---
title: "Shopify Devs Share Lessons on Self-Advocacy and Dealing with Adversity - Shopify"
description: "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."
---

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

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · 2023-10-18 · Mar 8, 2019

**Type:** Explainer

## 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.

**Tags:** [Mentorship](https://yomu.fyi/topic/mentorship), [Remote Work](https://yomu.fyi/topic/remote-work)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/shopify-developers-share-lessons-self-advocacy-adversity-technology)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/shopify-developers-share-lessons-self-advocacy-adversity-technology
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-31T04:00:55.654Z

[Read original post](https://shopify.engineering/shopify-developers-share-lessons-self-advocacy-adversity-technology)