---
title: "Tell Your Stories: The Benefits of Strategic Engineering Communications"
description: "Shopify created engineering communications in early 2016 as rapid growth and expansion from four to five offices made informal knowledge sharing insufficient. The program serves internal and external audiences through weekly technical talks, an internal newsletter, engineering-blog posts, conference presentations, and an editorial calendar, with Shopifolk developers treated as a primary audience. Communications staff hunt for stories by building relationships with project leads, then coach speakers and work alongside developers while preserving their voices; coaching covers narrative, breath control, body language, and calls to action. The reported effects include less risk of duplicated work or mistakes, cross-pollination of ideas, more confident speakers, increased interest in Shopify from some attendees, and a recurring pipeline in which storytelling generates further stories."
---

# Tell Your Stories: The Benefits of Strategic Engineering Communications

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · Jaime Woo · Oct 25, 2017

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Shopify created engineering communications in early 2016 as rapid growth and expansion from four to five offices made informal knowledge sharing insufficient. The program serves internal and external audiences through weekly technical talks, an internal newsletter, engineering-blog posts, conference presentations, and an editorial calendar, with Shopifolk developers treated as a primary audience. Communications staff hunt for stories by building relationships with project leads, then coach speakers and work alongside developers while preserving their voices; coaching covers narrative, breath control, body language, and calls to action. The reported effects include less risk of duplicated work or mistakes, cross-pollination of ideas, more confident speakers, increased interest in Shopify from some attendees, and a recurring pipeline in which storytelling generates further stories.

## Context

Rapid growth made ad hoc engineering communication inadequate for sharing company history, current developments, and technical knowledge across offices and with external audiences. The program also supports community knowledge sharing and recruitment efforts.

## Approach / What changed

The team combines weekly technical talks, an internal newsletter, engineering-blog posts, conference presentations, and an editorial calendar. It actively searches for stories by connecting with project leads, coaches speakers on narrative and delivery, and works with developers to prepare posts while preserving their voices.

## Takeaways

- Shopify treated internal and external engineering communication as connected rather than separate, with developers inside the company as a primary audience.
- Communications staff build a story pipeline by regularly meeting project leads, understanding their work, and developing internal talks and newsletters into external posts and conference presentations.
- Speaker coaching covers narrative clarity, breath control, body language, and calls to action; the team reports greater speaker confidence and higher audience engagement.

## FAQ

### How does the team find engineering stories to publish?

The communications team regularly connects with engineering project leads to learn what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how to share it. Relationships with those leads create a pipeline of ideas, while talks and newsletters provide material for external stories.

### Does the communications team ghostwrite developers’ blog posts?

No. The team works alongside developers, keeps their voice in the posts, and helps get the writing to the finish line rather than critiquing their writing skills.

### What benefits did Shopify associate with engineering storytelling?

The post reports reduced risk of duplicated work or mistakes, cross-pollination of ideas, and greater understanding of work from a perspective beyond one team. It also says speakers became more confident, some attendees showed increased interest in working at Shopify, and storytelling encouraged more teams to share.

**Tags:** [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/tell-your-stories-the-benefits-of-strategic-engineering-communications)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/tell-your-stories-the-benefits-of-strategic-engineering-communications
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-17T14:13:09.889Z

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