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I worked at Shopify until the Fall. Shopify was just a really fun place to work. And in part this was because they did a really good job of interviewing. Techn

• tmshu1 4y ago
  Can you share a bit about what they did well in the behavioral interviews? Do you have specific examples? Would love to learn some best practices
  • organsnyder 4y ago
    Shopify calls its first interview the "life story" interview, and (in my experience) it was a great place for me to talk about my career, reflect on past successes and mistakes, and demonstrate empathy and self-awareness.
    • annexrichmond 4y ago
      I did that interview. Borderline illegal. My life story I consider pretty personal and was so was a pretty uncomfortable interview.
      • organsnyder 4y ago
        I didn't feel compelled to share anything I didn't want to share. I really felt free to frame it in a way that I was comfortable with. It's as much a "career story" as a "life story", IIRC.
        • the_only_law 4y ago
          My “career story” is already nice and curated for you. It’s called a resume.
          • dopamean 4y ago
            A list of things is not a story.
          • diordiderot 4y ago
            Seems like they let's candidates filter themselves. Win win
            • the_only_law 4y ago
              No shit. Every company “lets” candidates filter themselves
      • s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Maybe that attitude is one of the things it is good at screening for?
        • annexrichmond 4y ago
          That’s a bit presumptuous. I was enthusiastic about the interview until afterwards The interview was conducted by the recruiter and while she didn’t flat out ask personal questions, she asked questions that would almost cause me to reveal personal information such as my marital status and sexuality. It was not fun coming with made up responses to avoid that because it’s none of her business. There’s a reason interviews should stay professional. I’m surprised they haven’t been sued.
          • s1artibartfast 4y ago
            Sorry if my comment came off at an personal attack, that wasn't the intent. With that said, there are lots of reasons why a company might want to vet candidate attitude besides discriminating based on protected characteristics. Out of curiosity, what kind of questions did you find invasive or discriminatory?
            • annexrichmond 4y ago
              So it wasn't the questions themselves, but when you start asking about why you moved from this city to that, or why did you choose this school, etc. Maybe it's because your SO got a job there, or some other personal reason. I get that it's totally an innocent intent, but there are much better ways to assess a candidate's soft skills, that is strictly related to their professional experience.
              • aprdm 4y ago
                [flagged]
                • dang 4y ago
    • motoxpro 4y ago
      That's really really cool.
    • drowsspa 4y ago
      What a nightmare.
    • symlinkk 4y ago
      So only people who have slick enough social skills to bullshit their way through that will get hired. The quiet unassuming engineer who spend their free time programming will get passed on and the extroverted engineer who spent their free time partying will get hired.
      • jross225 4y ago
        Lol, no. 1. That is a very deterministic statement 2. This is a part of the process, not the entire process. There are still technical elements tested during the interview. 3. The signal that they are looking for, but do not tell candidates, is a story about overcoming obstacles. What I will say about the lifestory, is that it aligns with the skillset required to do well in a corporate environment. Namely telling stories, being relatively interesting, and having some ability to sell yourself and your accomplishments (in addition to being technically competent which is tested elsewhere).
        • symlinkk 4y ago
          “Yeah, we see here that you developed your own machine learning framework in your free time. That’s great and all, but jross225 didn’t find you interesting enough, so we’re going to have to pass, sorry.”
          • the_only_law 4y ago
            As if “corporate environment” and “interesting people” are remotely compatible.
          • amrocha 4y ago
            If you developed an ML framework in your free time and can't tell a compelling story about it in 45 minutes then I probably don't want to work with you either
      • drowsspa 4y ago
        For all I know, "culture fit" means "personality clones". HR seems to love that.
    • umeshunni 4y ago
      Uh. I hope this was for a non-technical role. Otherwise, it sounds like a bad idea and best and a torturous thing that filters out a lot of non-native, non-extroverted people. But then again, that's probably why the environment seems 'fun'
      • amrocha 4y ago
        Being able to communicate empathetically with your coworkers is a core competency for technical workers too. There's a difference between an introvert and an asshole.
        • projectazorian 4y ago
          Asking people to tell their "life story" in a job interview seems like a sign of boundary issues, not empathy. An empathetic person would realize that people come to job interviews expecting to talk about their professional experience, so it isn't the appropriate environment to ask such an invasive question.
          • amrocha 4y ago
            You choose what to talk about and what to share. It's open ended to give you the ability to share as much as you're comfortable with. You can tell the story of your career, no need to get any more personal unless you want to.
      • waboremo 4y ago
        You've interviewed at places that didn't require you to talk about yourself? Just because Shopify might name it something specific, doesn't mean it's all that unique. Some companies hold this potion entirely on a first/second phone call, others might having an initial section of the interview dedicated to talking about yourself and your experience. Not sure how this weeds out non-native or non-extroverted people, both of whom are very capable of talking about their experiences. It would be great if you wouldn't infantilize them.
        • 4y ago
• organsnyder 4y ago
  I'm still at Shopify (even after today). I can confirm that the colleagues I'm losing are just all around great humans—in addition to having good technical chops. The hiring process optimizes for nice colleagues, and it seems to have worked quite well.
  • data-ottawa 4y ago
    Former Shopify here, there are a lot of really special people going today. People who mentored me, who work hard, and do high quality work, and people who really carried the best of culture of the company (both technical and personal culture). Really a shame to see this happen.
• joenot443 4y ago
  The buddies I made at my first internship at Shopify are friends I still chat with to this day, despite us living all over the continent. I think that was my fourth of five co-ops, but it was by far the most socially stimulating. I'm bummed to hear about the layoffs, I hope the culture doesn't suffer too much. Shopify Ottawa was genuinely warm and familiar in a way few tech offices are able to be.
• mpalfrey 4y ago
  +1 for an awesome interview experience. I had an offer last year which I didn't end up accepting (for various reasons) but I walked away from the process having actually enjoyed it.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• simonbarker87 4y ago
  I got the whole way through to the end of a senior backend role interview process a couple of years back and it was very enjoyable because of the people. Sadly I got vetoed by one interviewer for an inelegant game of life solution (first time I’d ever seen GoL and I got bogged down in the middle logic) - never been so disappointed ever as every interview I had went really well on a personal level and (with the exception of that one) all my code was fine. I hope to see Shopify continue to do well, I’ve used it for over 10 years and love using the platform.