Shopify Devs Share Lessons on Self-Advocacy and Dealing with Adversity - Shopify

Summary

Shopify’s Behind The Code series profiles Stella Lee, Helen Lin, and Cathryn, three developers discussing self-advocacy, adversity, management, inclusion, and career changes in technology. Lee describes building Shopify Checkout Experience features in TypeScript and Ruby to reduce manual checkout fields, while leading the f(empower) women’s employee resource group; she also discusses imposter syndrome, mentorship, and turning initial “stupid” questions into better ones through timeboxing and research. Lin, a remote Themes team lead, emphasizes aligning projects with long-term company vision, managing stakeholders, staying connected, and directly requesting career opportunities while sharing accomplishments. Cathryn recounts moving from health sciences into programming and stresses evaluating personal goals, hiring a more diverse workforce, and using meeting-room paper pyramids to support inclusive discussion. The article closes with advice to embrace feedback and own both accomplishments and failures.

Context

The feature was published for International Women’s Day to share three female developers’ experiences navigating technology careers, including adversity, imposter syndrome, management, inclusion, and career changes.

Approach / What changed

The feature presents interviews and career advice from Stella Lee, Helen Lin, and Cathryn, covering checkout and themes development, people management, self-advocacy, career transitions, mentorship, and workplace inclusion.

Takeaways

• Stella Lee uses TypeScript and Ruby on Shopify Checkout Experience features designed to let buyers reuse information and reduce the number of fields they manually complete.
• Helen Lin connects effective people management with understanding long-term company vision, mapping project tasks, maintaining stakeholder alignment, and staying connected with reports.
• Cathryn recommends examining personal goals when changing careers and points to diverse hiring and paper meeting pyramids as ways to support workplace inclusion.

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