better growth is that everyone has to show up at least 40% better every year to qualify for our current jobs. I expect you to hold yourself and your teams to this standard. Judge this improvement based on having a growth mindset, deepening the craft, taking risks, making better decisions, and doing what it takes to better support our mission and our merchants. ... - tobi
What the hell is this! TLDR please
Yikes
Lol that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. Are they getting a raise of 40% each year too? No? Then the real high performers will move on to greener pastures.
TLDR
TLDR is basically the title. They are a sports team and everyone has to re-qualify every year (i.e. the Netflix model) but the catch is that the criteria is a minimum 40% improvement.
Sounds like way more stress than it's worth. Just go somewhere that you'll get paid the same or more and not have such hardass leadership.
That’s actually a nice clearly written email.
40% clearer?
40% clearer version would probably say "make me more money or I'll fire you"
This guy sounds insufferable. Why does every founder think their company is gods gift to this green earth?
So in 10 years you're supposed to be 28 times "better". Time to jump ship.
Hmmm, you want me to improve 40%, will I get 40% increase in my tc? Fucking socialist wanker.
No sure what socialism has to do with this but go off
Op's username is anti-taxx, aligns with it.