Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng)19 December 2024

How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture

9Frameworks

15Insights

Episode overview

Lenny Rachitsky speaks with Shopify VP and Head of Engineering Farhan Thawar about choosing difficult paths that maximize learning, even when the immediate outcome fails. Thawar explains how Shopify creates intensity through pair programming, weekly GSD updates, six-week reviews, selective in-person collaboration, high-fidelity demos, and aggressive simplification of its codebase. He also discusses infrastructure-first product development, realistic hiring assessments, Shopify's large internship program, and a costly early platform decision that reinforced the value of taking informed risks.

Key ideas

Choose the harder worthwhile path when it creates learning, stronger relationships, and useful work even if the primary goal fails.
Intensity means increasing useful output per minute rather than extending working hours.
Pair programming improves focus, learning, knowledge transfer, and solution quality even when it produces fewer lines of code.
Weekly GSD updates and six-week reviews create rapid feedback loops where leaders pair with teams to remove blockers and refine direction.
Deleting recurring meetings and separating announcements from chat protects uninterrupted time for individual contributors.
Build reusable infrastructure that makes future features dramatically faster, and regularly delete code to preserve simplicity and maintainability.
Make hiring evaluations resemble the real job, use the first 30–90 days as an honest mutual assessment, and treat internships as extended work trials.
A learning culture should reward informed risk-taking, openly share failures, and avoid hedged decisions that merely delay learning.

Transcript available · source text is retained privately and is not published

Frameworks in this episode

Strategy4 steps

Build Infrastructure, Not Features

Ask 'what has to be true so anyone could build this in an hour?' and build that instead.

Read →

Peak Performance3 steps

Calories Per Hour: Intensity Over Hours

Get more done per minute instead of working more minutes, then go home.

Read →

Mindset3 steps

Choose the Hard Path

When choosing between options, pick the harder one because it wins whether or not it works out.

Read →

Leadership4 steps

Job Trials Over Interviews

Interviews don't predict performance; make the interview as close to the real job as possible.

Read →

Productivity4 steps

Meeting Armageddon

Once a year, delete every recurring meeting and forbid new ones for two weeks.

Read →

Self-Mastery4 steps

Merge With the Unreasonable

Don't try to become a visionary; find one and connect your APIs to theirs.

Read →

Leadership4 steps

Pair Programming as a Management Tool

Two people on one computer isn't half the code, it's the fastest path to the right code.

Read →

Self-Mastery3 steps

The Personal Values Framework for Career Decisions

Write down what you actually care about, then reject anything that violates it, no matter how shiny.

Read →

Leadership4 steps

The Six-Week Review Operating Cadence

Short, frequent check-ins where leaders pair on problems, not catch you slacking, create velocity.

Read →

People & resources mentioned

Attributed to the moment in the episode. Timestamps are approximate.

People · 18

Lenny RachitskyMentionstoday we've got another very special compilation episode something I've been pulling on more and more with the podcast and the newsletter
“today my guest is furhan ther furhan is vice president and head of engineering at Shopify”
▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
Farhan ThawarMentionsfurhan is vice president and head of engineering at Shopify
“furhan is vice president and head of engineering at Shopify”
▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
Steve JobsMentionsSteve Jobs is just uh the bar he held for the company and for technical talent and for excellence was not uh wavering.
“this is like the Steve Jobs everything looking backwards it all connects”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
Chamath PalihapitiyaMentionsthe original leadership of the growth team I think starting with chamat
“then chamoth in your 30s and Toby this decade”
▶ Watch at ~13:30approx.
Tobi LütkeMentionsif you look at Toby from Shopify, his scores aren't that good, but that company's doing really, really well.
“Toby famously built a lot of Shopify pair programming”
▶ Watch at ~23:00approx.
Cody FauserMentionshim and his CTO Cody would pair program for one hour
“him and his CTO Cody would pair program for one hour”
▶ Watch at ~23:00approx.
Shaquille O'NealMentionsShaquille O'Neal Who was a Hall of Famer
“Shaquille O'Neal Who was a Hall of Famer”
▶ Watch at ~25:30approx.
Daniel KahnemanMentionshis influence was so huge you know and his intellect was so huge and his Insight was was so change making
“the undoing project which is about AMS verki and Danny Conan”
▶ Watch at ~52:30approx.
Amos TverskyMentionsmentioned
“the undoing project which is about AMS verki and Danny Conan”
▶ Watch at ~52:30approx.
Michael LewisCoinedThe Undoing Project by Michael Lewis.
“behavioral economics Michael Lewis exactly”
▶ Watch at ~52:30approx.
Brian CheskyMentionsBrian chesky at Airbnb there was a whole article where we unpacked this moment in their product development cycle
“while I was at BNB it felt like no matter how well things are going it always felt like the F Brian”
▶ Watch at ~1:01:30approx.
Tim FerrissMentionsCited for his fear-setting framework and as an influence on Paul Millerd's five-episode podcast experiment.
“I think I read this in Tim Ferris is book or on the podcast where he said create a failure resume”
▶ Watch at ~1:21:00approx.
Mark ZuckerbergMentionsit was sort of a random decision for Mark Zuckerberg to move from a uh monthly active to a daily active
“I don't know if you were zuck's interview at the chase Center that the acquired podcast did”
▶ Watch at ~1:26:30approx.
Vlad LoktevCoinedVlad was my manager at Airbnb for many years and he's the person that I credit most for teaching me
“I will also give credit to a former guest on this podcast Vlad loav who was my manager at rbnb”
▶ Watch at ~1:29:30approx.
John BrooksCoinedmentioned
“business Adventures from John Brooks”
▶ Watch at ~1:31:00approx.
Bill GatesMentionsI think that J Leno is a greater philanthropist than Bill Gates
“if you ask a I think it's Bill Gates what his famous book of all time is it's this book”
▶ Watch at ~1:31:00approx.
Paul GrahamCoinedPaul Graham talks about this too right just like live in the future and build it
“Paul Graham wrote the post how to do great work”
▶ Watch at ~1:31:00approx.
ZendayaMentionsmentioned
“a Challengers the tennis movie with zenai”
▶ Watch at ~1:32:00approx.

Resources · 28

ShopifyMentionscompany · Shopify
“Shopify is an incredibly interesting company because they have over 10,000 employees are fully remote”
▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
DXMentionssoftware · DX
“that's where DX comes in DX is an engineering intelligence solution”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
DORA frameworkMentionsother
“Leading researchers including Those Behind the Dora and space Frameworks”
▶ Watch at ~4:00approx.
SPACE FrameworkMentionsother · Nicole Forsgren and collaborators
“Leading researchers including Those Behind the Dora and space Frameworks”
▶ Watch at ~4:00approx.
PersonaMentionscompany · Persona
“Persona the adaptable identity platform that helps businesses fight fraud meet compliance requirements and build trust”
▶ Watch at ~4:30approx.
TorontoMentionsplace
“all the unreasonable people that I knew in Toronto”
▶ Watch at ~14:30approx.
Xtreme LabsMentionscompany
“we were running a mobile company called Extreme Labs”
▶ Watch at ~17:30approx.
TupleUsessoftware
“if it's remote they use it you can use a tool like tupo like which we use”
▶ Watch at ~22:30approx.
ShopifyUsescompany · Shopify
“we use that tool in our Arsenal to move quickly down a path”
▶ Watch at ~27:00approx.
GitHub CopilotUsessoftware · GitHub
“what's happening right now with an AI co-pilot like GitHub co-pilot is it is your pair programmer”
▶ Watch at ~28:00approx.
WhisperUsessoftware · OpenAI
“they're talking through whisper to say okay let's build a new react component”
▶ Watch at ~28:00approx.
CursorUsessoftware · Anysphere
“you're seeing people use like like whisper like they're talking to cursor”
▶ Watch at ~28:00approx.
GSDUsestool · Shopify
“we have this tool called GSD which stands for get done”
▶ Watch at ~29:30approx.
SlackUsessoftware · Slack Technologies
“we moved a lot of our slack into workplace Facebook workplace”
▶ Watch at ~38:30approx.
Workplace from MetaUsessoftware · Meta
“we moved all of that to like Facebook meta workplace like Facebook for work basically”
▶ Watch at ~40:00approx.
Shopify SummitMentionsevent · Shopify
“we're doing this thing called Shopify Summit where we bring the whole company together”
▶ Watch at ~58:00approx.
Black Friday Cyber MondayMentionsevent
“for Black Friday Cyber Monday I encouraged all of engineer engineering leadership to come to Toronto”
▶ Watch at ~59:00approx.
Shopify POSMentionsproduct · Shopify
“we were rebuilding our Point of Sales system which you know now does like billions of dollars of gmv”
▶ Watch at ~1:22:00approx.
React NativeUsessoftware · Meta
“we realized pretty quickly that react native was the platform for the future”
▶ Watch at ~1:22:30approx.
ReactUsessoftware · Meta
“we became core contributors in react native before we became core contributors in react”
▶ Watch at ~1:26:00approx.
AcquiredMentionspodcast · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
“the acquired podcast did and he talked about this”
▶ Watch at ~1:26:30approx.
ManaRecommendsbook · Marshall Brain
“he recommended one to me that I think everyone should read right now called Mana Mna from Marshall brain”
▶ Watch at ~1:30:30approx.
How to Do Great WorkRecommendswebsite · Paul Graham
“Paul Graham wrote the post how to do great work and it's super long”
▶ Watch at ~1:31:00approx.
Business AdventuresRecommendsbook · John Brooks
“another book that I recommend to people and it's kind of a weird one to recommend but it's business Adventures from John Brooks”
▶ Watch at ~1:31:00approx.
ChallengersRecommendsfilm
“a recent one was a Challengers the tennis movie with zenai”
▶ Watch at ~1:32:00approx.
Halt and Catch FireRecommendstv show · Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers
“one of my all-time favorites is probably Halt and Catch Fire”
▶ Watch at ~1:32:30approx.
Meta Ray-Ban smart glassesRecommendsproduct · Meta and Ray-Ban
“The Meta Ray bands are amazing”
▶ Watch at ~1:33:00approx.
LennyPodcast.comMentionswebsite · Lenny Rachitsky
“you can find all p episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny podcast.com”
▶ Watch at ~1:39:30approx.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Hot Take· 4

Hot Take09:30

Looking Stupid in Public Is My Superpower

Farhan believes the willingness to ask dumb questions and look stupid is a genuine competitive advantage, and he tries to make it his whole team's superpower. He recounts being told 'that's the stupidest question I've ever heard' and even 'I've already explained this to you three times' — and shrugging it off because the goal is to understand, not to impress.

He deliberately asks questions others are too scared to ask, and often finds they had the same question
He built the resilience partly from retail and commission sales, absorbing constant rejection
When someone says his question is dumb, he just moves on to the next question
The point of asking is to understand the content, not to annoy anyone

“not everyone can look stupid in public over and over but I believe it's my superpower and I try to make it my whole team…”
Farhan Thawar · 09:30

“my goal there is not to annoy the person but is to understand the content”
Farhan Thawar · 13:00

#leadership#learning#psychology#confidence

Hot Take19:30

Do More Per Minute Instead of Working More Hours

Farhan reframes intensity: an hour is the same hour for everyone, so instead of expanding the workday, compress more output into it. He'd rather get more done in a 9-to-5 and then go take his kid to soccer than stretch work to 12 hours. Really good people can produce high-quality output 2-3x faster, a Parkinson's-law-at-scale effect most people ignore.

One hour is the same amount of time for everyone — the variable is calories expended in it
Compressing work frees you to do life outside work rather than expanding hours
Extremely good people output high-quality work in a fraction of the time a merely good person needs
You can cut time by 2-3x without dropping quality much

“everyone says oh yeah like work hard and like do more hours when you're young whatever I'm like what if you just did more per…”
Farhan Thawar · 21:00

“one hour is an hour like it's the same hour”
Farhan Thawar · 20:00

#productivity#intensity#management#focus

Hot Take45:30

The Metric That Matters Is Code Deleted, Not Code Written

Farhan pushes back on celebrating AI-written line counts: he tweeted that GitHub Copilot wrote a million lines of code for Shopify and it went viral, but what he actually wants is Copilot deleting a million lines. Shopify runs a delete-code club and hack days where a team hunts for code to remove, routinely finding a million-plus lines. A simpler codebase makes resilience, performance, and maintainability all easier.

Shopify has deleted millions of lines this year to rebuild things more elegantly
When people cite '25% of code is written by AI,' the real question is where's the 25% deleted by AI
The right code is never the voluminous lines-of-code metric — it's elegance
A delete-code club and hack days institutionalize the cleanup, with a manual for finding deletion targets

“what I want to see is GitHub co-pilot deleting one million Linens of code”
Farhan Thawar · 45:30

“where's the delete where is the 25% of all kodas deleted by AI”
Farhan Thawar · 48:30

#engineering#code-quality#ai#metrics

Hot Take1:03:00

Interviews Don't Predict Performance — Use Job Trials Instead

Farhan argues interviews are a poor predictor of job performance, and he'd rather assess people through real work. He uses a race-car-driver analogy: you can't really quiz a driver, you just put them in the car. His answer is job trials and the 30-60-90 day period, scaled through an internship program hiring 1,000 interns in 2025 — four months of real work product beats any set of interviews.

Studies and everyone's own experience show interviews don't predict performance
He once hired a coffee-shop enthusiast over a PhD, and the enthusiast is still a phenomenal ML engineer
Race-car analogy: to hire the best driver, put them in the car rather than asking questions
1,000 interns in 2025 gives 1,000 real four-month job trials to hire from

“interviews are not a good predictor of performance we know this we know this from studies”
Farhan Thawar · 1:03:30

“if I told you hey I want to go hire the best race car driver there's not really that many questions you could ask them…”
Farhan Thawar · 1:04:30

#hiring#recruiting#interns#shopify

Explainer· 3

Explainer22:00

Why Pair Programming Is the Most Underutilized Management Tool

Farhan makes the case that pair programming isn't about lines of code — the throughput limiter is finding the elegant solution, not typing speed. Two engineers on one machine produce less code but move faster toward customer value, with higher happiness, more knowledge transfer, and fewer silos, at roughly a 20% cost. He likens it to the underhand free throw: statistically better but nobody does it because it looks dumb.

The bottleneck is designing the right solution, not hands-on-keyboard keystrokes
Pairing yields higher happiness, knowledge transfer, less siloing, and higher intensity
It's so intense that people new to it sleep 10-12 hours a night at first
Analogy: the underhand free throw is statistically better but looks dumb, so nobody does it (even Shaq refused)

“it is the most underutilized management tool in engineering Bar None”
Farhan Thawar · 22:00

“the throughput limiter is not Hands-On keyboard”
Farhan Thawar · 23:00

#engineering#pair-programming#management#productivity

Explainer29:30

The Six-Week Review Cadence That Creates Intensity

Shopify replaced its twice-a-year cadence with six-week reviews where teams walk through the roadmap, resourcing, and progress with leadership and Toby. Six weeks is short enough to remember context and long enough to get real work done. Combined with weekly GSD ('get shit done') updates to the whole company, the frequent check-ins invoke Parkinson's law — people want to show progress every single week.

Six-week reviews force teams to show what they learned and shipped since last time
The cadence balances remembering context (short) with getting a lot done (long)
Weekly GSD updates surface progress company-wide every week
Feedback isn't saved for the next review — teams iterate the very next day

“we find six weeks is a very good Cadence because it's short enough that you can remember the context and it's long enough”
Farhan Thawar · 30:30

“whatever time you allot to something will be the time it takes”
Farhan Thawar · 31:00

#management#operating-cadence#shopify#productivity

Explainer59:30

The Trust Battery: How Shopify Thinks About Trust

Farhan explains Shopify's trust-battery metaphor: your trust with someone is a battery that depletes and grows, and you should charge it when you can and spend the charge strategically. Toby reportedly starts everyone at 50%, but some leaders start people at 100% and only deplete it when things go off-alignment. It's become a shorthand for figuring out how to work with someone.

Trust is a battery that can deplete and grow over time, especially in remote work
Charge it when you can and use the charge strategically
Toby starts people at 50%; others start hard-charging teams at 100%
It's a shared vocabulary for calibrating working relationships

“your trust with someone is like think of it as a battery that can deplete and grow”
Farhan Thawar · 1:00:00

“I'm pretty sure Toby says he starts everyone at 50%”
Farhan Thawar · 1:00:00

#leadership#culture#trust#remote-work

Story· 6

Story13:30

A Different Billionaire Every Decade — Pair With Irrational Visionaries

Farhan noticed he'd worked for a different billionaire in each decade of his life, and the common thread is that they're irrational long-term thinkers who can see 10-20 years out. He can't see that vision himself, so he pairs with people who can, contributing his ability to push the ball forward 1% a week. He even wrote a list of every unreasonable person he knew in Toronto to find a co-founder.

The people he's learned most from share an irrational, long-term view of the future
He knows his strength (execution, moving forward) and doesn't try to build a vision skill he lacks
The move is to recognize your strengths and weaknesses and merge forces with a complement
He literally listed all the 'unreasonable' entrepreneurs he knew and met each to find one he was 'API compatible' with

“they have an irrational view of what the world should look like over the next decade or so they're very long-term thinkers”
Farhan Thawar · 14:00

“I'm not good at seeing that Vision but I'm good at trying to move towards that Vision 1% a week”
Farhan Thawar · 14:00

#career#self-awareness#collaboration#vision

Story23:00

Toby's One-Hour Rule: Delete the Code, Keep the Tests

Farhan tells how Toby and his CTO Cody would set a one-hour timer while pair programming, and if they hadn't finished the feature, they'd delete all the code, keep the tests, and start over — even if they were one minute over. The logic: if you can't write it elegantly in an hour, you're on the wrong design. Deleting is hard because of sunk-cost fallacy, but the shorter, more elegant solution appears after pathfinding.

Set a one-hour timer; if the feature isn't done, delete the code but keep the tests and restart
Inability to write it in an hour signals you're building the wrong thing
The best time to rewrite code is right after you wrote it, because you now know the problem domain
Deleting is hard due to sunk-cost fallacy, but it lands you on a much better solution

“if we were not able to articulate and write the code for this feature in one hour we must be on the wrong design we…”
Farhan Thawar · 23:30

“code lives a long time code is a liability”
Farhan Thawar · 24:00

#engineering#code-quality#pair-programming#shopify

Story37:30

Meeting Armageddon: Deleting Every Recurring Meeting Once a Year

Once a year at a random time, Shopify deletes all recurring internal meetings with more than two people, then bans adding new recurring meetings for two weeks. The point is to break the inertia of standing meetings that persist by default. That reset, plus moving announcements from Slack to Facebook Workplace, cut IC meeting time to about three hours a week — a 50-60% reduction.

Delete all recurring internal meetings of 3+ people (keeping 1:1s and external meetings)
Two-week moratorium on adding any new recurring meeting forces a rethink of what's actually needed
IC meeting time dropped to ~3 hours/week; managers to ~6 hours/week
Paired with moving announcements off Slack to a lower-distraction 'river of information' feed

“once a year at a random time we will delete all recurring meetings that have more than two people”
Farhan Thawar · 37:30

“we're at something like three hours of meetings per week for an Niner contributor at shifi which is phenomenal”
Farhan Thawar · 39:00

#management#meetings#productivity#shopify

Story42:30

Build Infrastructure, Not Features — Put Gas in the Tank

When merchants demanded NFT gating, Farhan estimated 2-3 weeks to build it, but Toby asked how long to build a platform layer where anyone could build NFT gating in an hour — 2-3 months. Toby said do the platform, because you don't know what people will build on top. He calls it putting gas in the tank, and habitually writes client code against an API that doesn't exist yet to discover what infrastructure should exist.

Toby reframes 'you could write this in a day' as 'what has to be true so you could write it in a day'
Building the infra layer is slower now (2-3 months vs 2-3 weeks) but unlocks unforeseen use cases forever
Shopify buckets work into experiment, feature, or infrastructure
Toby writes client code against a non-existent API first, then implements the server to match

“if you put the gas in the tank people could drive on that gas for a long time going forward”
Farhan Thawar · 43:30

“what has to be true so that you could write this in a day what infrastructure do you need”
Farhan Thawar · 44:00

#engineering#platform#product#shopify

Story1:21:30

The $18-Month Mistake: Punished for Hedging, Not for Failing

In his first week at Shopify, Farhan hedged on the point-of-sale rebuild — iOS in Swift, Android in React Native — to guarantee a shipped product while learning React Native. A year later React Native was the clear winner and they had to rewrite, burning ~18 months for 100 engineers. When he confessed, Toby's response wasn't anger — it was that Farhan's real mistake was not taking the risk.

He hedged to guarantee a product in market, but React Native was clearly the future platform
The wrong call cost roughly 18 months of time for about 100 engineers
Toby said he comes down harshly on people who don't take risks, not on those whose risks fail
Because he was going all-in on React Native anyway (core contributor, release captain), hedging was the wrong instinct

“I will always come down harshly on people who do not take risks and you did not take a risk in this case”
Farhan Thawar · 1:23:30

“I hedged right HED is the worst”
Farhan Thawar · 1:22:30

#failure#engineering#leadership#risk

Story1:35:30

The Waitress He Hired Who Became a Director of HR

Farhan spotted a waitress running a chaotic, busy restaurant with total organization, and offered her a job at Extreme Labs. She started as receptionist, became his admin, then a recruiter, and eventually took over an HR function — later becoming a director of HR elsewhere and finishing her degree. He kept hiring talented people from that restaurant, because everyone is smart at something.

He scans everyday environments for people who do their job exceptionally well
The waitress moved from receptionist to admin to recruiter to running an HR function
She parlayed the experience into a university degree and a director-of-HR role
Several other strong hires came from the same restaurant

“she was kind of like doing an phenomenal job of organizing the entire crazy busy restaurant”
Farhan Thawar · 1:36:30

“everyone's smart at something right”
Farhan Thawar · 1:38:30

#hiring#talent#stories#recruiting

Takeaway· 2

Takeaway00:00

Why Choosing the Hard Path Means You Win Even When You Lose

Farhan argues that when you face a choice, picking the harder option is asymmetric: if it works you did more, and if it fails you've still learned something, done hard things, and worked with smart people. The easy path that fails leaves you with nothing. He illustrates it with job seekers who blast out resumes versus building something on a company's API.

The hard path is a hedge against failure: you keep the learning and relationships even if the goal doesn't happen
The easy path that fails teaches you nothing because you didn't stretch
Instead of sending 10 resumes a day, build something on a company's API to show real learning
He deliberately took harder courses and minors (electrical engineering, financial engineering) to be around smarter people

“if you do the hard path and it doesn't work actually you still kind of win because you've now done something hard you've probably worked…”
Farhan Thawar · 00:00

“are you really learning anything from sending out 10 resumes a day why don't you look at the API docs and build something even if…”
Farhan Thawar · 00:00

#career#learning#decision-making#job-search

Takeaway50:30

There Are 10,000 Right Options — Don't Stop at the First One

When Farhan brings Toby an A-or-B choice, Toby sends him back to generate more options, because 'A or B' is just picking two of thousands of viable answers. Toby's philosophy: there are unlimited wrong options and roughly 10,000 right ones, but everyone stops at the first right option instead of searching for the optimal one. This pattern rewired how the whole company thinks.

Presenting only two options means you stopped exploring the solution space too early
The valuable work is finding which of the many right options is optimal
Toby refuses binary choices and asks for more options by default
Over time the team learns to spot the pattern and generate options themselves

“there are unlimited amount of wrong options for any problem there's probably 10,000 right options but everybody stops at the first right one”
Farhan Thawar · 51:00

“I Don't Like A or B come back when you have something else”
Farhan Thawar · 50:30

#decision-making#leadership#problem-solving#shopify

Key ideas

Frameworks in this episode

Build Infrastructure, Not Features

Calories Per Hour: Intensity Over Hours

Choose the Hard Path

Job Trials Over Interviews

Meeting Armageddon

Merge With the Unreasonable

Pair Programming as a Management Tool

The Personal Values Framework for Career Decisions

The Six-Week Review Operating Cadence

People & resources mentioned

People · 18

Resources · 28

Insights & moments

◆Hot Take· 4

Looking Stupid in Public Is My Superpower

Do More Per Minute Instead of Working More Hours

The Metric That Matters Is Code Deleted, Not Code Written

Interviews Don't Predict Performance — Use Job Trials Instead

✶Explainer· 3

Why Pair Programming Is the Most Underutilized Management Tool

The Six-Week Review Cadence That Creates Intensity

The Trust Battery: How Shopify Thinks About Trust

❝Story· 6

A Different Billionaire Every Decade — Pair With Irrational Visionaries

Toby's One-Hour Rule: Delete the Code, Keep the Tests

Meeting Armageddon: Deleting Every Recurring Meeting Once a Year

Build Infrastructure, Not Features — Put Gas in the Tank

The $18-Month Mistake: Punished for Hedging, Not for Failing

The Waitress He Hired Who Became a Director of HR

▲Takeaway· 2

Why Choosing the Hard Path Means You Win Even When You Lose

There Are 10,000 Right Options — Don't Stop at the First One

Hot Take· 4

Explainer· 3

Story· 6

Takeaway· 2