AI is a baseline expectation (at Shopify)
What the leaked memo from Shopify's CEO means for you
This tweet from Tobi, Shopify’s CEO caught my eye today. I think it is the most clear vision into the future of software engineering we’ve seen in some time, and the implications are huge.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll dig deeper into a few things from this memo:
The requirement to prove AI can’t do the job before approving headcount 😬
Creating incentives for employees to get better at AI over time 💸
How this might play out at your company
Here’s a link to the whole memo. I encourage you to read it, but I’ll distill it here. Part of me thinks it was leaked on purpose :)
The tl;dr on the memo is that reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation at Shopify.
Using AI effectively is an expectation
Tobi calls out that the use of AI to augment yourself is a fundamental part of working at Shopify.
Frankly, I don't think it's feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow.
This is pretty interesting to me. I personally don’t expect most companies to move towards outright requiring employees to use AI, but I do see them creating incentives to do so. No one requires me to use an IDE at work today, I’m welcome to use Notepad or TextEdit. Still, I would be outpaced by my peers using the right tools for the job, so the incentives exist for me to use similar tools.
I think AI usage will move this way. As time goes on, it will be harder to keep up if you’re not using AI in at least some way. Shopify seems to be taking the most extreme stance here, even making it part of their employees’ performance reviews.