How Shopify Builds Product

1. How far out do you plan in detail, and how has that evolved over the years?

• Annual planning doesn't really work
  • they'd usually get torn up by about March
• CEO sets themes for the eyar, that reflect top-level priorities
  • Imagine : A Shopify merchant writing an email to friend, saying “ Here's why I love Shopify, and here's why I'm going to keep using it for my business”
  • ex) “Shopify keeps me on the cutting edge.” : amorphous thing. could be any of something, which is the idea.

2. You said you never use the word “OKR,” but let me ask you anyway—have you used OKRs in some form, and how has that changed over the years?

• OKR: Objectives and Key Results : 발전하고자 하는 목표를 세우고 정량적인 결과를 통해 성과 측정
• Part of the culture : although people end up using things that smell like OKRs, it's part of the culture. Affinity for chaos and change that doesn't embrace structured systems.
  • Tobi(CEO) doesn't agree with product development and micro-optimizations
• But there are some parts of Shopify where do care about lots of metrics : Checkout team(conversion rate)

We care a lot about the speed and quality of the product itself, but we're not the kind of company that would deem something a failure or not approve something to go ahead just because you can't put a metric on it.

3. How do product/design review meetings work?

• GSD: Get Shit Done
  1. Proposal
  2. Prototype
  3. Build
  4. Release
  5. Results

4. Are product and design part of the same org? And who do PMs ultimately report to? Has this changed over the years?

• There are two divisions under Tobi(Previous, it was GM system with 10 GMs):
  • Core : features(online store, checkout, admin)
  • Merchant Services : optional add-ons(payment processing, point of sale, shipping labels, …)
• Advantage of Shopify over competitors is the breadth of the feature set
  • and that value will fall apart if the parts of the product don't work together and don't seem like they were crafted from a single vision

The best companies figure out how to make sure you can't see the org chart through the product

5. Do you structure your teams around products, user types, user journey, outcomes, or something in between? Has this changed over the years?

• Structured essentially around jobs to be done
  • Core has 11 teams, and they are oriented around the main merchant jobs to be done

6. What's in your product team's tool stack?

혼돈이었지만 정리했다.

7. How many PMs are there at Shopify?

a few hundred, half of whom report into Core

8. What percentage of ideas come from the top down and what percentage come bottom-up, roughly?

• 대부분 top-down, 그렇게 내려온 것 중 일부를 bottom-up으로 수정(polishing and small features)

9. You build one of the most beloved and successful products out there. What would you say is unique or central to your approach that leads to such a great and successful product?

• 창업자가 리딩하는 회사
  • product와 merchants에 대해 가장 많이 고민하는 Tobi

10. I imagine much of your success has been thanks to hiring well and keeping a very high bar. In your product hires, what do you most look for (that maybe others don't), and, broadly, what does your interview process look like?

• 채용 시 4개의 질문
  • Tell me about a product that you were responsible for that went well, and tell me the story of that thing
  • Tell me about a product that you're responsible for that didn't go well, and tell me the story of that thing
  • ⇒ good/bad를 어떻게 생각하는지, 어떻게 반응하는지, 어떻게 변화를 주었는지
  • sheer horsepower and grit!