How Shopify Rages Against Meetings

Nejatian says Shopify aims to make building work the primary job for people who want to be crafters. Its manager and crafter tracks reach the same levels, so people can earn more and take on broader responsibility without adding direct reports. He argues that leading complex work, such as an open-source project, can be as demanding as managing a team.

Shopify limits pixel-perfect presentations and often reviews code directly. Its product process moves from proposal to prototype, with review at the prototype stage; Nejatian says teams focus on the product being built rather than a strategy presentation. He also describes talking with customers regularly, having Shopify stores, and letting employees work in customer service to experience merchant problems.

Nejatian says Shopify is not an OKR or metrics-driven company, because some important things are hard to measure. He describes the work as building platforms, products and features, or experiments, and says teams should use measurement while also relying on product judgment and customer feedback. He values user empathy, ownership, and taste in product managers.

Shopify canceled recurring meetings, reinstated No Meeting Wednesdays, removed some channels, and changed the default response to calendar invites from yes to no. Nejatian says meeting time fell by about 33%, the company deleted roughly 322 hours of meetings, and it shipped 25% faster. He also describes weekly written updates and says recurring meetings can point to missing information or processes that teams should improve.

Nejatian says Shopify focuses on helping people build retail businesses and sell things, including creators who want to launch brands or use affiliate links. It does not aim to serve every creator need, such as making VR content. He frames focus as choosing a specific customer problem and being exceptional at solving it.