Leading through the downturn
summary
Shopify reports 61 million customers buying $9.1 billion in 4 days and the leader describes rebuilding after doubling engineering headcount in 2021, shifting from hypergrowth onboarding to smaller teams of ~5–10, six‑week cycles with weekly demos and incident reviews, active skip‑levels, and explicit performance management. Practical tools include Co‑pilot, ChatGPT and Duet AI for slides, rationalizing instances and reducing toil, encouraging internal moves, and claiming a 10x improvement through retrospection when stability and clear aims align.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Leading through downturn
- 3:32Resilient team culture
- 7:27Rethinking team structure
- 10:42Performance management
- 14:22Growth and mentorship
- 17:32Setting goals
- 20:06Retrospection and improvement
- 21:10Leader's growth
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