Perspectives on Onboarding: Joining Shopify as an Engineering Leader

Summary

Shopify’s onboarding program is presented as an alternative to the common first-day experience of receiving a laptop, documents, and a team without enough context. It gives new engineers, including engineering leaders, a structured period of roughly six weeks to learn the product, merchants, engineering practices, and company values, including by creating test shops and using the admin. Avanti Ketkar and Maria Robledo describe how this preparation helped them connect onboarding content to later work, ship a pull request after using a test shop, and build relationships and trust in a remote environment. Their accounts also cover the adjustment to learning before delivering impact, moving from a .NET background to Ruby and Rails, managing time zones, and keeping technical craft relevant while leading teams.

Takeaways

1. 1

   New hires create test shops and use Shopify’s admin to understand the merchant journey and build product empathy before joining their teams.

2. 2

   Onboarding prioritizes learning and relationship-building before immediate delivery, with managers, colleagues, and coaches helping new leaders adjust to that expectation.

3. 3

   Remote engineering leaders are advised to build intentional one-on-one relationships, communicate asynchronously across time zones, and maintain technical craft to strengthen team trust.