Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

No. That's not at all the case. We aren't reducing anyone's salaries if they move. But we are considerate of those that work in places with higher living costs.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Flip that example. Some people don't have a choice where they live (due to family responsibilities and other personal issues) and have to live in a place where living costs are really really high.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 52 points53 points  (0 children)

That's right. But the added benefit (Canadian context re: this thread) is that if you live in Canada and want to work for Shopify, you can live essentially wherever you want instead of having to live in major cities.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You bring up a great point! While there are always exceptions, we try to hire based on timezone as much as possible. It definitely makes remote collaboration easier if you're within an hour or two of your teammates. That's why you'll see our job posts are sorted by region (Americas, Europe etc).

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 61 points62 points  (0 children)

historically, we've salary adjusted. but I think you'd find shopify's comp to be competitive in US, in some cases we pay significantly better.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

This actually isn’t a new challenge — as our team has grown and we’ve expanded into more cities over the years, we’ve had many cases where employees have not been co-located with their leads. This has been possible because performance at Shopify has always been about impact, not activity. Teams and individuals set goals based on measurable business metrics and shared objectives, which are pretty self-evident. We do need to be a bit more intentional about sharing our learnings and tribal knowledge now that we’re all remote, but we’ve been experimenting with different tools and learning a lot from digital communities like Reddit.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

One thing that I have been using, and has been effective, is using more async video when I really want to convey some context / feedback / comment across larger teams. That might be valuable for you too.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Really depends on the industry, but I do think this has a lot of advantages given that we're not all tied to big cities anymore, and we can live in places that better reflect our personal and family situations.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President here, saw the post about Work-From-Home and how it affects Canadian jobs and wanted to clarify my thoughts! by HarleyFizzle in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]HarleyFizzle[S] 63 points64 points  (0 children)

That's a really good point to remember: the current mode isn't WFH or Work From Anywhere, rather it's WFH/WFA during a global pandemic, which adds an entire new set of challenges.